Approaches to Literature(Week3)

• Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

• Charles Dickens' works

>> A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas,commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall on 19 December 1843. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

The book was written at a time when the British were examining and exploring Christmas traditions from the past as well as new customs such as Christmas cards and Christmas trees. Carol singing took a new lease on life during this time. Dickens's sources for the tale appear to be many and varied, but are, principally, the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales.

A Christmas Carol remains popular—having never been out of print —and has been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.

>> A Tale of Two Cities


A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. It follows the lives of several characters through these events. A Tale of Two Cities was published in weekly installments from April 1859 to November 1859 in Dickens's new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. All but three of Dickens's previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments.

Dickens's famous opening sentence introduces the universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted within:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

• Western Canon

The Western canon is the body of books and, more broadly, music and art that Western scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes work perceived as the greatest works of artistic merit. Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the development of high culture. The idea of a Canon has been used to address the question What is Art?; according to this approach, a work is art by comparison to the works in the canon—or conversely, any aesthetic law, to be valid, should not rule out any work included in the canon

>> Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Bloom came to public attention in the United States as a commentator during the Canon wars of the early 1990s

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages is a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature. It is his best-known book alongside The Anxiety of Influence, and was a surprise bestseller upon its release in the United States. In the book, Bloom defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon.The book argues against what Bloom calls the "School of Resentment", in which he includes feminist literary criticism, Marxist literary criticism, Lacanians, New Historicism, Deconstructionists, and semioticians.




>> Canon(music)

In music, a canon is a contrapuntal compositional technique or texture that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader (or dux), while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower (or comes). The follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof (see "Types of canon", below).

• Roman Fever

"Roman Fever" is a short story by American writer Edith Wharton. It was first published in the magazine Liberty in 1934, and was later included in Wharton's last short-story collection, The World Over.

>>Plot Summary

The protagonists are Grace Ansley and Alida Slade, two middle-aged American women who are visiting Rome with their daughters, Barbara Ansley and Jenny Slade. The elder women grew up in Manhattan, New York, and were friends from childhood. A youthful and romantic rivalry led Mrs. Slade to nurture feelings of jealousy and hatred against Mrs. Ansley.

In the opening pages of the story, the two women compare their daughters and reflect on each other's lives. Eventually, Mrs. Slade reveals a secret about a letter written to Mrs. Ansley on a visit to Rome many years ago. The letter was purportedly from Mrs. Slade's fiancé, Delphin, inviting Mrs. Ansley to a rendezvous at the Colosseum. In fact, Mrs. Slade herself had written the letter, in an attempt to get Mrs. Ansley out of the way of the engagement by disappointing her with Delphin's absence (and, it is implied, to get Mrs. Ansley sick with Roman Fever). Mrs. Ansley is upset at this revelation, but reveals that she was not left alone at the Colosseum—she responded to the letter, and Delphin arrived to meet her. Mrs. Slade eventually states that Mrs. Ansley ought not to feel sorry for her, because "I had [Delphin] for twenty-five years" while Mrs. Ansley had "nothing but a letter he didn't write." Mrs. Ansley responds, in the last sentence of the story, "I had Barbara."

>>Analysis

A deeper reading of Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” displays a major emphasis on the multiple figurative dimensions of knitting. Wharton establishes this chief theme early on by making sure that the matter of knitting is the first subject to receive any attention: “let’s leave the young things to their knitting.” The first impression of the knitting women is that they are incapable of anything more than the monotonous act of knitting; this sets the stage for the stereotypical mundane middle-aged woman image to be blasted apart.

It is imperative to note that, of the two protagonists, Mrs. Slade does not even knit, while Mrs. Ansley seems devoted to the craft. As the story progresses, one can even make a correlation between Mrs. Ansley’s mental state and the way in which she handles her needles and skeins. When she is nervous, she picks up her project cautiously, as if to draw as little attention as possible. However, something even as simple as the way she stores her work, crimson silk being “run through” by her needles elicits a very provocative response in the reader.The switch between a “half guilty” extraction of her work to the subtle provocation of the passionate color and style of materials chosen changes the element of knitting from one of complacency to one of increasing complexity.

Mrs. Ansley’s use of knitting in an attempt to blaze a path of forgetting, as she neither wishes to live in the past or the present, introduces an element of dramatic irony in Wharton’s work. This mix is shown in the cautious drawing out of her knitting, indicating feelings of guilt at the mention of the love triangle conversation that Mrs. Slade begins. Thus, her knitting serves two purposes: her knitting allows Mrs. Ansley to refrain from fidgeting and it also serves as an evasion tactic for Mrs. Ansley to avoid uncomfortable conversation. In that respect, her knitting can seem as though it is a psychological weapon wielded against the onslaught of Mrs. Slade’s tongue. It is easy to discern that knitting may be required to dispel the “cold” and “damp” air that has been flowing freely between Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley

• Edith Wharton

A Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

Thought:

* What is literature?

* What does literature do?

Prefix / Root / Suffix

mori- / mort- "dead"

moribund (a.) in a dying state; near death
example: The region's heavy industry is still inefficient and moribund.

mortal (a.) subject to death; having a transitory life
example: He received a mortal wound soon after the battle began.