Transcript Document

Walt Whitman
Life (1819-1892)
Born in Long Island, New York; lived mostly in
Long Island, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, New York
 Was the son of a poor Quaker farmer-carpenter,
and left school at eleven
 Had a wide range of experience, working as a
printer, schoolteacher, office boy, journalist, editor,
house builder and army nurse, making a journey
through west and middle west, traveling down the
Mississippi River
 Died unmarried, unknown to the general public but
well known to men of letters

Works
Leaves of Grass (1855-1892): more poems
added to it in each revision
 Pride accompanied by humility
 Democracy symbolized by the humblest of natural
growths – the grass
 His new man speaks in words simple as grass
 Life is an organic form that is nevertheless
unexpected, asymmetrical, even willful

Unconventional style and content
Innovative free verse: unmetered lines of variable
length, some short, many very long like prose
printed in short lines with more controlled rhythm
 Plain style that ordinary people can read him
 All embracing spirit, including both bright and
dark, noble and humble (e.g. mechanic, prisoner)
 Open celebration of body and sexuality
 Vibrant democratic sensibility
 Freeing American poems from the old English
traditions

Conventional poems have
a regular rhyme scheme （韵脚）
and / or
a regular meter（韵律）
A metered poem has lines of the same
length（诗行长度）
&
rhythm（诗行节奏）
Free Verse has no regular
rhyme scheme
meter
Meter （韵律、格律）& foot （音步）
– a rhythm of stresses which is
structured into a recurrence of regular units
 Foot – a recurrent metric unit which is a
combination of a strong stress and the
associated weak stress or stresses
 Meter
Four standard feet




iamb (iambic)抑扬格: a metrical foot consisting of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable or a
short syllable followed by a long syllable, as in “delay”
trochee (trochaic)扬抑格: a metrical foot consisting of a
stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in
“season”, or of a long syllable followed by a short syllable
anapest(ic)抑抑扬格: a metrical foot composed of two
short syllables followed by one long one, as in the word
“seventeen”
Dactyl(ic)扬抑抑格: A metrical foot consisting of one
accented syllable followed by two unaccented or of one
long syllable followed by two short, as in “flattery”
The number of feet
 Monometer
(one foot)
 Dimeter (two feet)
 Trimeter (three feet)
 Tetrameter (four feet)
 Pentameter (five feet) (五音步）
 Hexameter (six feet)（六音步）
 Heptameter (seven feet)
 Octameter (eight feet)（八音步）
Types of meters
Iambic pentameter
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
(Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”)
 Trochaic pentameter
There they are, my fifty men and women.
(Browning, “One Word More”)

rhyme

Repetition of the last stressed vowel and all the
speech sounds following it: late-fate, followhollow
- end rhyme: rhyme scheme （押韵格式）,
e.g. abab, abcb, aabbccdd, etc.
- internal rhyme:
Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow.
Heroic couplet（英雄双韵体）
THE CANTERBURY TALES (G. Chaucer)
THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE
(Thanked be God that is etern on live),
Husbands at the church door have I had five,
For I so often have y-wedded be,
And all were worthy men in their degree.
Blank verse (无韵体诗）
HAMLET (W. Shakespeare)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
Sonnet （十四行诗）
A
single stanza of fourteen iambic
pentameter lines
- Italian sonnet or Petrarchan sonnet: an
octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet
rhyming cdecde
- English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet:
three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab
cdcd efef gg
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
John Keats (1795-1821)
“Ode to a Nightingale”
I
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
One’s Self I Sing
 “Self”
means
- personality, particular part of one’s nature
being different
independent
individuality
The Self is usually not much respected in _____
society?
primitive
slavery
feudal
The Self is highly respected in a society that
embraces
democracy
Cf. definition of democracy (Oxford):
government that allows freedom of speech,
religion and political opinion, that upholds the
rule of law and majority rule and that
respects the rights of minorities
The Self in a democratic society is expected
to
respect equality
freedom allowed by the law
&
pursue equality
freedom
with passion and power
The Self I sing / praise / celebrate is

The Modern Man
an independent individual who
not only enjoys democracy but also
embraces and pursues democracy
values equality and freedom allowed by the law.
One’s Self I Sing
(paraphrase version)
I sing of one’s self, a simple separate person who
yet embraces democracy and respects the voices
of all people.
 What I sing of is every part of a body, but not just
the face or the brain. I mean the whole body is far
more valuable. I sing of man and woman equally.
 I sing of the Modern Man who earnestly and
energetically cheers and pursues for the freest
action allowed by the sacred law.

One’s Self I Sing as a poem
Free verse: natural speech, intimate,
expressive, passionate, powerful sweeping
prose lines
 Iambic feet（抑扬格音步）：musical
 Repetition: “word”, “sing”
 Alliteration（头韵）: “simple separate”; “top to
toe”; “passion, pulse, and power”; “Modern
Man”
 Contrast: physiology vs. physiognomy; male vs.
female
 Metaphor: physiology vs. physiognomy

Song of Myself (1)
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs
to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of
summer grass.
Song of Myself (1)
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from
this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the
same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health
begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Song of Myself (1)
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are,
but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at
every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Song of Myself (21)
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the
Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of
hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I
translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of
men.
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it
should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank
or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work,
or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat,
the deck-hand singing on the steamboat deck,
I Hear America Singing
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the
hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the plowboy’s on his way in
the morning, or at noon intermission or at
sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young
wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none
else,
The day what belongs to the day – at night the party
of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious
songs.
O Captain! My Captain!
Metaphor
- Abraham Lincoln as the captain of a ship
- Lincoln and “I” as father & son
 Rhyme: end rhyme, internal rhyme
 Repetition
 Monosyllabic and two syllabic words of loud and
long sounds
 Contrast between the exulting crowd and the dead
body of captain and the sorrowful speaker
 Stanzas shaped in the form of a ship sailing
forward

Assignments for Emily Dickinson’s poems
Read Emily Dickinson’s poems closely.
 Imitate one of her poems to write a poem of your
own.
 Which poem do you like best? Why?
 Do you like her language? Why or why not?
 Comment on the function of the dashes used in the
poem.
 Identify unique or amazing images in her poems and
tell us why you think so.
 Think about the questions in the textbook.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Life (1830-1886)
Born in Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts of a
prominent family with Puritan heritage
 Education: Amherst Academy 1840-1846; Mt.
Holyoke Female Seminary 1847-1848
 Brief visits to Boston (1844, 1846, 1851),
Springfield (1853, 1854), Washington &
Philadelphia (1855)
 Eye treatments at Cambridge in Apr.-Nov. 1864,
Apr.-Oct. 1865
 Masters / Preceptors / Lovers?
 Desire to become a published poet?
 Seclusion late in life (recluse)

Religion
Calvinistic influence: Amherst College (revivals
of Calvinism) vs. Harvard & Yale (Unitarianism)
 Familiar with the Bible and hymns
 Refusing to join the church
 Doubt & faith: doubts about fulfillment beyond
the grave; belief in immortality

Death Experience
high infant and childhood mortality, high
mortality in childbirth
 High mortality for diseases or other reasons
like weather, etc.: death of neighbors, friends,
family members and other people
 Death of her 8-year-old nephew Gilbert
 Victorian habit of observing dying people and
signs of salvation

Works
 1,755
poems (1955 edition)
 1,789 poems (1998 edition)
 More than 1,000 letters to various people
including her family members, school friends,
well-known editors and writers
Myths about Emily Dickinson
 Recluse
of Amherst?: a woman in white,
odd and eccentric, mentally ill
 Vesuvius at home?
Features of Dickinson’s Poems
Form: familiar meters, stanzas (hymn stanza –
quatrain of alternating lines of 4 and 3 stresses)
occasional “slant” rhymes
frequent capitalization, dashes,
exclamation points
few periods
 Subject: life, love, nature, death, time, eternity
inner/psychic world (esp. suffering)
 Image: original, peculiar, striking
cognitively difficult
 device: metaphor, irony, contrast

67
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
67 (“Success”)
Poem of aphorism : The first sentence is a short wise
saying with the rest of the poem to illustrate that
message.
 rhyme scheme: abcb
 Metaphors: drinking, battle fight
 Images: the dying soldier’s feelings on the battlefield
- paradox 矛盾；synesthesia 通感
 Contrasts: success and failure, deprivation and
possession
 Capitalization: “Host, Flag, Victory” emphasizes its
great attraction and appeal to the dying soldier
 Punctuation

288
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
288 (“Nobody”)
Why is it popular?
 Conversational language: intimate
 Unusual thinking: “Nobody” is good.
 Convincing argument
 Vivid images: “public frog” “admiring bog”
 Unique and effective punctuations
Q: Is the speaker satisfied with being nobody?
Assignments for Emily Dickinson’s poems (2)
Read the rest of Emily Dickinson’s poems closely.
 Imitate one of her poems to write a poem of your
own.
 Which poem do you like best? Why?
 Do you like her language? Why or why not?
 Comment on the function of the dashes used in the
poem.
 Identify unusual or amazing images in her poems
and tell us why you think so.

Assignments for Emily Dickinson’s poems (2)
Questions for 241
1. Find synonyms of pain in the poem.
2. What do “beads” refer to?
 Questions for 249
1. Who is “thee”?
2. What do “I” desire?
 Questions for 712
- How does the speaker respond to Death’s
invitation?

241
I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it’s true –
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe –
The Eyes glaze once – and that is Death –
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.
249
暴风雨夜，暴风雨夜 江枫 译
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
暴风雨夜，暴风雨夜
我若同你在一起
暴风雨夜就是
豪奢的喜悦
Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!
风，无能为力
心，已在港内
罗盘，不必
海图，不必
Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!
泛舟在伊甸园
啊，海！
但愿我能，今夜
泊在你的水域
Questions on 249
 Who
is “thee”?
 Why is it a luxury to be with “thee” even at
“wild nights”?
 What are the metaphors used in the poem?
 For whom or what would you feel the same
as the speaker does toward “thee”?
712
Because I could not stop for Death –
 He kindly stopped for me –
 The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
 And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
 And I had put away
 My labor and my leisure too,
 For His Civility –

712
We passed the School, where Children strove
 At Recess – in the Ring –
 We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
 We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
 The Dews drew quivering and chill –
 For only Gossamer, my Gown –
 My Tippet – only Tulle –

712
We paused before a House that seemed
 A Swelling of the Ground –
 The Roof was scarcely visible –
 The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
 Feels shorter than the Day
 I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
 Were toward Eternity –

因为我不能停步等候死神 江枫 译
因为我不能停步等候死神他殷勤停车接我车厢里只有我们俩还有“永生”同座。
也许该说，是他经过我们而去露水使我颤抖而且发凉因为我的衣裳，只是薄纱我的披肩，只是绢网-
我们缓缓而行，他知道无需急促我也抛开劳作
和闲暇，以回报
他的礼貌-
我们停在一幢屋前，这屋子
仿佛是隆起的地面屋顶，勉强可见屋檐，低于地面-
我们经过学校，恰逢课间休息孩子们正喧闹，在操场上我们经过注目凝视的稻谷的田地我们经过沉落的太阳-
从那时算起，已有几个世纪却似乎短过那一天的光阴那一天，我初次猜出
马头，朝向永恒-
Role-play game
 Imagine
what Death and “I” said at our
meeting
 Imagine what the children, the gazing grain
and the sun would say when Death and “I”
passed them?
 Imagine what would the house and the
horse say when Death and “I” arrived at the
front of the house?
Amazing points in “Death”
 Irony
- Death: “kindly” “Civility”
 Contrast
- vitality of the school, the fields and the sun
- chilliness and stillness of the night and the
“house”
Assignments of Tom Sawyer
Read 序言 (period of Realism, pp.5-7)
 Read the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
think about the following questions:
1. The admirable aspects in Tom’s character
2. The undesirable / bad aspects in Tom’s character
3. The character of Sid, Becky, Aunt Sally, Mr.
Dobbins the headmaster (p. 135-146), Mr. Waters
the Sunday-school superintendent (p. 26-31)
4. Retell / Perform a scene you like and tell us why
you like it. Share with us a similar / funny story of
your own childhood.

Assignments for 20th-cent poems
Read 序言 （period of realism and modernism,
pp.5-8)
 i. Read Ezra Pound, W. C. Williams, and Robert
Frost’s poems in the textbook;
 ii. Write a poem of your own in English imitating
their poems or write a poem (English or Chinese)
to interpret one of their poems as if you’re in
converse with the poet;
 iii. Translate one of their poems into Chinese.
