11 Lit
Eleven Lit - Term Three, Week Three : Poetry, Gothic Literature & Aesthetics
Lesson One
Poetry Styled Questions
Welcome to our closeout of poetry. Today, you are going to get the opportunity to connect your knowledge with possible questions regarding poetry.
You will find a series of questions to attempt.
It is assumed that you have:
- knowledge of two poems in your head
- know how those texts are constructed
- know how various theories/readings work with the texts
- and that its all in your head, not just in your file.
Have a go at creating an intricate plan for the questions below. Outline your thesis, three or more apsects of that thesis, and the evidence from the text(s) in brief. Aim to do this all in under 10 minutes for each question.
- Explore how the economical and sometimes ambiguious use of langage can allow for multiple interpretations of a text.
- Discuss how at leat one Australian literary text has drawn from mythical concepts and/or archetypes to shed light on the values underpinning Australian life.
- Explain the ways that specific poetic features have served to illuminate and explore social controversy in at least one poem.
- Consider the ways in which ideas about family in a literary text have reinforced or challenged th ways we think about particular cultures.
- Discuss the way that texts may give voice to important issues in order to challenge dominant ideologies
- Explain how the use of reading practices can reveal conflicting attitudes in a literary text
- Evaluate the role of narrative persona in establishing meaning, using one text you have studied this year.
Lesson Two: Gothic Fiction
Read the link below
In the most general terms, Gothic literature can be defined as writing that employs dark and picturesque scenery, startling and melodramatic narrative devices, and an overall atmosphere of exoticism, mystery, fear, and dread. Often, a Gothic novel or story will revolve around a large, ancient house that conceals a terrible secret or serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character.
A more refined definition
There is no one definitive definition of Gothic Fiction. This one seems to encapsulate the genre though:
Gothic texts are, overtly but ambiguously, not rational, depicting disturbances of sanity and security, from superstitious belief in ghosts and demons, displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to portrayals of perversion and obsession.
Moreover, if knowledge is associated with rational procedures of enquirey and understanding based on natural, empirical reality, then gothic styles disturb the borders of knowing and conjure up obscure otherworldly phenomena or the ‘dark arts’, alchemical, arcane and occult forms normally characterised as delusion, apparition, deception.
Not tied to a natural order of things as defined by realism, gothic flights of imagination suggest supernatural possibility, mystery, magic, wonder and monstrosity.
Gothic texts are not good in moral, aesthetic or social terms.
Their concern is with vice: protagonists are selfish or evil; adventures involve decadence or crime.
Their effects, aesthetically and socially, are also replete with a range of negative features: not beautiful, they display no harmony or proportion.
Illformed, obscure, ugly, gloomy and utterly antipathetic to effects of love, admiration or gentle delight, gothic texts register revulsion, abhorrence, fear, disgust and terror.’
Fred Botting, Gothic: Second Edition (2014)
Spend time discovering and translating the definition. Process it and rewrite it in a way that will enable you to remember the components of Gothic Fiction. Beware not to ‘dumb down’ the definition too much. Rise to meet it.
How do we use this definition?
We are going to have an initial look at how The Picture of Dorian Gray (TPODG) fits into the Gothic Fiction sub-genre.
So, what generic conventions of Gothic Fiction can you see in narrative elements of TPODG?
Three: Key Tropes of Gothic Fiction
The Gothic Double or Doubling
Glossary of the Gothic: Doubling | Glossary of the Gothic | Marquette University
Doubling refers to a multiplication by two, such as when two or more characters parallel each other in action or personality. It can also mean internal doubling, or division within the self to exhibit a duality of character.
The Gothic Double is influenced by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who explained the uncanny. It is a feeling of being unsettled by something familiar and unfamiliar, or that something is not quite right, some features of which are:
- somethign that ‘ought to have remained secrete and hidden but has come to light.’
- ‘many people experience the feeling in the highest degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts.’
- ‘It undoubtendly belong to all that is terribel - to all that arouses dread and creeping horror.’
The most important aspect of his observations are concerning the double:
- Human doubles - people who are alike in some way, ‘doubling, dividing and interchanging the self’.
- Object doubles - things that look human but aren’t, like automatons, waxworks, dolls, ghosts, and the supernatural, masks and disguises.
- A feeling of ‘intellectual undertainty’ - doubting whether something is a lifelike object or a real person. This is sometimes referred to as the uncanny valley.
The portrait arouses dredge in creep and horror as an object double of Dorian it is a double of Dorian that’s both familiar and unfamiliar it provides a lifelike representation of him but a representation that is also a hideous distortion.
Iif the uncanny is something that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light then the portrait can be described as uncanny because it reveals something that should remain a secret the corruption of Dorian’s soul.
The portrait epitomizes the experience of uncanny in relation to death because it’s just because it’s decaying state manifests Dorian’s fears of aging and dying now compare your answers to these answers take a moment to reflect on what you did well and where you could improve you might want to note down any key phrases or structural points that could help improve your essay skills
Gothic Subjectivity: When a character’s sense of self disrupts the norm in some ways or working in Gothic ways. Doubling is central to a Gothic text.
The information above was taken from:
Away Lesson
- Ensure you have finished the text
- Make sure your journal activities are up to date
- study for your assesement next Monday
Eleven Lit - Term Three, Week Four: Oscar Wilde & Aestheticism
One
The late VIctorian Period brought to light conflicting ideologies that challenged the foundation of the society itself.
You are watching and taking notes on the following to
- understand the society in which the author lived and the text is set.
- identify how aspects of the text integrates with the zeitgeist of the late Victorian Period.
Literature in the Victorian Era | A Historical Overview
A Visual Mind Map of the Victorian Age
The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900
Two: Oscar Wilde
Who is Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde Biography: His “Wild” Life
Oscar Wilde’s Role in Literature’s “Aesthetic Movement”
Walter Pater in England and Theophile Gautier in France influenced the movement with their theorizing about it. Gautier in France said: Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless. Everything useful is ugly for it expresses a need, and the needs of men are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature.
Three: Aestheticism
This will hurt your brain. Take your time. Ask lots of questions.
Take notes on the four clips below. It starts off a bit easier and does get really twisted in terms of the arguments put forward. The topic is a deeply philosophical one and will likely hurt you a little. You are not meant to get it first time through.
Take your time. Ask clarifying quesitons and have the discussions that need to take place in order to understand the concept.
You will likley discover conceptual links to TPODG throughout the text. Make note of them as you go.
It will be one we refer back to throughout our study of the text.
The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900
What is Aesthetics? (Philosophy of Art)
Aesthetic Appreciation: Crash Course Philosophy #30
Aesthetics: Crash Course Philosophy #31
Eleven Lit - Term Thre, Week Five: Text Analysis
Examine the use of the Gothic Double in the text. Trace it throughout the text.
- the portrait - start and end.
- Other characters - cybil? Henry? Basil?
What does the use of the Gothic Double enable Wilde to say about Victorian England?
examples from the text are at the following link: