Transcript Dias nummer 1 - Aalborg Universitet

Text Analysis and History
Session Four: Imagery
Agenda
 Week 42: NO CLASS – just work for you!
 The prose fiction module
 An introduction to imagery, symbol and
related concepts in an historical context
 Group work: imagery and symbolism in ”A
White Heron”
 Group presentations and general discussion
The prose fiction module
 Motif and theme
 Story and plot, character and characterisation
 Point of view
 Imagery
 General summary: Toni Morrison, ”Recitatif”
 Evaluation: Essay assignment (for the
portfolio)
Imagery, symbol and related concepts
in the context of history: Imagery
1. Broadest def.:
All the objects and
qualities of sense
perception
1.
2.
3.
Literal descriptions
Allusions
The vehicles of
similes and
metaphors
1. = motif
2. Broad def.:
Specific descriptions of
visible objects and
scenes
2. = motif
3. Narrow def.:
Figurative language – the
vehicles of metaphors
and similes (= 1.3)
An Example: Imagery – broad senses
 ”Charlie Stove waited until he heard his mother snore
before he got out of bed. Even then he moved with
caution and tiptoed to the window. The front of the
house was irregular, so that it was possible to see a
light burning in his mother’s room. But now all the
windows were dark. A search-light passed across the
sky, lighting the banks of cloud and probing the dark
deep spaces between, seeking enemy airships. The
wind blew from the sea, and Charlie Stowe could
hear behind his mother’s snores the beating of the
waves. A draught through the crack in the windowframe stirred his night-shirt. Charlie Stowe was
frightened.” (Graham Greene, ”I Spy”, p. 534)
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): simile
and metaphor
 Simile – a statement of similarity
 Metaphor – a statement of identity
 The tenor – the subject
 The vehicle – the metaphorical term itself
 My love is like a red, red rose (Robert Burns)
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): simile
and metaphor
 There’s a lipstick sunset smeared across the
August sky (John Hiatt)
 Let us go, then, you and I when the evening
is spread out against the sky like a patient
etherised upon a table (T.S. Eliot, ”The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)
 He smiled like an open piano (Graham
Greene)
An Example: simile
 When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed
upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his
father had left the house again so late at night and
who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept him
for a little while awake. It was as if a familiar
photograph had stepped from the frame to reproach
him with neglect. He remembered how his father had
held tight to his collar and fortified himself with
proverbs, and he thought for the first time that, while
his mother was boisterous and kindly, his father was
very like himself, doing things in the dark which
frightened him.” (Graham Green, ”I Spy”, p. 537)
William Blake, ”The Sick Rose”
(1794): literal or metaphorical rose?
 O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
 Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake, ”The Sick Rose”
(1794)
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
 Public symbols (cultural specific signification
and value)
 Private symbols (writer specific signification
and value
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
symbol
James Joyce, ”The Dead”
 He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch
the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his
wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as
if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself
what is a woman standing on the stairs in the
shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he
were a painter, he would paint her in that attitude. Her
blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair
against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt
would show off the light ones. (p. 2192)
James Joyce, ”The Dead”
 A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It
had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver
and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had
come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the
newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It
was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the
treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther
westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.
It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on
the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on
the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little
gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard
the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the
dead.
Imagery, symbol and … (cont.):
 Modernism