Today’s Objectives:

•Interpret the possible influences of historical context on literary works;

•Understand the literary term, “tragedy”;

•Understand and appreciate a Shakespearean drama;

•Identify poetry forms and devices (sonnet, blank verse, iambic pentameter) and examine the influence of poetic devices on readers’ understanding;

•Use strategies for reading and making meaning of Shakespearean drama.pply reading strategies to a

Terms for Understanding the

Text:

DRAMA:Literature in which plot and characters are developedthrough dialogue and action;IOW, literature in play form.

Most divided into acts, with each having an emotionalpeak, or climax of its own.

Tragedy

A drama that ends in catastrophe—most often in death—for the main character and often for several other characters as well.

ComedyA type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. •Things work out happily in the end.

•May be either:•romantic--characterized by a tone of tolerance and genialityOR •satiric, showing a darker vision of human nature, one that ridicules human folly.

Prologuean introductory section of a play, speech, or otherliterary work

CHARACTERISTICSOF

SHAKESPEAREANTRAGEDY

Tragic hero: the maincharacter in a tragedy, who comesto an unhappy or miserableend.

Tragic flaw:a fatal error in judgment or weakness of character, that leads directly to the protagonist’s downfall.

Oxymoron:an expression in which twowords that contradict eachother are joined

POETRY:A type of literature in which words are arranged to create a certain effect.

Poets employ a variety of sound devices, imagery, and figurative language to express emotions and ideas.

Meter: The repetitionof a regular rhythmicunit in poetry.

Each meter is known asa foot, consisting ofone stressed syllableand one or two unstressedsyllables.

Meter

Patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables

The basic unit of meter is a foot.Most common feet in English poetry:

Iamb / Trochee / Anapest /Dactyl / Spondee / /Pyrrhic

The meter of a poememphasizes themusical quality of thelanguage.

Iambic pentameter:pattern of an unstressedsyllable followed by astressed syllable.

“Let two more summers wither in their pride

Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”

MOTIF: A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula,which appears frequently in works of literature.

- a pattern

JUXTAPOSITION: The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect,

suspense, or character development.

Alliteration: in prose or poetry, repetition of consonant sounds at the beginningsof words

Example:“I'll look to like, if looking liking move . . .”

What is Consonance?• It is the repetition of consonant sounds located

other than at the beginnings of words.

Examples:

Snuffles at my feet for what I might drop or kick up

Sucks and slobbers the stones, snorts through its lips

The railroad ran over the tracks, roaring and

lurching along.

FOIL

A character whosepersonality or attitudes are in sharp contrast to another character

(Romeo Benvolio)

Conceit: an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire poem or poetic passage

A conceit is a fanciful notion, generally expressed through an elaborate analogy or metaphor, that extends and elaborates throughout the course of the passage or poem

Occurs when a speaker compares two highlydissimilar things.

XVIIIShall 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 wander'st 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.

ASIDE: a character’s remark,either to the audience or to anothercharacter, that the other characterson stage are not supposed to hear.Purpose: reveals character’s thoughts.

Monologue: an extended speech by one speaker.

Dramatic Monologue:a lyric poem in which a speaker addresses a silentor absent audience in amoment of high emotion.

Example: Act I, scene 4, lines 58-100, (1. 4. 58-100): Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet

Act I, scene 4, lines 58-100 = (3.2.21-23)

Soliloquy

A speech that a character gives when he or she is alone on stage. The purpose is to let theaudience know what the character is thinking

Allusion: a reference To a historical or fictional person, place, or event with which the reader is assumed to be familiar.

2 types: direct implied

AllusionsAn allusion is a reference to a well known work of art, music, literature, or history.

“At lovers’ perjuries, they say Jove laughs.” (Act II, Sc. 2)

Jove is another name for Jupiter, the Roman King of the Gods.

Eye rhyme:

A rhyme consisting of words, such as lint and pint, with similar spellings but different sounds. Also called sight rhyme.

analogy: illustration of an idea by means ofa more familiar idea that is similar or parallel to it in some significant features, and thus said to be analogous to it.

Analogies are often presented in the form of an extended simile.

Example: Likening electromagnetic wave to ocean waves

paradox A statement that is seemingly contradictory

or opposed to common sense and yet is

actually true.

Examples:

It is an interesting paradox that drinking a lot of water can often make you feel thirsty.

Not having a fashion is a fashion; that's a paradox.

He is a paradox; you would not expect him in that political party.

“We are most alive when we forget that we are alive.”

Jack London

Pun: an expression that achieves emphasis or humor by contriving an ambiguity, two distinct meanings suggested by the same word.

Example:When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.

Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.

Meiosis •a figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants;

•An UNDERSTATEMENT;

•the speaker's words convey less emotion than is actually felt.

Examples:

One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.

Said of an amputated leg.: "It's just a flesh wound" —Monty Python and the Holy Grail

LITOTES:understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed bythe negative of its contrary, as in “not bad at all.”

Litotes: As a means of saying:

“Not bad.” “Good.”

“. . . no ordinary city.” “. . . a very impressive city.”

“She is not as young as she was.”

“She’s old.”

“He’s no oil painting.” “He’s ugly.”

“You are not wrong.” “You are right.”

Writers include irony in stories to reflect the real world—a world where expectations aren’t always fulfilled and unexpected events often surprise us.

IronyIrony is the difference between what we expect or what seems suitable and what actually happens.

Katie’s grandfather taught her to play chess a few weeks ago. Now, she consistently wins matches against her grandfather and the other members of his chess club.

In literature, we find three kinds of irony:

Irony

• Verbal irony occurs when someone says one thing but means the opposite.

• Situational irony occurs when an event is not just surprising but actually contrary to what we expected.

• Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that the character does not know.

equivocation

1. the use of equivocal or ambiguous expressions, especially in order to mislead or hedge; prevarication (lie or falsehood).

2. an equivocal, ambiguous expression;

3. Logic. a fallacy caused by the double meaning of a word.

Ambiguity:

1. doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or

intention: to speak with ambiguity; an ambiguity of manner.

2. an unclear, indefinite, or equivocal word, expression, meaning,

3. Language that is characterized by vagueness and deceptiveness.

Ambiguous language: expressions that are open to more than one meaning

Comic Relief

A humorous scene, incident, or speech that relieves the overall emotional intensity of the action.

Challenge: As we read today, consider whether the action involves comic relief.

Blank verse: unrhymedpoetry written in iambicpentameter

Themes tend to beuniversal, that is, themessages they conveyapplies to all people, in all ages and places.

Symbol: a person, place,object, or activity thatstands for something beyond itself.

Dramatic irony:occurs when the readeror audience knows something that thecharacter does not.

Mood: the feeling oratmosphere that a writer createsfor a reader.

- created by diction, imagery, setting, foreshadowing,

dialogue, figurative language

Anachronism: Someone or something belonging to another time

period than the one in which it is described as being.

The reference, in Shakespeare'sJulius Caesar, to "the clock striking twelve" is anachronistic, since

there ?were no striking timepieces in ancient Rome.