Deconstruction notes

Deconstruction

Il y a toujours un qui baise et un qui tend la joue.

Il n’y a pas hors de texte.

Some ways that deconstruction ‘thinks’ about a text: 1) examining binaries or oppositions (if the concept of love is being discussed in a text, the concept of hate is often lurking there for the reader keen enough to see it); the concept of absence (what is present in the text is important; but what is left out or marginalized in the text is often extremely important and interesting); the concept of privilege (whose narrative or ideology is given special standing in the text, whose is shunted aside); the concept of trace (if some idea or concept is not discussed or is left to the side, how does it leave a trace or mark in the text).


Opening paragraph:

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I was along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.

Deconstructive response to the first paragraph of The Sound and the Fury:

The opening paragraph creates an opposition between nature (flower tree space, flower trees) and the manicured space of the golf course, divided by the boundary of the fence. The text clearly asks the reader to view this binary through the lens of the superiority and greater aesthetic quality of nature. The manicured space is further structured by the opposition of the “they” versus the “I” and “we” of the flower space, and is presented as the space where “hitting” takes place and flags

Reading for Tuesday

Please go to this link and read the short essay by Martha Nussbaum. (The essay begins beneath the photograph of Nussbaum as a college student.) For a bit more about Nussbaum go this link. Come to class ready to discuss Nussbaum's contention about the importance of an inner life.

Practicing using literary terminology ...

Identify the meter and verse form of the following passage:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, (135)

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: (140)

So excellent a king; that was, to this ...

[from Hamlet, meter = iambic pentameter/ verse form = blank verse]

Do the same for the following passage:

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

[Walt Whitman/ verse form = free verse

Lit terms:

Identify the following: Fane would I follow Friedrich faintly and fantastic.

[alliteration repetition at close intervals of initial consonant words]

Long lost lovers loathe lone hours.

[assonance repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds]

I will miss the mill where Will did thrill

[consonance repetition at close intervals of final consonant sounds]

I will die 'ere she shall grieve

[from Emily Dickinson/ consonance – ll sound. Note too how the consonance emphasizes the words that indicate willing and desiring: will and shall.]

No examples for the following, but focus on them:

connotation what a word suggests beyond its surface definition

denotation basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word

diction choice of words for effect

syntax word order or grammatical appropriateness

And make sure you know these:

tone writer's attitude toward the audience or subject, implied or related directly

mood the atmosphere suggested by the structure and style of the poem

Review the following:

cacophony harsh, non-melodic, unpleasant sounding arrangement of words

euphony pleasant, easy to articulate words

onomatopoeia use of words which mimic their meaning in sound

sibilance hissing sounds represented by s, z, sh

allegory characters are symbols, has a moral

didactic poetry poetry with the primary purpose of teaching or preaching

dramatic monologue character "speaks" through the poem; a character study

elegy poem which expresses sorrow over a death of someone for whom the poet cared, or on another solemn theme

sonnet 14 line poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line)

blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter

caesura a natural pause in the middle of a line, sometimes coinciding with punctuation

couplet two successive lines which rhyme, usually at the end of a work

enjambment describes a line of poetry in which the sense and grammatical construction continues on to the next line

  

free verse no fixed meter or rhyme

iambic pentameter: syllables per line, following an order of unaccented-accented syllables

internal rhyme repetition of sounds within a line (but not at the end of the line)

meter regularized rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables; accents occur at approx. equal intervals of time

refrain repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines in a pattern

rhyme repetition of end sounds

rhythm wave-like recurrence of sound

stanza group of lines

structure internal organization of a poem's content

allusion a reference to something in literature of history

anaphora repetition of the same word or words at the start of two or more lines

archetype a character or personality type found in every society

conceit an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor

hyperbole exaggeration, overstatement

imagery representation through language of a sensory experience

irony incongruity or discrepancy between the implied and expected; verbal, dramatic, situational

metaphor implied or direct comparison

metonymy symbolism; one thing is used as a substitute for another with which it is closely identified (the White House)

oxymoron compact paradox in which two successive words contradict each other

pace tempo or rate implied by the structure and style of the poem

paradox statement or situation containing seemingly contradictory elements

parallelism presents coordinating ideas in a coordinating manner

persona assumed speaker of the poem; typically used synonymously with 'speaker'

personification giving a non-human the characteristics of a human

simile comparison using 'like' or 'as'

style an author's combined use of these ideas into a recurring pattern of usage

symbolism something (object, person, situation, etc.) means more than what it is

synecdoche symbolism; the part signifies the whole, or the whole the part (all hands on board)

theme central idea