1. Tekstanalyse og –historie F11 Session Five: Poetry II

2. Agenda Genre specific aspects of the study of poetry

3. Genre specificity In poetry images are particular conspicuous because other aspects of signification are toned down or absent (plot, point of view) Images have to be interpreted to create meaning: (foot, shoe: entrapment / fetishism) The nature of interpretation: part and whole – the hermeneutic circle (Abrams, ”Interpretation and Hermeneutics”)

4. Genre specificity Sound produces meaning Rhyme and alliteration Plath: the repetition of /u:/ (you, do, shoe, achoo, blue, through, &c)

5. Genre specificity The sense of sight produces meaning The division into lines and stanzas: Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time– Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. (ll. 6-15)

6. Genre specificity: metre Accentual-syllabic or stress and syllable metre: ”a recurrent pattern of stresses on a recurrent number of syllables – I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. (William Wordsworth, 1807 (1804))

7. – I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

8. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself. Philip Larkin – “This Be The Verse”

9. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

10. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old-style hats and coats, who half the time were soppy-stern and half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. Philip Larkin – “This Be The Verse”

11. Poetry: genre specific aspects Larkin, ”This Be the Verse” Syntactical organisation Stanzaic organisation – lines and stanzas Imagery – metaphors, similes Tone – happy, sad, angry, pessimistic … Meaning Prose chopped up to look like verse?

12. Poetry: genre specific aspects Larkin, ”High Windows” Syntactical organisation Stanzaic organisation – lines and stanzas Imagery – metaphors and similes Tone – happy, sad, angry, pessimistic … Meaning

13. High Windows When I see a couple of kids and guess he's fucking her and she's taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--bonds and gestures pushed to one side like an outdated combine harvester, and everyone young going down the long slide to happiness, endlessly. I wonder if anyone looked at me, forty years back, and thought, that'll be the life; no God any more, or sweating in the dark about hell and that, or having to hide what you think of the priest. He and his lot will all go down the long slide like free bloody birds. And immediately rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun- comprehending glass, and beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

14. Poetry: genre specific aspects Philip Larkin, ”Aubade” Why and how can Larkin’s poem be said to form an aubade? The tone of the poem?