1 Je de l écrivain et jeu de l écriture Pistes [B.O.] Autobiographie, mémoires, journal intime L écrivain dans sa langue, l écriture comme jouissance esthétique, l expression des sentiments, la mise en abyme
Starting blocks Literature is about plots and characters and it is also about who is speaking to whom. The reader has to question the narration: who is the narrator? Whom is he or she addressing? About what? Should the words be taken at face-value or is there more than meets the eye? Writers also enjoy the very act of writing. They play with words and their own language to express the protagonist s or character s ideas and feelings, the narrator s and sometimes even their own. Indeed, the author, the narrator and the protagonist are very often not so clearly differentiated and it requires a reader to pull the thread and unravel the story and make up his or her mind about Who s Who, so to speak. However, none of this is possible without a preliminary agreement between the writer and the reader. Whatever the genre chosen by writers, they need readers to cooperate, to apply the willing suspension of disbelief* as defined by the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817) to go with the flow of the plot. This collaboration is best exemplified by Samuel Johnson s quotation: A Writer only begins a book A reader finishes it To sum up, first-person narrative*, stream of consciousness*, omniscient* narrator, mise en abyme* and the like are the tools used by writers to unsettle the reader and raise deeper issues. In other words, twists and turns help build up stories within stories, and it s up to the reader to read between the lines and decipher the encoded message. List of texts under study Text 1 Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789 & 1793) by William Blake Text 2 (The) Daffodils (1804) by William Wordsworth Text 3 The Oval Portrait (1842) by Allan Edgar Poe Text 4 The Canary in The Dove s Nest and Other Stories (1923) by Katherine Mansfield Text 5 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou Text 6 An Unauthorized Autobiography of Me (2000) by Sherman Alexie j Text 7 Any Human Heart (2002) by William Boyd 6
TEXT 1 Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1793) by William Blake PRE-READING ACTIVITIES Identify the following elements. Try and connect them in various artistic fields such as painting, sculpture or poetry. To understand this extract, you need to take into account the Industrial Revolution that transformed the landscape of European cities as in London. It was also a period of political and social revolutionary ideas which were implemented in the new-born United States of America (1776) as well as in France during the French Revolution (1789). Background The Enlightenment (the 18th century) was also called the Age of Reason because intellectuals from all over Europe meant to denounce superstitions and abuses in societies dominated by the Church and the government. They intended to spread the lights of knowledge, to promote sciences, to exchange ideas on philosophy and how to reform societies. Many famous intellectuals including the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677), the English philosopher and physician John Locke (1632-1704), the physicist Isaac Newton (1643-1727) or the philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) took part in this cultural movement, which roughly dates back to the middle of the 17th century. The Age of Reason was epitomized by the edition of the great Encyclopédie (1751). The collective work of major intellectuals was one of the triggers of the American Revolution and eventually of the French Revolution. Romanticism* emerged and stressed the superiority of emotion opposing the ideals of reason and reform. In the wake of the Enlightenment, Neoclassicism* paid tribute to the cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The ideas of grandeur and reasonable organisation were a response to the philosophical ideals of the age. 7
William BLAKE (1757-1827) was an English poet but also a remarkable painter and printmaker, he illustrated his own poems with engravings. His prophetic style went unnoticed during his lifetime, caught between eighteenth-century Neoclassicism* and the Romantic* Age. He is now acknowledged as a major Romantic artist before his time both in poetry and visual arts. He used philosophy and mysticism but his work is mainly based on the Bible. This atypical poet was a believer but totally rejected the Church of England among many institutions, including traditional marriage and the rationalism encouraged by the Enlightenment. NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT Introduction Songs of Innocence (1789) and Introduction Songs of Experience (1793) by William Blake Text 1 5 10 15 20 Songs of Innocence was the first collection of poems printed. Five years later, a volume enriched with a set of new poems was printed under the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Songs of Innocence (1789) Introduction Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: Pipe a song about a Lamb! So I piped with a merry chear. Piper, pipe that song again; So I piped: he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy chear: So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read. So he vanish d from my sight, And I pluck d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs, Every child may joy to hear. 5 10 15 20 Songs of Experience (1793) Introduction Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, & Future sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk d among the ancient trees, Calling the lapsed Soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might controll The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the dewy grass; Night is worn, And the morn Rises from the slumberous mass. Turn away no more; Why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor, The wat ry shore, Is giv n thee till the break of day. 8
VOCABULARY pipe: jouer (du pipeau) glee: allégresse, joie chear=cheer: bonne humeur, gaieté wept: pret. de weep (wept, wept): pleurer pluck: cueillir reed: un roseau (bot.), anche (mus.) lapsed: qui n est plus pratiquant dew: la rosée starry: étoilé slumberous: somnolent, endormi FOCUS ON 1. Focus on the title of the book. What content might you expect in each poem? Are your answers in keeping with what you have read? 2. Read the Introduction to Songs of Innocence aloud. What does it sound like? 3. What are the lexical fields observed in Introduction to Songs of Innocence? And in Introduction to Songs of Experience? Are the themes you have found in keeping with the Romantic Age? 4. Which one is easier to understand? Why? 5. Identify the I in Songs of Innocence. What differences can you observe with the narrator of Songs of Experience? 6. Could you draw a parallel between the contrasting ideas of innocence/experience and the Bible? BRANCHING OUT Literature owes a lot to the Bible. Consciously or not, many English-speaking writers have been influenced by the texts of the Bible, its imagery, its characters, its themes or even its very words (See the influence of gospels in this very chapter, TEXT 5). Most of these writers grew up in a Protestant milieu, which encourages a personal approach to the Bible and can account for this major influence. The Bible must not just be considered as a religious text. Indeed, the Biblical genre enables readers to classify the parts of the book according to their literary genre thus Genesis is considered as an historical narrative or epic. For readers, the Bible is a key that can cast a new light on the arts. To a certain extent it can help you understand a text more fully. Today, these literary and more generally artistic works refer to the Authorized Version, also known as the King James Version of the Bible, printed in 1611. 1. Find some titles and complete works that were suggested by the Bible.You will come across visual works such as paintings or sketches, writings, movies, music pieces or songs. Be ready to explain what part of it was inspired by the Bible. 2. Compare the various works that you have found: do they belong to the same form of art or do they have in common a character or a famous quote? To become aware of the use of the Bible in English language literature, see TEXT 19 in chapter 3, The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne and in chapter 6, TEXT 35 Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley and TEXT 36, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. 9
TASK! POETRY Learn a verse or the full poem and choose the best way to tell it. It can be played, chanted or sung. Music in any form is welcome.! ARTS William Blake himself engraved and coloured the illustrations for both collections of poems (See the example above). You are going to imitate Blake s engravings. Create a picture or a collage for a poem you like. Like Blake, you will include words from the poem into your work. Text 1 If you feel like Further information to supplement your personal exam file Watching http://www.biblicalarts.org Museum of Biblical Arts in Dallas, Texas (USA) http://www.biblical-art.com Listening Poems from both books have been set to music by a wide range of composers, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Frandsen, Per Drud Nielsen, Sven-David Sandström and Benjamin Britten to name but a few. More recently in 2002 Victoria Poleva composed a chamber cycle on the verses by W. Blake for soprano, clarinet and accordion. 10
TEXT 2 (The) Daffodils (1804) by William Wordsworth PRE-READING ACTIVITIES Make a list of a minimum of five Romantic* elements according to you. They can be seen, felt, etc. What is common to the elements you have chosen? To understand this extract, you need to take into account the influence of William Wordsworth on the Romantic* movement in England. William WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was born in the Lake District (Northern England). In 1785, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), which was to launch the English Romantic* movement. One of Wordsworth s most famous poems, Tintern Abbey, was published in the work, along with Coleridge s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Within the third edition, the Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. Indeed, Wordsworth unveils the elements of a new type of poetry based on the real language of men and which avoids the poetic diction of 18th-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions. NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT Daffodils (1804) by William Wordsworth I WANDER D lonely as a cloud That floats on high o er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; 5 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. VOCABULARY wander: errer host: ici, foule daffodils: jonquilles beneath: sous flutter: frémir 11
Text 2 10 15 20 Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretch d in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed and gazed but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. FOCUS ON Stanzas 1-2-3 1. Draw a simple sketch of the scene keeping in mind all the elements surrounding the flowers. What sort of scene is it? 2. Description of the flowers: a. List the elements associated with the daffodils (colour, movement, number, emotion, other natural elements). b. Describe how the poet links them (simile, metaphor). What effect does it create? 3. Compare the description of the daffodils with the description of the I (verses 1-2). Are they similar? 4. List all the words belonging to the lexical field of vision. Why is it important? VOCABULARY twinkle: scintiller margin: bord glance: un coup d oeil toss: agiter sprightly: alerte outdo: surpasser sparkling: étincelant glee: allégresse jocund: jovial, enjoué gaze: contempler oft: often inward: intérieur bliss: béatitude fill: (se) remplir 5. Verses 15-16: describe the impact of the scene on the poet and explain why he feels this way. Stanza 4 6. Find echoes of stanza 1-2 (words, images, emotions ). 7. In your opinion, what does the inward eye stand for? Conclude 8. Keeping in mind what you know about Romanticism*, prove that this poem is representative of this literary movement. 12