The Historicist Approach to Literature - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Historicist Approach to Literature

An approach to the study of literature that highlights the importance of

historical contexts

in

shaping the meaning of texts

. For example, historicism acknowledges

how texts engage with historical events as well as with other texts

; it also acknowledges that readers often interpret texts in ways that confirm their own experiences and ideas.Slide2

AS – Love Through the Ages

Shakespeare

Poetry Anthology

Diachronic study – considers texts through a wide time period.

Greek Origins…

Chronos

– timeDia – throughSyn -with

So what is a synchronic study?

Synchronicstudy – considers texts within a narrow time period.

‘WW1 and its aftermath’

‘Modern Lit – 1945 to present day’Slide3

Text

from the Latin

textus

Meaning..?

WOVEN

How does this link the Historicist approach?

Subtext…?

What is underlying/going on beneath

So that next word we need to think about is…?

_ _ _ TEXT

CONTEXT

Which assessment objectives?

What goes with the text, how it connects to wider ideas, events

and circumstances that shape its meaning.Slide4

I’m going to give you a text to analyse using an Historicist approach…

Name: ‘Dangerous Corner’

What do you notice? Initial response?

1932

English Writer

Image

Image

ImageSlide5

I’m going to give you a text to analyse using an Historicist approach…

Name: ‘Drummer Hodge’

What do you notice? Initial response?

1899

English Writer

Image

Image

Image

Thomas HardySlide6

I’m going to give you a text to analyse using an Historicist approach…

Name: ‘Anne Hathaway’

What do you notice? Initial response?

‘Item I

gyve

unto my wief my second best bed…’

(from ?’s will)1999

‘My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses’

ImageImageSlide7

The

History of English Literature

is not just a chronological account of works written in the English Language. It is a record of the

relationship

between a writer and those who precede him or her; it is a record of the relationship between different ages; it records the rise, the growth and the decline of styles and movements; it is a record of the influence

of individual writers upon their age, and vice versa. To understand a work of literature, we must understand the personal and wider forces which shaped it – i.e. the context and time it was written in. Slide8

You will be looking at different periods of English Literature:

A period is a certain length of time during which a particular taste prevails

Different ages have different tastes and different ways of thinking

The literature written in a certain age therefore has certain common features, such as subject matter, tone and style

The periods of English Literature are connected to the historical periods in which they existed, e.g. the Elizabethan age; the Victorian age

Anglo Saxon/Old English 449-1066

Middle English 1066-1485Renaissance (Elizabethan) 1558-1603Renaissance (Jacobean) 1603-1625Neo-Classical (Restoration) 1660-1685Neo-Classical (Age of Enlightenment) c18th (up to 1798)Romantic 1798-1832

Victorian 1832-1901Modern 1901---->Slide9

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

What type, or form, of poem do we have here?What do you remember about the conventions of a sonnet?

How does the following poem both conform to and flout (break) the conventions of the sonnet form?

Shakespearian Sonnet: 14 lines, traditionally about love, uses blazon (a poetic listing of a loved one’s beautiful qualities), has a set rhyme scheme (ABABCDCDEFEFGG), is structured using three quatrains (four line stanza) and a couplet - the first twelve lines are devoted to the main idea of the poem, the final rhyming couplet marks the

volta – a turning point, or shift in a mood or argument. A sonnet is traditionally written using iambic pentameter – five iambic ‘feet’ (a soft syllable followed by a stronger syllable). Slide10
Slide11

Anne Hathaway

‘Item I

gyve

unto my wief my second best bed…’(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning worldof forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seaswhere he would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,dribbling their prose. My living laughing love – I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

as he held me upon that next best bed.How does the following poem both conform to and flout (break) the conventions of the sonnet form?

Shakespearian Sonnet: 14 lines, traditionally about love, uses blazon (a poetic listing of a loved one’s beautiful qualities), has a set rhyme scheme (ABABCDCDEFEFGG), is structured using three quatrains (four line stanza) and a couplet - the first twelve lines are devoted to the main idea of the poem, the final rhyming couplet marks the

volta – a turning point, or shift in a mood or argument. A sonnet is traditionally written using iambic pentameter – five iambic ‘feet’ (a soft syllable followed by a stronger syllable). Slide12

Duffy employs the sonnet form so adored by Shakespeare. This 14-line structure is often associated with love poetry, and is highly appropriate given the subject matter of the poem. Shakespearean sonnets contain three quatrains and a couplet.

The quatrains usually present the key ideas explored by the poet with the resolution or '

volta

' (an Italian term which literally translates as: the turn) arriving in the couplet.

In the poem, Duffy quite literally employs a softer rhyme with a much more relaxed, less restrictive rhyme scheme, combined with overtly sensual, erotic language and imagery.

She uses a regular meter but her deliberate choices of alliteration are designed to imitate the random touching made during love making, so that it is almost as though the words themselves are grazing each other.

Duffy makes frequent use of enjambment in the poem to show how freely and without obstruction love flowed between the couple, as well as to place emphasis on important words or phrases. The entire poem is a metaphor comparing the couple’s love making to the process of artistic and poetic creativity.