Lecture 5 Poetry Interpretation

References

1. Delaney, D. Fields of Vision. Literature in the English Language. Volume 1 / Denis Delaney, Ciaran Ward, Carla Rho Fiorina. – Longman, 2003.
2. Verdonk, P. Stylistics. – OUP, 2003. – 124 p. (reading hall)
3. Galperin, I.R. Stylistics. M.: Higher School, 1977. – 332 p.
4. Lethbridge, Stefanie & Mildorf, Jarmila. Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary studies in English. Developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg.
5. Widdowson, H. G. Practical Stylistics: an approach to poetry. Oxford University Press, 1992. – 230 p.
6. Скребнев, Ю.М. Основы стилистики английского языка: учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. – М., 2003. – 221 с.

Plan:

1. The distinctive nature and characteristics of poetry.

2. Types of poetry.

3. Imagery.

4. Symbols.

5. Figures of speech.

6. Sound features.

7. The structure of verse. The stanza.

8. Layout.

1. Delaney, 4: One modern poet, when asked the question "What is poetry?", replied that poetry, unlike prose, is a form of writing in which few lines run to the edge of the page! The American poet Robert Frost contended that " poetry is the kind of thing poets write ". While these replies, at first, may not seem serious, they inadvertently reveal two important aspects of poetry: the first quotation indicates the arrangement of the words on the page as an important element of poetry, while the second emphasizes that there is a special "poetic" way of using language. A working definition may, therefore, be that poetry emerges from the interplay between the meaning of words and their arrangement on paper; or – as the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it – "poetry is the best words in their best order".

Poetry, like all literature, is a writer's attempt to communicate to others his emotional and intellectual response to his own experiences and the world that surrounds him. The poet puts word together to make the reader feel that he has felt and experience what he has experienced.

According to Delaney, although poems come in all shapes and sizes, they share certain characteristics.

{ Imagery, metaphors and symbols make poetry dense with meaning;

{ Sound features, such as rhyme, rhythm and repetition, give the language a special musical quality.

{ The standard rules of grammar and syntax are often ignored, so that the language may be used in a striking or original way.

According to Verdonk, 11: the language of poetry has the following characteristics:

š Its meaning is often ambiguous and elusive;

š It may flout the conventional rules of grammar;

š It has a peculiar sound structure;

š It is spatially arranged in metrical lines and stanzas;

š It often reveals foregrounded patterns in its sounds, vocabulary, grammar, or syntax;

š It frequently contains indirect references to other texts.

According to Lethbridge, 142: there are a number of outward signs that indicate a poem:

ü The individual text lines in poetry do not fill the entire width of the page;

ü Very dense use of specialized language. Poems usually try to express their meaning in much less space than, say a novel or a short story.

ü As a result of its relative brevity, poetry tends to make more concentrated use of formal elements, it displays a tendency for structural, phonological, morphological and syntactic overstructuring. It means that poetry uses elements such as pound patterns, verse and metre, rhetorical devices, style, stanza form or imagery more frequently than other types of text. Most poetry depends on the aesthetic effects of a formalized use of language;

ü Some people associate poetry with subjectivity and the expression of intense personal experience. While this is true for some poetry, especially lyrical poetry, there are a great number of poems this does not apply to (e.g. some narrative didactic and philosophical poems). One should not assume that the author of a poem is identical with its speaker and thus even lyrical poems cannot be treated as subjective expressions of the author. The two levels of author and speaker should always be kept separate.

According to Muller-Zettelmann (ibid. 144): poetic texts have a tendency to:

— Relative brevity (with some notable exceptions)

— Dense expression;

— Express subjectivity more than other texts

— Display a musical or songlike quality

— Be structurally and phonologically overstructured

— Be syntactically and morphologically overstructured

— Deviate from everyday language

— Aesthetic self-referentiality (which means that they draw attention to themselves as art form both through the form in which they are written and through explicit references to the writing of poetry).

With all the difficulties of defining poetry it is worth remembering that poetry, especially in the form of song, is one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, much older than prose, and that it seems to answer – or to originate in – a human impulse that reaches for expression in joy, grief, doubt, hope, loneliness, and much more.

Verdonk, 12: Our socialization has trained us to immediately perceive the purpose and intended effects, i.e. the social function, of most texts we are confronted with. Clearly, the majority of these texts have some practical function in that they have intentions which can be related to the real world around us. For instance, a headline encourages us to read a news story, a publisher's blurb encourages us to buy a book, and an advertisement is designed to promote a product. Whereas the non-literary text makes a connection with the context of our everyday social practice, the literary text does not: it is self-enclosed.

The first thing we might note is that poetry bears no relation to our socially established needs and conventions, because unlike non-literary texts, poetry is detached from the ordinary contexts of social life. To put it differently, poetry does not make direct reference to the world of phenomena but provides a representation of it through its peculiar and unconventional uses of language which invite and motivate, sometimes even provoke, readers to create an imaginary alternative world.

It is this potential of a literary text which is its essential function, namely that it enables us to satisfy our needs as individuals, to escape, be it ever so briefly, from our humdrum socialized existence, to feel reassured about the disorder and confusion in our minds, and to find a reflection of our conflicting emotions. We may conclude that the function of literature is not socializing but individualizing.

In ordinary communication we use language to make reference to all sorts of items in the material world around us. But when language does not refer to our everyday social context, as in literary texts, when it is the only thing available to us to construct an imaginary context, then the language becomes the constant factor to which we have to go back every time we wish to recall what we have imagined.

Unsurprisingly, our awareness and perception of this particular use of language have to be much more astute than in ordinary communication, and we therefore experience the verbal structures of a literary text as elements of a dynamic communicative interaction between the writer and reader, in which our expectations are fulfilled or frustrated and our emotions roused or soothed by incentives in the text whenever we turn to it. Of course, given the fact that we all have different expectations and different emotions, the responses to these incentives, and thereby our interpretation of the text as a whole, are bound to differ from reader to reader, and it may include total rejection. A literary text prompts a more individual, more creative response. The text seems to alert the reader to some significance which is implied but not made linguistically explicit, which is somehow read into the text.

Widdowson, 24: Unlike other types of discourse, poetry is cut off from normal social practice. Its interpretation does not depend on being referred to some external situational context. So the poet must of necessity compensate for this lack of normal contextual connection by increasing unique patterns of language within the context of the poem itself, thereby representing an elusive alternative to familiar social reality. Poetry sets up an alternative order of its own. All poems contain within their design the potential of multiple significance. There are ideas and experience particular to the individual which cannot be made general within the scope of rational description or explanation. Poems represent them, fashion them into a form which we can apprehend without being able to explain.

Widdowson, xii: the effects of poetry are never precise: they are evocative, suggestive, elusive. If they were made precise, they would become referential. The poem would then simply conform to the normal conditions of conventional statement and lose its point.

2. It is useful to keep two general distinctions in mind: lyric poetry and narrative poetry (Lethbridge).

o Lyric poetry

A lyric poem is a comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song which is said to be its origin: For Greek writers the lyric was a song accompanied by the lyre.

Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic monologue and most 'occasional poetry'.

Elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular person. More broadely defined, the term elegy is also used for solemn meditations often on questions of death.

An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style.

The sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lover's sufferings and hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Renaisasance (Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey imitated the sonnets written by Petrarch). From the 17^th century onwards the sonnet was also used for other topics than love, for instance for religious experience (By Donn and Milton), reflections on art (Keats and Shelley) or even the war experience (Brooke and Owen).

In a dramatic monologue a speaker, who is explicitly someone other than the author, makes a speech to a silent auditor in a specific situation and at a critical moment. Without intending to do so, the speaker reveals aspects of his temperament and character.

Occasional poetry is written for a specific occasion: a wedding (then it is called an epithalamion), the return of a king from exile or a death, etc.

o Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a sequence of connected events, it propels characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator. Narrative poems might tell of a love story, or the deeds of a hero or heroine.

Sub-categories of narrative poetry are for example: epic, mock-epic or ballad.

Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the founding of a nation or the beginning of world history, they tend to use an elevated style of language and supernatural beings take part in the action.

The mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely insignificant occurrences. (A famous example is Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock', which tells the story of a young beauty whose suitor secretly cuts off a lock of her hair).

A ballad is a song, originally transmitted orally, which tells a story. It is an important form of folk poetry which was adapted for literary uses from the 16^th century onwards.

o Descriptive and Didactic Poetry

Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions (descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry).

The purpose of a didactic poem is primarily to teach something. This can take the form of very specific instructions, such as how to catch a fish, or how to write good poetry. But it can also be meant as instructive in a general way. Until the 20^th century all literature was expected to have a didactic purpose in a general sense, that is, to impart moral, theoretical or even practical knowledge.

3. Imagery (Delaney, D.)

Images are words or phrases that appeal to our senses. Consider these lines taken from Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags we cursed through sludge.

The poet is describing his experience as a soldier during the First World War. Through his choice of words he creates:

· visual images: bent double, old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed;

· aural images: coughing like hags, cursed;

· a tactile image: sludge.

If we replace the imagistic words that Owen uses with more generic terms:

Physically exhausted, the soldiers marched across the wet terrain cursing their fate.

the impact on our senses is lost.

The writer may use an image to help us:

· re-live a sense experience that we have already had. We may be able to conjure up the sound of old women coughing or the sensation of walking through mud from past experience;

· have a new sense experience. This is achieved when our sense memories are called forth in a pattern that does not correspond to any of our actual experiences. Exploited in this way, images allow us to see, hear, feel, smell and taste experiences that are new to us.

We use the term imagery to refer to combinations or clusters of images that are used to create a dominant impression. A writer's choice and arrangement of images is often an important clue to the overall meaning of his work.

Questions to ask when analyzing a writer's use of imagery

T What does the writer want the reader to see, hear, taste, feel and smell?

T What revealing details bring the place, the people or the situation to life? Does the writer use details that people would usually overlook?

T Which are the most striking and revealing images? Which images tend to linger on in our minds? Are they important to the overall meaning of the work?

T Does the work appeal to one sense in a particular or to all the senses?

T What emotions or attitudes do the images arouse in the reader?

4. Symbols (Delaney, D.)

A symbol is an example of what is called the transference of meaning. Writers take a concrete item – an object, a colour, a person, a place – and attribute a deeper meaning to it. A symbol may be a detail, an object, a character or an incident. It exists first as something literal and concrete in the work, but it also has the capacity to evoke in the mind of the reader a range of invisible and abstract associations. By definition symbols are open-ended. A given symbol will evoke different responses in different readers. There is, however, an acceptable rage of possible readings and any interpretation of a symbol must be confirmed by the rest of the work.

The identification and understanding of symbols demands awareness and intelligence of the reader. It involves the reader directly in the creative process, asking him to add his own intellectual and emotional responses. Through this collaboration the work is enriched and enlarged.

Cultural and shared symbols

Many symbolic associations are widely recognized and accepted: the dawn with hope, the serpent with evil, the colour white with innocence, light with knowledge, dark with ignorance. Writers often make use of these cultural or shared symbols. Readers must not, however, automatically apply conventional meanings to these symbols. Sometimes writers will enlarge or narrow the meaning of a cultural symbol. The reader must first carefully examine how the symbol is used in the text before assigning meaning.

Literary or personal symbols

Authors also use their own original symbols. Personal or literary symbols do not have pre-established associations: the meaning that is attached t them emerges fropm the context of the work in which they occur. A particular landscape or certain atmospheric condition may become associated with a character's emotional state. A colour or an object may take on a secondary meaning. A recurring gesture or a character may be given symbolic meaning.

Guidelines for identifying and understanding symbols

When does an object, character or action cease to be just part of the story and begin to develop symbolic association? There is no simple answer to this question. Ultimately, the reader must develop his own awareness through receptive and responsive reading. There are, however, some broad guidelines he can follow.

The principal techniques that writers use for creating symbols are:

G repetition: the reader should take note of multiple references to a particular object or the recurrence of the same gesture;

G emphasis: does the author seem to pay particular attention to some element, describe it in detail or use poetic or connotative language when referring to it?

G associations automatically made with shared symbols: the reader should try to understand if the author wishes him to make conventional associations with the symbol or if he has added his own personal significance.

While there is a risk that a reader may not identify symbols, there is also the danger that he may see symbolic importance where the writer did not intend it. 'Symbol hunting', i.e. attributing symbolic status to objects, characters or actions when there is little evidence in the text that they should be viewed as a symbol, should be avoided.

Questions to ask when analyzing symbols

T Does the writer refer repeatedly to any objects or gestures in his work?

T Does he make any concrete items in the short story emerge and assume importance?

T Does he use poetic or connotative language when describing particular objects or gestures?

T Does he use any shared or cultural symbols?

T Does he attribute the conventional meaning to these symbols?

T How does the use of symbols help the writer to convey the meaning of his work?

5. Figures of speech (Delaney, D.)

A figure of speech is any use of language which deviates from the obvious or common usage in order to achieve a special meaning or effect. We use figures of speech in everyday conversation when we say, for example, 'money talks' (personification) or 'I've got butterflies in my stomach' (metaphor) or 'he's like a bull in a china shop' (simile).

The density and originality of a writer's use of figures of speech is part of his characteristic style.

The are many different figures of speech. The most widely used are:

A simile is a figure of speech in which a comparison between two distinctly different things is indicated by the word 'like' or 'as'. A simile is made up of three elements:

- The tenor: the subject under the discussion;

- The vehicle: what the subject is compared to;

- The ground: what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common.

We can therefore analyse the simile 'lifeis like a rollercoaster' as follows:

tenor ground vehicle

life it has its ups and downs rollercoaster

A metaphor is an implied comparison which creates a total identification between two things being compared. Words such as 'like' or 'as' are not used. Like a simile, a metaphor is made up of three elements:

- The tenor: the subject under discussion;

- The vehicle: what the subject is compared to;

- The ground: what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common.

We can analyse the metaphor 'he's a live wire' as follows:

tenor ground vehicle

he is full of energy / is very lively live wire

is potentially dangerous

In metonymy (Greek for 'a change of name') the term for one thing is applied to another with which it has become closely associated. ' The crown', for example, can be use to refer to a king.

In synecdoche (Greek for 'taking together') a part of something is used to signify the whole or vice versa, although the latter form is quite rare. An example of synechdoche from everyday speech can be found in the proverb 'Many hands make light work', where the expression 'many hands' means 'the labour of many people'. An example of the whole representing a part can be found in expressions such as 'I'm reading Dickens', where an attribute of a literary work (i.e. it was written by Chjarles Dickens) is substituted for the work itself.

Personification is a form of comparison in which human characteristics, such as emotions, personality, behaviour and so on, are attributed to an animal, object or idea: 'The proud lion surveys his kingdom'.

The primary function of personification is to make abstract ideas clearer to the reader by comparing them to everyday human experience. Humanizing cold and complex abstractions can bring them to life, render them more interesting and make them easier to understand.

An oxymoron is the combination of words which at first sight seems to be contradictory or incongruous, but whose surprising juxtaposition emphasizes a contrast, expresses a truth or creates a dramatic effect. Oxymorons are paradoxical metaphors that are reduced to the two words, usually adjective-noun ('burning ice') or adverb-adjective ('painfully beautiful').

Parallelism is the repetition in the same line or in close proximity of similar syntactical structures. An example of parallelism in She Walks in Beauty by G. Byron can be found in line 7:

One shade the more, one ray the less

Parallelism is a sophisticated form of repetition which is used to emphasize the meaning of the separate clauses. It also creates a harmonious syntactical balance which adds a musical quality to the language.

Hyperbole (Greek for 'overshooter') is the use of exaggeration to draw the attention to or underline the importance of a particular statement. It is often used to provoke a reaction, or for serious or comic effect. Perhaps the most famous example of hyperbole in English literature is when Christopher Marlowe's hero Doctor Faustus asks of Helen of Troy, 'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships…?'

Hyperbole is commonly used in everyday speech:

I'd give my right arm for a slice of pizza.

A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration is magnified so greatly that it refers to an impossibility is called an adynaton (from Greek a, 'without' and dynasthai, 'to be able').

Questions to ask when analyzing figures of speech

T Are comparisons drawn through metaphors or similes? What information, attitudes or associations are revealed through these associations?

T Are there any examples of synecdoche or metonymy? What is the writer's purpose in using these figures of speech? How do they affect the style and tone of the poem?

T Are animals, objects or ideas personified in the poem? How does personification contribute to our understanding of the poem?

6. Sound features (Delaney, D.)

Different sounds have different effects on us (e.g. the gentle lapping of water against rocks and the screeching of chalk against a blackboard). The sounds of language also create different responses in us and writers, especially poets, use this in their work. By choosing words for their sound as well as their meaning, writers create a musicality in their work that can evoke strong emotional responses and reinforce the meaning they wish to convey.

The most common sound features are rhyme, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.

The term rhyme refers to the effect that is created when a poet repeats the same sound at the end of two or more lines. Rhyme has several important functions:

· It adds a musical quality to the poem;

· It marks the end of each line;

· It makes the poem easier to remember;

· It affects the pace and tone of the poem.

There are several different types of rhyme:

single-syllable or masculine rhyme: the beginning of the syllable varies while the rest stays the same, for example day/say, light/night;

doudle-syllable or feminine rhyme matches two syllable words or parts of words: ocean/motion, pretending/bending;

triple-syllable rhyme matches three-syllable words: beautiful/dutiful, comparison/garrison;

true or perfect rhyme; the rhymed sounds correspond exactly, for example: boat/float, double/trouble;

imperfect rhyme (half rhyme or slant rhyme): the sound of two words is similar, but it is not as close as is required in true or perfect rhyme. Generally the words contain identical vowels or identical consonants but not both, for example loads/lids/lads, road/moan/boat;

end rhymes fall at the end of the lines;

internal rhymes occur within the same line;

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary (Thee Raven, Edgar Allan Poe)

Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound in a sequence of nearby words. In Anglo-Saxon times, before the introduction of rhyme, alliteration gave the language of poetry its musical quality and made the poems, which were often recited, easier to remember. Alliteration is still popular in modern poetry and can also be found in songs, headlines and everyday expressions such as 'black and blue', 'safe and sound', and 'right as rain'.

Assonance is the repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words containing different consonants. It creates 'vowel rhyme' as in break/play, hope/spoke.

Like alliteration, assonance adds a musical quality to the language and it also establishes rhythm:

· open, broad sounds [o], [T], [a:], [ei] (flow, burn, heart, flame) tend to slow the rhythm down;

· slender [i] and [e] (hill, met) sounds create a quicker pace.

The use of sound of words to suggest the sound they denote is called onomatopoeia. We hear this sound-echoing effect in the 'slamming' of a door, the 'buzzing' of bees, the 'ticking' of a clock. In his poem 'OnaMaTaPia', the poet Spike Milligan suggests that it's more difficult to spell onomatopoeia correctly than to understand and identify it!

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