Literary Theories
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Literary Genre: Short Story We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers Alejandro Roces Cultural studies is an academic field of critical... -
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Literary Genre: Film Jason and the Argonauts Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by fo... -
MOVIE WAKING LIFE Directed by Richard Linklater Existentialism Literary Theory involves the attempt to make meaning... -
LITERARY GENRE: SONNET SONNET XXXVII William Shakespeare New Historicism was developed in the 1980's, supported ... -
LITERARY GENRE: PLAY CLOUD NINE Caryl Churchill Post-colonialism Theory is the extension of one's rule. It exam... -
LITERARY GENRE: POETRY I TAUGHT MYSELF TO LIVE SIMPLY Anna Akhmatova Reader Response Theory considers readers' ... -
Literary Genre: POETRY ANNABEL LEE Edgar Allan Poe Romanticism Literary Theory is most closely associated with the writin... -
MOVIE Click Directed by: Frank Coraci The term “moral criticism” has sometimes been applied to a tendency in modern anglophone L... -
MOVIE FISHING A BORDERLESS SEA Brian J. Payne Territorialism / Possessions (objects of desire) are metaphors for who w...
Monday, January 14, 2013
LITERARY GENRE: NOVEL
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Gertrude Stein
The Plot Summary:
Stein inhabits the persona and speech patterns of Toklas throughout the book. The perceptions of other characters and the recounting of events, however, belong to both Stein and Toklas. For continuity, the narrator of the book will be referred to as Toklas.
Toklas introduces herself and provides some details about her life, mentioning, importantly, that her life changed after the San Francisco earthquake, and she met Gertrude Stein. Saying that she has only met three geniuses in her life, Toklas writes, "The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Whitehead."
THE INTERPRETATION:
Gertrude Stein has written her memoirs. But she has attributed them to her friend and companion of twenty-five years, Alice B. Toklas; and her book is thus something a little different from the ordinary book of memoirs. It is Gertrude Stein's imaginative projection of how she and her life and her circle look to Alice B. Toklas. Miss Toklas is presented as the enthusiastic admirer and the obedient shadow of Miss Stein; she turns toward her as the sunflower toward the sun. Yet Miss Toklas's personality is by no means indistinguishable from Miss Stein's: Miss Stein has created her as an individual. And thus The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas has something of the character and charm of a novel — a novel of which the subject is the life which Miss Stein and Miss Toklas have made together in Paris, the salon over which they have presided, the whole complex of ideas and events of which they became the center: a social-artistic-intellectual organism.
LITERARY GENRE: POETRY
I TAUGHT MYSELF TO LIVE SIMPLY
Anna Akhmatova
The Poem
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.
THE INTERPRETATION:
Apparently, by writing poetry, she seems to be able to dissect herself from the world. Surrounding herself in her own thoughts, she begins to understand more about it. The poor, the ugly, the rich, and the beautiful; she takes in all their features, mesmerizing herself in a world of only her words. Simple is her pleasant reminder of the world she lives in. She writes of a place she hopes to belong to, a place of longing, she seems to have given up hope for it though; deciding that it’s much too complicate to hope for something like that, and preferring to keep it simple. Clearly, this poem was written in what appears to be a somewhat painful moment, with a lot of emotion and hidden meanings behind it.
LITERARY GENRE: POETRY
THE PIG
Roald Dahl
New Criticism Theory focused on the text of a work of literature and tried to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis. New Critics often performed a "close reading" of the text and believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately connected and should not be analyzed separately. Before the New Criticism became dominant, English professors in America focused their writings and teaching on historical and/or linguistic scholarship surrounding literature rather than analyzing the literary text itself.
The Poem
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"
"They want my bacon slice by slice
"To sell at a tremendous price!
"They want my tender juicy chops
"To put in all the butcher's shops!
"They want my pork to make a roast
"And that's the part'll cost the most!
"They want my sausages in strings!
"They even want my chitterlings!
"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!
"That is the reason for my life!"
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
"I had a fairly powerful hunch
"That he might have me for his lunch.
"And so, because I feared the worst,
"I thought I'd better eat him first."
THE INTERPRETATION:
Roald Dahl has portrayed an interesting conflict between the “meaning of life” and “survival of the fittest”. The poem outlines the story of an intelligent pig that knows every single thing on Earth but astonishingly is unaware about the real meaning of life. The Pig simply has no clue as to why he was placed on the Earth and what is the motive of his life.
The pig has been compared to a normal individual who despite being knowledgeable about everything in the society including mathematics, flying an aeroplane, knowing how an engine works, having almost all the information his massive brain can fill in.
Despite knowing everything about his surroundings, despite having read all the books when it comes to knowing the meaning and significance of life, his knowledge is zero. The lines “What was the reason for his birth? Why was he placed upon this earth?” Reveal the curious nature of the young masses today who has puzzled their life to such an extent that they cannot understand what the simple thing called life is? This is the reality of each and every individual today. They plan everything in their life, every single event is pre-planned; but they fail to understand the essence of life.
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