Interpretations of Poetry and Prose revision session

What is the module worth?

Section A

• You will select either one piece of unseen prose or one piece of poetry to respond to.

• Your answer will need to refer to how the writer uses language, structure and form to shape meaning.

• There are 40 marks available for this question.

• You should spend 50 minutes in total on this section of the exam.

Section B• This section is worth 60 marks.

• You will select a question to answer based on the texts that you have studied: ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, ‘The Great Gatsby’ and either ‘Rapture’ or The Metaphysical poets.

• The question will be a comment made by a reader. You will have to respond to that comment referencing at least two of the three books that you have studied.

• You MUST refer to one post 1900 text

• The question will be based on relationships.

Section B

• AO1: 10 marks

• AO2: 10 marks

• AO3: 20 marks

• AO4: 20 marks How do you access all 20 marks?

A04

• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the text was produced.

• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the text was received

• Can refer to response as a modern reader

• Can refer to how opinions towards the text have changed through time.

Focusing on the context of Gatsby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozkOhXmijtk

What factors affected the way that the text

was produced?

• Family background: Money Vs Breeding• Theme of social insecurity: “That morning he had gone out a

comparatively young man, a man full of strength, full of confidence. He came home that evening, an old man, a completely broken man.”

• Desire to be one of the greatest writers that ever lived: ‘I want to write something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.’ letter July 1922

• Relationship with Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre.

“Scott Fitzgerald was a legend in his own lifetime and has become even more so ever since. He seems to epitomize an American Era – the jazz age – and to symbolize its delights, dangers and defeats…While his fiction is never simply autobiographical, his life and work are intricately interwoven.” Nicholas Tredell 2007

“ The man with the jingle of money in his pockets who married [her] would always cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, towards the leisure class- not the conviction of a revolutionary but the smouldering hatred of a peasant. In the years since then I have never been able to stop wondering where my friends’ money came from, nor to stop thinking that at one time a sort of droit de seigneur might have been exercised to give them my girl.” Fitzgerald ‘The Crack-up’

After the birth of their first (and only) child Zelda said: ‘I hope its beautiful and a fool – a beautiful fool.’

• The after effects of World War One• ‘Writers were geniuses on the strength of one respectable book

or play; just as during the War officers of four months' experience commanded hundreds of men, so there were now many little fish lording it over great big bowls.’ Fitzgerald Echoes of the Jazz Age

• ‘The Lost Generation’• Emancipation of women• Immigration

• ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Declaration of independence 1776

• America as a world power: ‘We were the most powerful nation. Who could tell us any longer what was fashionable and what was fun?’ Echoes of the Jazz Age.

• Prohibition 1919• The growth of organised crime• 1920: American women first given the right to vote. ‘Flapper’ • Acceleration of technology and consumerism• Social class

• America: the 'land of the free', the 'American Dream' • However, in The Great Gatsby strong social divisions were already in place, with

"indiscernible barbed wire" in between them. Eg: West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two".

• America , and the characters in the novel, are divided by class - partly between new money and old money, but also social provenance.

• In the USA, Protestants of English, Scottish, French, Dutch or German origin formed the social elite. They were the descendants of immigrants who had come to the USA in search of religious freedom (Pilgrim Fathers) or to develop business interests. They were well educated, often already wealthy, who formed an ‘aristocracy ‘

• Poor migrants from Eastern Europe, Poland and Ireland were looked down on. Jewish immigrants, although they might be wealthy, were also excluded socially. Nick clarifies this in the guests to Gatsby's parties:

"From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet…“

The listed names of the East Eggers are clearly all of Western European origin, like the characters Buchanan and Carraway.• By contrast, those from West Egg sound East European, Irish or Jewish: "the Poles and the

Mulreadys, Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick…Eckhaus…Clyde Cohen and Don S Schwartz and Arthur McCarty."

• In the novel, Gatsby's real name is 'Gatz'. He has anglicised this to 'Gatsby' in order to be more socially acceptable.

• The Midwest of America is associated with an upright, conservative lifestyle and strong family values.

• Gatsby comes from the Midwest, specifically North Dakota, a relatively poor, agricultural area on the northern edge of the Midwest. He abandons it in favour of the glamorous East.

• By the 1920s, Midwestern society had remained unchanged for generations. Nick describes his city as one where "dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name".

• While this creates a secure environment, it can also appear stifling and old-fashioned, e.g. he describes "all my aunts and uncles" talking over his change of career.

• After the war the Midwest seemed to him "like the ragged edge of the universe".• However, Nick comes to appreciate his home after becoming disgusted with the

soulless immorality of the East.

• Romanticism – influence of Keats – emphasis on imagination over intellect.

• Modernism• T.S Eliot The wasteland – exploration of the

darker side of human nature.• Henry James

Literary Modernism : a conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse. ( movement from Victorianism and ‘The Grand Narrative’ ) Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to the modernist maxim to "Make it new.“ The modernist literary movement was driven by a desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time

How is this information relevant?

• Taking one of the aspects that we have explored so far this morning, in pairs create a paragraph that links the historical context to the way in which relationships are presented within ‘ The Great Gatsby’.

• Swap your paragraph with another pair – identify WWW and EBI

A04

• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the text was produced.

• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the text was received

• Can refer to response as a modern reader

• Can refer to how opinions towards the text have changed through time.

Self made man

Gangster

Lover

Dreamer

‘Great’ Gatsby

Which view of Gatsby is the most accurate?

What evidence is there in the text to support each view of Gatsby?

Soldier

What is the significance that one character can be interpreted in

these different ways?

AO4 – The factors affecting the way that the ‘The Great Gatsby’ was

received

The story is obviously unimportant…What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story – that Fitzgerald seems far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people. It is not they are false; it is that they are taken too much for granted. Only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes. The rest are mere marionettes – often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive.What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing.

H.L. Mencken Baltimore Evening Sun May 2nd 1925

AO4 – Responses to Fitzgerald through time. Review when the story was first published

Responses to Fitzgerald after death:

“ My generation thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald as an age rather than as a writer, and when the economic strike of 1929 began to change the sheiks and flappers into unemployed boys or underpaid girls, we consciously and a little belligerently turned our backs on Fitzgerald.”

(Kazin, The man and his work.)

John W. Bicknell: The Waste Land of F. Scott Fitzgerald(1954)

In 1925 it was perhaps difficult to take seriously a writer who portrayed the beautiful and the rich as essentially damned and who implied that the American Dream was, after all, little more than a thinly veiled nightmare, in the 1950s we are less likely to misunderstand his intentions. Increasingly, modern critics are recognizing that The Great Gatsbyis a searching critique of American society. In fact, some of our pundits are elevating Fitzgerald into the first order of American writers almost entirely on the strength of his gloomy cadences. Those who take Fitzgerald closest to their bosoms seem to be the ones who are always lecturing us on the necessity of having a tragic sense of life. But is the tendency of Fitzgerald’s art essentially tragic, or is it merely pessimistic?

Interpreting Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship

Tom’s wife, Daisy, suggests the callous boredom of the beautiful society matron. She is ready to play with Gatsby, partially out of nostalgia for their youthful romance, partially to spite the philandering Tom, but more, one feels, as a relief from boredom. “What do people plan?” she asks, and the sentence is symbolic of her emptiness; she is like Eliot’s lady in “The Waste Land” who cries out, “What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?” Ironically enough, it is Gatsby who finally isolates the quality of her voice. “Her voice is full of money,” he suddenly remarks; she is the “king’s daughter … the golden girl.” The suspenseful play of irony around the ambiguous connotations of “golden” finally resolves when we discover that the golden girl is really made of bronze. If she does not love Tom, she shares his callous selfishness. With him she conspires to sacrifice Jay Gatsby to her own safety, and is in a real sense an accomplice in the final crime.

What affects our response to Gatsby as a reader?

• Do we have the same views towards Gatsby as Fitzgerald’s contemporaries? What affected their POV?

• Do we find our opinion is more similar to Bicknell in the 1950s? What again affected their POV?

• What factors affect our view of Gatsby as a modern reader?

Reflecting on your learning

What have you learned this morning about ‘ The Great Gatsby’ that you can apply within an essay response?

What have you learned about the exam in general that is of importance?

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

What factors affected the way that the text

was produced?

• “History ought to consist of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it”

• De Bernieres describes the novel as “what happens to the little people when megalomaniacs get busy”

• ‘Looking back on the things that I have published, it seems that I’m rather obsessed with the question of power, I seem to be very interested in the abuse of it.’

• ‘You can’t really write an honest book in which people are unmotivated by love.’

• Louis De Berniéres is a passionate player of the mandolin and hoped the novel would lead to a revival of it – it has.

• The novel is concerned with World War Two – and the occupation of Greece under the Italians and then the Germans. Despite being written in 1993- the plot is based around the events from 1939 - 1993

• The novel accurately depicts the attitude of the Greeks to the arrival of the Italian forces.

• The book has received some criticism for its unhistorical representation of Italians – some claiming they could be just as cruel as the Germans.

• However, there is evidence that shows Italian occupiers as being friendly to the local people and are still welcomed fondly by elderly locals.

• Conscription for military service preceded the war, although there were some, such as Mandras, who volunteered first.

• There are accurate historical events in the novel, although the thoughts and actions of historical figures must be treated with caution.

• De Bernières spent a fortnight in Cephallonia, where after learning about the history of the island he decided to make this the setting of his novel.

• He wrote the novel in Britain, relying on accounts of Greeks living in London.

• The island has been occupied since at least 4000 BC• 19th Century History of Cephallonia• 1807-9 – French occupation of island• 1815-1864 – Congress of Vienna gave Ionian islands to Britain• 1821 – Greek War of Independence 1832 - Kingdom of Greece established.• 1864 – Ionian islands left British control to form union with Greece• 20th Century History of Cephalonia• 1941-44 – Italian and German occupations.• 1947-9 – Civil War.• 1953 – earthquake.• 1980s onwards – increasing prosperity due to tourism; this has increased further

due to the book and then the film.

• The novel also explores ideas of community that are specific to Greece – eg: Daughters and dowries, Mothers and Sons, Saints and Supersitions etc

• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin shares some of the characteristics of a postmodern text ( Eg: does not have one narrative viewpoint – instead incorporates many, comical treatment of serious and sentimental events)

• The novel explores the way in which story and history can be conveyed in other modes rather than the omniscient narrator in the past tense – instead the text operates as a collage that reminds the reader there are many ways of seeing and understanding the characters and events.

• ‘Faction’ – a combination of forms of fiction and non-fiction (fact)

• Intertextuality and implicit and explicit references to Greek mythology.

How is this information relevant?

• Taking one of the aspects that we have explored so far, in pairs create a paragraph that links the historical context to the way in which relationships are presented within

• ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’.

• Swap your paragraph with another pair – identify WWW and EBI

Self made man

Soldier

Lover

Dreamer

Musician

Which view of Corelli is the most accurate?

What evidence is there in the text to support each view of Corelli?

What is the significance that one character can be interpreted in

these different ways?

Reflecting on your learning

What have you learned about ‘ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ’ that you can apply within an essay response?

Focusing on AO2 in ‘The Great Gatsby’ p46

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under the constantly changing light.

How is this scene relevant to the topic of ‘relationships’?

Focusing on AO2 in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’. p105

As though answering her thoughts, a movement a caught the corner of her eye. Below, to the left, a body was diving about in the waves like a human dolphin. She watched the brown fisherman with a pleasure that was purely aesthetic, until she realised with a small shock that he was completely naked…Pelagia crept closer in order to admire this man who was so sleek, so at one with the sea, so much like a fish, a man naked and wild, a man like Adam

The Unseen question

Section A

• You will select either one piece of unseen prose or one piece of poetry to respond to.

• Your answer will need to refer to how the writer uses language, structure and form to shape meaning.

• There are 40 marks available for this question.

• You should spend 50 minutes in total on this section of the exam.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.Oh, could I lose all father now ! For whyWill man lament the state he should envy?To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,And if no other misery, yet age !Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lieBen Jonson his best piece of poetry.For whose sake henceforth all his vows be suchAs what he loves may never like too much.

On My First Sonne

Since you must go, and I must bid farewell, Hear, mistress, your departing servant tell What it is like : and do not think they can Be idle words, though of a parting man. It is as if a night should shade noon-day, Or that the sun was here, but forced away ; And we were left under that hemisphere, Where we must feel it dark for half a year. What fate is this, to change men's days and hours, To shift their seasons, and destroy their powers ! Alas ! I have lost my heat, my blood, my prime, Winter is come a quarter ere his time.My health will leave me ; and when you depart, How shall I do, sweet mistress, for my heart ? You would restore it ! no ; that's worth a fear, As if it were not worthy to be there : O keep it still ; for it had rather be Your sacrifice, than here remain with me. And so I spare it : come what can become Of me, I'll softly tread unto my tomb ; Or, like a ghost, walk silent amongst men, Till I may see both it and you agen.

An Elegy

Creating meaning and interpreting the poem

• Look at the significance of the title or the connotations within key words of the question.

• Look for semantic fields – does this reveal any emerging themes/ ideas /information?

• Compare beginnings and endings does anything seem to have been achieved by the ending? What ideas have been developed?

Since you must go, and I must bid farewell, Hear, mistress, your departing servant tell What it is like : and do not think they can Be idle words, though of a parting man. It is as if a night should shade noon-day, Or that the sun was here, but forced away ; And we were left under that hemisphere, Where we must feel it dark for half a year. What fate is this, to change men's days and hours, To shift their seasons, and destroy their powers ! Alas ! I have lost my heat, my blood, my prime, Winter is come a quarter ere his time.My health will leave me ; and when you depart, How shall I do, sweet mistress, for my heart ? You would restore it ! no ; that's worth a fear, As if it were not worthy to be there : O keep it still ; for it had rather be Your sacrifice, than here remain with me. And so I spare it : come what can become Of me, I'll softly tread unto my tomb ; Or, like a ghost, walk silent amongst men, Till I may see both it and you agen.

An Elegy

Once you have gained an understanding of the meaning…

You need to consider how to write your response:

• Your introduction should outline the meaning of the poem/ your interpretation of what the poem means

• Throughout the rest of your response you should explore how the poet has used the language and structure to help create this meaning.

You can use FLIRTS to structure your response:

• Form• Language• Imagery• Rhythm and Rhyme• Tone• Structure

Remember: You need to refer in each paragraph to how the writer has used this technique to create the meaning that you established within your introduction

What will make a good answer?

Establish success criteria for an introduction – what should it include in order to fulfil the examiner’s expectations?

Now write your introduction to this answer – in light of the success criteria.