Transcript Document

Lesson Seven
Literary Texts
Remember…
• Literary texts ‘declare their distance’
• No intertextuality
• Creative, expressive
How?
Novels, plays, etc. are mostly standard discourse,
especially for example detective novels BUT
important literary works can:
explore character
use unusual language
use language devices eg. alliteration, metaphor, plays
on words, etc.
Who?
• The unspeakable in full pursuit of the
uneatable.
• I can resist anything except temptation.
• There is only one thing in the world worse
than being talked about, and that is not
being talked about.
Who?
• If music be the food of love, play on.
• Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund
day stands tiptoe on the mountain tops.
• To be or not to be, that is the question.
more Romeo and Juliet
J: Come, gentle night; come, loving, black
browed night,
Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun
… in Italian
J: Vieni, dolce notte, amica dalla buia fronte,
Vieni, e dammi il mio Romeo;
Poi te lo lascerò, quando morirò
E potrai tagliarlo in tante stelline,
E il firmamento con lui sarà così chiaro
Che tutto il mondo sarà invaghito della notte
E non baderà più allo scalzante sole
Who?
• In a few minutes the train was running
through the disgrace of outspread London.
Who?
• In the fishing-boat bobbing sea
• Farmyards away
• Do not go gentle into that good night.
Who?
• And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom
flashing.
• The answer my friend, is blowing in the
wind.
• … with the lunch-bucket filled every season
Blowing in the Wind
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How many roads must a man walk down
before you can call him a man.
How many seas must a white dove sail
before she sleeps in the sand
And how many times must the cannon balls fly
before they are forever banned
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Blowing in the Wind
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repetition of aspirate H, before, the answer
rhyme
rhythm in syllable length
repetition of chorus
semantic equivalence
– roads, seas, etc.
– times, years, etc.
Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’
I’m going back out before the rain starts a falling
I’ll walk to the depth of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all
empty
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty
prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’ (2)
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the colour, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and speak it, and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking, but
I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s ….
gonna fall.
Who?
• Eleanor Rigby ..wearing a face that she
keeps in a jar by the door.
• The highway’s filled with broken heroes on
a last chance power drive…
Protest song
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I’ve been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you’ve seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
And there’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs
Translation
Guardavano fuori dalla porta, si
guardavanol’un l’altro, sbadigliavano.
Sospiravano.
(C. Cassola ‘Il taglio del bosco’)
They would look out of the door, they
would look at each other, they would yawn,
they would sigh.
Translation
Ma neanche con lei dicevo una parola,
anche con lei chinavo il capo.
(E. Vittorini, ‘Conversazione in Sicilia)
Not even with her did I say a word, even
with her my head hung heavily.
The Wind in the Willows
TOAD; … I could eat a horse
ALBERT (a horse) Oh, could you? Well, I
wouldn’t say no to some toad-in-the hole.
translation
TOAD: Potrei mangiarmi un cavallo.
ALBERT (un cavallo): Ah si? Beh, io non
rifiuterei di certo un po’ di coda di rospo.
James Joyce
Once upon a time, and a very good time it was
there was moo-cow coming down along the
road and this moocow that was down along
the road met a nicens little boy named baby
tuckoo…
The Vances lived in number seven.
translation
Nel tempo dei tempi, ed erano bei tempi
davvero, c’era una muuucca che veniva giù
per la strada e questa muuucca che veniva
giù per la strada incontrò un ragazzino
carino detto grembialino.
I Vances abitavano al numero sette.
Margaret Attwood
On the thirteenth of November, day of
unluck, month of the dead, Kat went into
the Toronto General Hospital for an
operation.