What is literature?
 Structure (certain kind of organization)
 Story, characters
 Literature is a document about the time it was written in
 General concept (literature can intend to teach people)
 Deeper meanings/hidden messages
Difference between literature and newspaper: result of different operations
Has 4 rules: production, mediation, reception, criticism
Concepts of Literature:
 2 different types of literature:
o Textual conveys a deeper meaning; deals with bigger matters, style is different
o Contextual: there’s nothing about literary texts that make it special
Quantitative criterion (narrow vs. broad selection)
- Narrow: some people only regard the 3 typical genres as literature (narrative fiction, drama,
poetry)
- Broad: others are more open-minded & consider other things as literature as well (i.e. essay,
diary, article, lyrics)
Qualitative criterion:
- Normative (prescriptive): prescribes smth.; norm/standards are set (i.e. “high” literature)
- Descriptive: popular literature
Textual concepts of Literature:
Fictionality
(has to do with the type of reference; its language that pretends to refer to smth that doesn’t exist;
we don’t usually take fictional texts to be pragmatic)
• Real vs. fictional (is it about sth. real or are things made up?)
• Depends on type of reference
• Fictional language works like referential language
• Not read as truth statement: literature trusts us to know when smth. is false;
• mimesis – poiesis (imitation – creation; realism – fantasy)
• mimesis: to be as close to reality at a given time; to be as close to reality at a pointed time
as possible; to project a world very similar to our own; imitation of the real world
• poeisis: science fiction; its deviating from our world; fantasy; sth. that’s remote form daily
experience
Specific Features (5):
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complexity (linguistic language is complex/multi-layered)
ambiguity
organization, patterning; importance of form
deviation, defamiliarisation:
o literature break rules & destroys them to create new fresh meaning
o making what seems to be familiar into sth. else  shedding new light on it
self-referentiality, poetic function
Intertextuality, autonomy (referring to other things)
(text places itself in relation to similar works; text as part of ‘autonomous’ literary system)
Novels tend to contain different view points to a certain issue
Contextual Concepts of Literature:
Literature as Social Practice
• Literature is socially constructed & socially performed; defined by a group of people; it’s a matter
of collective agreements; part of a social system  “We make literature”
• Embedded in literary system
 it becomes literature
• Institutions of literary system construct & perpetuate a certain view of literature
• Literature marked by special ways of reception and appreciation
• Text-internal and text-external markers
- genre, title, subtitle, cover design, blurb, font, type of paper, etc.
- Placement in bookshop, review in culture section in newspapers, type of marketing, type of
publisher, poetry reading…
- Author‘s name as signal : aesthetic object produced by single creative mind 
English Literature: a Working Definition
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Part of larger area of aesthetics (painting, sculture, music etc.)
Verbal art in print (the material literature works with)
Texts which show both features of literariness and fictionality
Texts which belong to one of the three classical genres of poetry, drama or narrative fiction
Anglophone literary texts
READINGS of Hamlet
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Conforms as a pattern text
Uses all the elements that where used in all revenge tragedies
Takes Hamlet & uses the context to see if there any other similarities with other texts
Hamlet as a a study of seeming and being
Hamlet as a Freudian Play:
- Freud wrote a lot about Shakespeare
- He said that Hamlet is/was hysterical & that he suffers from Hysteria  no longer looking at
style, form, literary content  treating the characters psychologically (PPP: 30)
treating hamlet as if he were a real person;
talks about deeply human subconscious tendencies
Hamlet as a Character Unwilling to Conform to Conventional Social Roles & Ahead of His Time:
We ask ourselves why the hell he reacts the way he reacts
Fulfilling a certain social role
Context: psychological approach
Hamlet as a Topical Political Play:
Context: the contemporary political situation
Hamlet as a Document of Doctrinal Transition
Reading it as a study that divides Catholic & Protestant
Hamlet as a study on Patricahry
- Feminist approach
- Looking at the text as if being a feminist & looking what emerges when reading Hamlet from
a feministic angle  becomes a different meaning
 you can’t say that an approach is “truer” as the other one; Literary texts allow themselves to be
viewed by completely different angles  so much material, hidden meanings
Literary criticism:
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Concerned with all areas of literary system (author – text – reader – context)  a social system
Uses specific theories, models, tools and terms
Explains how texts work, what they consist of, what their specific features are (analysis)
Explains the manifold meanings/effects of a text (interpretation)
o Not one definitive meaning, but range of potential meanings
o Not one authoritative reading, but many readings
Explores the complex interrelations between society, history, ideology and literature
Meaning
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Meaning= a text‘s function/effect with regards to a specific context;
Meaning is defined by an object‘s specific relationship to different contexts
o Other texts by same author
o Texts of the same genre
o Texts of the same period
o Texts of a previous period
o Contemporary cultural context
o Contemporary political/social context
o Contemporary ideological/philosophical context
o Literary theory (feminist, psychoanalytical, Structuralist, poststructuralist, sociological…
theory) …
Meaning is surrounded by/embedded in different sorts of context
Innertextual vs. extratextual meaning:
o Innertextual: find out the theme; things that are repeated
o Extratextual: the way a text acts or reacts; how it is constructed
Meaning of a textual element vs. meaning of the entire text difference
The Changeability of Textual Meaning
Dependence on context implies that:
 textual meaning is not stable, fixed, monolithic, universal
 but changes with the cultural communities/frameworks/contexts within which it is placed/read
 Also changes with each individual reader within a given community
 „Every decoding is another encoding!“ (David Lodge)
 sciences:always same test, results, reproducibility, repeatability
Literary Criticism as a Scholarly Endeavour
 Interpretation is never context-free,
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always rests on certain assumptions, premises which need to be made explicit!
 Argumentation should be: coherent, logical, plausible and systematic
 Intersubjectivity: argumentation should be demonstrated (ex.: via test)
 most important criteria literature has to fulfil
 whatever we say, needs to be demonstrated  other readers can reconstruct your opinion
Institutions ofliterary mediation:
Author
Reader
Medium/Channel  Literary text (Message)  code
The Channel: Language in Print:
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Written text as storehouse of human memory
Repeatable, durable
Communication at one remove
non-pragmatic, abstract & aestheticised through lack of immediate communicative context
No feedback possible: ambiguity, polyvalence
Standardisation (of stylistic & generic choice, of way of thinking/perceiving/evaluating etc.)
Individualisation (through deviation from standardized norm)
Mass production
Emergence of a reading & debating public (Öffentlichkeit)
A simplified Model of Literary Communication
We’ve got a sender, receiver, code, message
 helps us make sense of all the different approaches
 Approaches centring on the library context
- Studies on lit. sources and influences
- Literary sociology
- Studies on intertextuality & intermediality
 Author-centred approaches
- Biographical approach
- Psychoanalytical approach
 Context-centred approaches
- Feminist literary criticism
- Marxist literary criticism
- Post-colonial theory
- New Historicism
- Cultural Studie
 Reader-centred approaches
- Reader-Response Criticism
- Cognitive Poetics Empirical Reception Studies
- History of Reception and Effect of Works
Hänsel und Gretel: Discourse Features:
 Direct speech (mode of showing; low degree of mediation)
 Segmentation through repetition and variation
 Inserted sections of poetry
 Prolongued coda
 Last sentence: explicit narratorial comment; level of medi.; seeming transgression into the real
 Theme: child abandonment; function: catharsis
 Theme: oedipal desires & fears; function: catharsis
 Themes:
- semantic focal point
- Content-related ‚red thread‘ in a text
- abstract concept repeatedly dealt with in a text
STORY VS. DISCOURSE: Analytical Distinction:
STORY (történet)
DISCOURSE (elöadás)
DEF: chronological sequence of events
WHAT is narrated?
What is narrated? What happens?
Content – raw material (tartalom)
Story element: action, characters, temporal and
local setting
DEF: shaping of material by the narrator
HOW it is narrated?
How is the story told? Who tells the story
Mediacy (közvetítés)
Narrative transmission: textualisation = giving the story
a textual shape
Typoghraphy, Phonetic level, communicative situation,
temporal order, duration, frequency, characterisation,
Space, Distribution of information
There are 5 Analytical levels:
 Story – Discourse – Themes(issues) – Norms (underline world view, relating text to its ideological
context, start of interpretation) =Functions
Narrativity
elements of form and content that characterize and distinguish literacy from other genres
 story: chronological sequence of events action, characters, temporal & local setting
 discourse: shaping of material by the narrator
 5 analytical levels: story – discourse – themes – norms – functions
The Ubiquity of Narratives:
 Story-telling: fundamental human activity
 Way of making things mean; of imposing order, hierarchy, sequence and significance onto a
disjointed chaos of experiences and impressions
 Story-telling occurs in real life AND in literature
 Story-telling can be found in ALL genres and media
- Narrative fiction, drama, poetry
- Film, TV-shows, manga, radio-plays, computer-games, computer art
- opera, songs, ballet, paintings, sculpture, performance art, flash mobs, …
Story? Yes or No
 The king and queen lived together in endless harmony.
 The king died and then the queen died of grief.
Story
Events: change of state
 „the representation of at least two real or fictive events in a time sequence, neither of which
presupposes or entails the other“
 „narrative is a representation of a causally related series of events“ (Richardson 2000:170)
Mediation (Vermitteltheit):
 Mediation: no direct access to story, but mediating agent (narrator)
 Temporal (cultural, ideological, emotional) distance
 Narrative: „Ein Erzähler erzählt einer Hörerschaft etwas, was geschehen ist“.
Definition of a Narrative:
 Story: mediated succession of events
1. Story Telling in Real Life
Narrator --> tells a story --> adressee
2. Literary Story Telling:
Autor creates --> innerfictional spraker tells --> a story --> innerfictional addressee --> reader
 The narrator/speaker IS NOT the author.
 The narrator/speaker is a FICTIONAL CREATION (just like any other character).
Story vs. plot
 story: no consideration of casual relation
 plot: events are linked
A story consists of
 sequence of events
 causality (“causally related series of events”)
 mediation and temporal distance
“Fiction does not imitate reality out there. It imitates a fellow telling about it.”
Story terms
 event: smallest plot unit, propels the action onward and brings about changes in the situation of
the characters
 kernels: important events, open narrative options, cause change
 satellites: merely embellish (ausschmücken) the central plot sequence, could be left out
Action
Plot structure:
 Internal vs. external plotlines
 Teleological: goal oriented, end defined, Entwicklungsroman
 Cyclical: harmony is disrupted
 Episodic: no dramatic change, hero stumbles from one event to another
 Static: anti-story, nothing happens
Teleological: 2 Types:
1.Freytag Triangle consists of
 exposition/Introduction
 complication (rising action)
 climax
 peripety/turning point (falling action)
 catastrophe moment (moment of final suspense)
 denouement
2.Quest:
 you have a hero on a journey,
 special journey, relevant for the entire universe, seeking desirelable objects
Multiple Plot Lines
 Longer stories have multiple plotlines
 connected causally or through caracters /common themes etc
 hierarchy: main (important) vs. subplot
 contrast – correspondence/ mediation – temporal distance
 are there any elements that are similar to each other?
Beginnings and endings Terms:
 Beginnings:
- Ab ovo: chronological beginning (e.g. the birth of the character)
- In medias res: in the middle of the action
- In ultimas res: ‘‘gradually revealing the conditions of its beginning’’
 Endings:
- Closed ending: all conflicts resolved
- Open ending: fate of characters
Local Setting:
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Semanticised space: spaces are loaded with meaning but meaning of things changes from story
to story (city vs. town)
Text as a spatial system: texts show spatial organisation or create systems of space (heaven&hell)
Contrast vs. correspondence:
TIME - Temporal Setting:
1. Order – When?
2. Duration – How Long?
3. Frequency – How often?
Time: Relation between story time and discourse time:
 Discourse time: time required in order to narrate or read a text
 Story time: time that passes within the narrated world
1. When? Order
- Chronological order: natural temporal sequence of events
- Anachronical order: can be interrupted by a flashback (analepsis) or flashforward (prolepsis)
- Objective vs. subjective anachrony (factual really happened vs. imaginary)  ex pro, sub
2. Duration / speed – how long?
Ellipsis: (omnission/cut)
Discourse time
Story time
(time it takes to read it)
(time in narrative world)
0
Runs on
Summary (speed up)
<
Scene (dialogue)
=
Stretch (slow down)
>
Pause (narrator disrupts
the story to comment
something else)
Runs on
0
3. Frequency – how often?
 Singulative: Happens once in the story, mentioned in the discourse once
 Repetitive: Happens once in a story, mentioned in the discourse twice: I always take the bus at 6
o clock. I tell about it once, but it happens every day
 Multi-singulative: Events happens as many times as it was mentioned
 Iterative: An event happens often in the story, but it is only talked about once in the discourse
CHARACTERISATION:
1. Character grouping (acc. To correspondences & contrasts); certain groups that are found/formed
in a story ( share one common characteristic tail) e.g. older generation vs. young generations
2. Character’s position within system of characters: Character is made to stay on some sort of
higher position (unique characters; representing general higher abstract principle) e.g.: loyalty
(what makes a character special in contrast to others?)
3. Which larger concept(s) does a character stand for? Character represents complex subject &
individual at the same time represent an abstract idea
Character types:
 Flat: one dimensional, easily descibed by one specific merkmale
 Round: pluri-dimensional, are more complex
 Protagonist: Main character, always in the focus
 Antagonist: Minor character
 Static: characters who don´t change, doesn’t develop
 Dynamic: characters who change in the story
 Character types (acc. To function)
- Confidante: the best friend sort of type
- Foil character: make brilliance; makes a story shine brighter
- Blocking character: they are there to get the action going somewhere; or hinder a comedy
from lasting only 5 mins.  because stories need some kind of tension/unpleasant
Types of Characterisation: (more discourse site)
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Narratorial: a narrative character describes a story for you
Figural: character characterising herself or others for us, not the narrator
Explicit: direct telling, states what sb. Is like e.g. John has blue eyes)
Implicit: somebody´s physical appearance or behaviour, sb. characterises herself by behaving
self-characterisation: somebody characterises herself; exp. Or impl.; but in an “attractive” way
altero-characterisation characterising somebody else (person / animal)
reliable vs. unreliable characterisation:
 reliable: this is made for you; everything is obvious; you can completely trust the narrator
 unreliable: have to construct your own mind; have to use your own knowledge; have to look for
hidden clues; narrator is not trustworthy,
- discrepancy between contents of characterisation and real state of affairs
Narratorial vs. Figural characterisation:
 narratorial/authorial characterization: descriptions from narrator
 figural characterization: characters supply their own information through speech and actions
Example Texts:
1. She [Katie] pecked Martha on the forehead. "Funny little Martha," she said. "She reminds me of
Janet. I really do like Janet."
 1st part: narratorial, implicit, altero characterisation
2nd part: figural, implicit, self characterisation
 Martha: figural, explicit, altero.characterisation
2. He was personable and quick-minded, which might, with his middle-class manner and accent, have
done him harm; but he was also a diplomat. His name was Michael Jennings.
 narrtorial, explicit, altero-characterisation
3. "I give every man his due, regardless of religion or anything else. I have nothing against Jews as an
individual," I says, "It's just the race."
 narratorial, implicit, self-characterisation
The Tell-Tale Heart:
I-as-narrator: describes story happening in the past, also addresses the ausience “you”
Unreliable: explicit self characterisation is not on line with the implicit self characterisation
 I am not mad – but I killed him – but I am not mad
Internal: we see everything through the eyes of a character
Explicit focalization: the camera shows everything from the outside
Explicit altero. Describint the old man
NARRATIVE Fiction – The Discourse Level
 all about mediation(közvetítés) & the different renderings of the level of mediation
Levels of narrative communication
1. Fictional communication: character -------> character
 core level= interaction between characters; =fictional word
2. Fictional mediation: narrator -------> addressee (fictional reader)
 telling a story/textualizing it; narrator is very important since it is always there – gives you info
3. Non-fictional communication: author -------> reader
 Author interacting with reader
Narrative situation:
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Shaping the level of mediation
Concerns the way a story is mediated
Many (conflicting) theories, many (contradictionary) terms
5 Levels of Narrative Situation  Caracterise, structurise and identify the narrative persona
1. FORM: where the narrator is situated the fictional world, about whom the story is told
 Homodiegetic: narrator is part of narrated story, but not a main character  1st person narration
 Autodiegetic: narrator tells his own story, he is the protagonist  1st person narration
- I as narrator: character is looking back on his life, telling you about it
- I as character: limited knowledge, story is unfolding how he is telling it
 Heterodiegetic: narrator is outside the narrated story  1st or 3rd person narration
 Extra-diegetic narrator: outside the story such as hetero
 Intro-diegetic narrator: inside the story, h omo and autodiegetic
2. FORMAT: specific shape of narratior character
 Overt: has a personality almost, sometimes they even talk out to the reader
 covert: doesn’t address narrate/reader, uses no voice/lingusitic markers such as conative, phatic,
appellative or expressive speech acts (not fully fledged characters)
Level of knowledge:
 Omniscience. All knowing
 Same degree of knowledge: knows as much as the reader
 Limited knowledge: mystery level, he is trying to figure out what is going on just like the reader
reliable vs. unreliable characterisation:
 reliable: this is made for you; everything is obvious; you can completely trust the narrator
 unreliable: have to construct your own mind; have to use your own knowledge; have to look for
hidden clues; narrator is not trustworthy,
- discrepancy between contents of characterisation and real state of affairs
1. Does the narrator appear as an individualised speaker? Does he have an opinion etc..?
 Yes  overt
 No  Covert
2. How much does the narrator know?
 Everything  omniscient/omnipresent
 As much as I do/less  limited
3. Does the narrator give me reasons to doubt what he is saying? (contradicting, arguing..)
 Yes  unreliable
 No  reliable
3. FOCALIZATION: Narrative voice: who sees/narrates  from which perspective is the story viewed
 wo sees =/= who narrates
 view: seeing, feeling, knowing, believing, remembering  subjective stunts towards the world how do I perceive things/understand things; how the character approaches the world
 external focalisation: (godlike, omniscience; no perspectivity); no limit to anything; there’s no
limitation to knowledge at all; can provide an image of the fictional world
 internal focalisation: (info which can be known by the focalizer; focalizer can change; strong
perspectivity;) they try to present the world just like a character sees it, you’re given the feeling
as if you were looking at the world from the eyes of a character
 focalizer: character within the story whose focus of perception is (temporarily) taken over by the
narrator; reason: a story is not really obliged to choose 1 focaliser only
Internal Focalization:
“[Der Erzähler] tritt so weit hinter die Charaktere zurück, dass seine Anwesenheit uns nicht mehr
bewusst wird. [Für Leser scheint es, als betrachte er] die dargestellte Welt mit den Augen einer Figur,
die jedoch nicht erzählt, sondern in deren Bewusstsein sich das Geschehen gleichsam spiegelt.”
1Focalizaton: Is he described scene narratedfrom a character`s direct, experienced point of view?
 Yes  internal
 No  external
4. VIEW: (Bewusstseinsdarstellung)
Do we get to know the CHARACTERS’ Thoughts? (or even feelings?)
 Inside: we know what sb. feels, sb.’s thoughts, what they are doing, we know about their internal
processes
 Outside: we don’t know, how a character feels
Do we get to know the caracter`s thoughts?
 Yes: Inside view: she remembered, she thought, she felt
 No: Outside view
5. MODE:
 Showing mode (mimesis, dramatic mode): direct discourse, lot of quotation, lot of dialog
 Telling mode (digesis, narrative mode): mediation, many description, arguments, story-creation
- Descriptive mode: describing spatial object
- Argumentative mode: logical mode, philosophising, focusing on story telling itself
Do we have the feeling of listening to a narrator who tells a story?
 Yes  telling, blue birds, sun shining, wind was blowing
 No showing; confronting you what is going on, without much description, she says while
showing the video, his voice broke and she thought he was…
STANZELS TYPICAL NARRATIVE SITUATION
=typical narrative situation is a collection of narrative features; still used in schools; Stanzel read a lot
of French, german, russian novels  in some ways all fall in one of 3 main types of narrative
situations:
 authorial narrative situation (auktoriale Erzählsituation): very straightforward, external
perpective-outside the world of characters
 first-person narrative situation (Ich-ES): have knowledge about characters, experiencing eye,
they are involved with the events as a protagonist or as a side character
 figural narrative situation (Personale ES): reflector mode, reflector is the center of the story
telling narrator is outside
 (camera eye narration)
Authorial narrative situation
 Form: heterodiegetic, 3rd person, not a character in the story
 Format: overt; omniscient; reliable narrator
 Focalisation: external perspective; Olympian focalisation (knows everything), usually no reflector
 he can be in a room, the next chapter in China  no limit
 View: inside & outside view
 Mode: changes between telling and showing; mode of telling is dominant
First Person Narration
 Form: autodiegetic; 1st person
 Format: I as protagonist: narrator is main character of the story
I as witness: minor character
 Format: generally: overt, limited knowledge; both reliability and unreliability possible
 Focalisation: external (when focus on I-as-narrator, erzählendes Ich); internal possible (when
focus in limited on limited viewpoint of I-as-character, erlebendes Ich)
 View: inside & outside view (inside of character, unless she talks to people)
 Mode: changes between telling & showing
 Example: Charlotte Bronte
Figural Person Narration
 Form: heterodiegetic, 3rd person ´reflector person´
 Format: highly covert; focalizer  limited knowledge,; often unreliable
 Focalisation: internal focalizer
 View: inside view (but only as regards reflector’s consciousness!!) and outside view of all other
characters
 Mode: showing dominant
 Example: Mrs. Dalloway
How to recognize a figural narration
 referentless pronouns
 familiarising articles (THE dog rather than A dog)
 slice-of-life story (a day in the life of somebody)
 focus on internal action
 impressionistic, emotional, subjective
 associative, (slightly) incoherent (order isn’t important, lots of prolepsis and analepsis
 reminiscence (personal past) and conjecture (personal future)
Authorial Narration Example:
1) Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief
personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some
particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his
profession.
2) I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on
the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No;
moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my
head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern
carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves
were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another
world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of
wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to
the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key
turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.
First Person Narration Example:
1) Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.[indirect speech]
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s
men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to
children on a beach.[free indirect discouse]
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the
hinges, which she could hear now, [narratorial comment] she had burst open the French windows
and plunged at Bourton into the open air. [narratorial comment??] How fresh, how calm, stiller than
this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and
sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) [narratorial comment??] solemn, feeling as she
did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the
flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and
looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—was that it?—“I prefer men to
cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on
to the terrace— Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot
which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife,
his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a
few sayings like this about cabbages.[free indirect discourse]
- where: London, wealthy lady
- what: day of her party, remembering the last time she saw him, on the street she hears
construction noises, it reminds her to a country house, it is a flashback
- Lucy: maid
- Extreme case of internal focalisation
Speech and Thought Representation
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Narrator`s discourse and characters´discourse
Discourse: words uttered and words thought
Inquit-formula/tag & act of speech, thought or perception
- verba dicendi (she said, asked, replied, muttered, claimed, promised, ...)
- verba cogitandi & percipiendi (thought, realized, felt, remembered, imagined)
 If any of these are present in an exct = tagged discourse!
tagged: marked for inside view
Representation of thought :
direct, indirect, free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness, psycho-narration
 basic structure: character’s discourse is presented WITHIN narrator’s discourse (narrator will
often introduce a character’s discourse)
- frame= narrator’s discourse;
- Inset= character’s discourse
 Attitude; actual vs. virtual; accuracy (how accurately is the speech of the character represented
in the text?)
- Attitude: Regulates between authors and character discourse
- Accuracy: very ruff summarisation/approximation to what characters think/say  usually
thoughts are a very long process (representation of sb.’s actual words – indirect speech)
Types of discourses:
Direct
 Often quotation marks (“…”)
 Tagged (he said ...) or untagged (without he said)
 Verbatim rendering of speech/thought
 Present tense: original tense & deixis
- BSP: He said: “I am Hungry”
- BSP: She asked, Why am I here?
Indirect
 Narrator explains a thought process and eventually comments it
 grammatical structure of reported speech
 no quotation marks
 Changed tense & deixis
- BSP: He asked why he was there.
- BSP: He said that he was hungry.
- BSP: Mary wondered what she should do.
.
Direct
vs.
- Tagged or untagged
- Often quotation marks
- Original tense und deixis
- Main clause
- BSP: He asked “Why am I here?”
Free indirect discourse: “narrated monologue”
Indirect discourse
- Tagged
- No quotation marks
- changed tense und deixis
- subordinate clause
- BSP: He asked why he was there.
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3rd person  narrator continues to talk of the character in the third person
main clause
deixis retained, but transposed (“here” becomes “there”)
Temporal system equals indirect speech (“Why for god’s sake had she not talked to him?”)
often (but not always) untagged
often loose syntax, exclamations
Narrator reports character‘s thoughts using the character ‘s mind style
Can create immediacy but also create ironic distance
Can reproduce character‘s stream of consciousness (contrast indirect discourse)
mostly used in internal focalization, subjective
BSP: gosh, he was hungry  meist umgangssprachlich
- What on earth was she doing?
- He didn‘t know how else he could have put it. After all, the chief point was that he‘d done
the same as everybody else, and it was all over long before he met her. Of course as things
turned out he had been a fool, but anyone could be wise after the event. He put his hand to
his heart. Funny how it hurt him there.
Stream of consciousness
 “interior/quoted monologue”
 1st person
 untagged (-->no she asks, say, tell, remember..)
 original tense & deixis
 highly mimetic
 total insight into character’s mind (seemingly unmediated)
 BSP: I am so hungry, I should eat smth., oh there is a cookie it looks delicious  Gedankenfluss
- I think I‘ll get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some blancmange
with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the
London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as far only for the bones […]
Psycho-narration
 high degree of narrator participation – renders (wiedergeben) characters mind and thoughts
from his own informed and elevated perspective
 mediated distance
 narrator summarizes character’s feelings, thoughts
 often narrator’s language
POETRY
Relation to music
Musicality: one of main characteristics in poetry: meter, rhythm
Greek word ‘lyric’  lyre, instrument
Lyric  songs that were accompanied by the lyre
Defining Poetry
1. Which broader category does poetry belong to? Literature
2. Which feature(s) do all poems have in common?  typical features
3. Which feature(s) make poetry different from all other genres?  defining poetry
Defining poetry:
 It is hard to define
 Oldest genre
 Extremely heterogeneous in both form and content
 Generic criteria have changed over time
 NO exact defining features, (bc.no poems are the same)
Typical features:
1. Brevity (=shortness)
- reduced length  quantitative brevity
- reduced content  qualitative brevity
2. Overstructuring/Artificiality
- Overstructured typography
- Overstructured sound
3. Deviation
4. Subjectivity
5. Selfreferentiality
6. Fragile Aesthetic Illusion
 EX: William Wordsworth: A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
Brevity:
Quantitative: very little happening, reduced length, vertically
 Space-saving code: brevity compensated for by vertical density (all linguistic levels)
 Intensified reading experience (can be read in one sitting)
 Simultaneous cognitive presence of all textual details (poem as texture, as spatial object)
Qualitative: little information about speaker, addressee
 Few/no events
 Sketchy fictional word, semantic gaps (Leerstellen)
 Prototypical element triggers context – cognitive frames (->airport: stereotypes)
 Hightened reader activation: reader needs to supply missing information
Over-structuring: Patterning, Structure, Repetition, Paralellism, Similarity, Equivealences, SelfReferenriality, Poecity..
 Order through sameness: repeating formal elements
 Repeated elements establish network of relations, structures, order
 add meaning and complexity to the text!
Over-structuring 2
 Poetry establishes order on ALL levels of language (including typographical level and sound level)
 Each poem creates unique code
 Requires different way of reading: mindful of (formal) details
 Reading poetry: visual and auditive component  typographical and acoustic information
Jakobson: Poetic Function: words become non-semantic word block, pure form of function
Three levels Text Model
They belong together, they build the system and order
Slumber did my spirit seal:
Alliteration- reputation of a sound
Stanza= versszak!
Rhythm: underlined is stressed
Morphology: past tense 1. Stanza, present 2. stanza
Overstructured: Typology
 ‚Verse‘: first and last word fixed
 Creates additional unit for establishing correspondences
 Slows down reading
 Draws attention to the artificiality of the discourse (self-referentiality)
Overstructured: Sound
 Overstructuring suprasegmental level: stress, unstress; metre / rhythm)
 Overstructuring phonetic level: alliteration, assonance, rhyme
 Cave: sounds do not mean anything in themselves; effect will be determined by innertextual
context
 Overstructuring builds an order -> formality
Deviation: (eltérés) destroys order & rules
 Poetry breaks inner- and extratextual rules – grammar rules, etc..
 Causes reader activation & self-referentiality
 Produces unique code (subjectivity)
 Example: metaphor
Subjectivity: the most subject genre (emotionality)
 Often: focus on speaker‘s subjective perspective (cf. autodiegetic narrator, internal focalization)
 The speaker talking is not the author  terms: speaker, persona, lyrical I
 Overt (comes up with an agenda) vs. covert speaker
 Subjectivity through:
- Use of the 1st person pronoun
- Reduced information on communicative constituents
- Emotionality markers
- Idiosyncratic language use (egyéni nyelvhasználat)
- Deviation
Self-refrentiality: language that a whole poem uses, it refers back to its structure
 "The set (Einstellung) toward the message as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the
poetic function of language" (Jakobson)
 As direct consequence of
- Overstructuring (similar elements draw attention to each other rather than to world outside)
- Deviation
Fraigle Aesthetic Illusion: we believe there is a speaker, we are willing to lose ourselfes in the story
 Aesthetic illusion: to be re-centred in the fictional word
 (“willing suspension of disbelief for the moment” S. T. Coleridge)
 Frodo, Salaman: there are no such people in real life
 Illusion of lyric world: sketchier, less consistently immersive, because of
- Static cognitive images
- Fragmented fictional world
- Focus on form (overstructuring)
- Distance through deviation
 But: strong speaker illusion!
The communicative levels of poetry:
 Extratextual level: real author (addresser) > real reader (addressee)
 Intratextual level: lyric persona/speaker (addresser) > lyric thou (addressee)
 Overt (open) = explicit subjectivity
 covert (close) = implicit subjectivity
SONNET: history of the sonnet 2 types
1. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet:
 an octave (eight lines) rhyming abba-abba
 sestet rhyming cdecde or some variation
 Characters: realistic, complex, flawed characters
 Story level:
- extreme idealisation of woman, Laura cult
- praising her perfection (perfectly beautiful & perfectly pureà problem!)
- Frustration, melancholy, isolation
- Self-scrutiny; self-definition through renunciation
 Discourse level:
- Sonnet: strict form necessitates strict logical structure, rational way of dealing with passion
- Very artistic, stylised, formulaic, mannered (no attempt at detailed realism)
- esp. with imitators: stereotypical „blazon“ = description of lady‘s assets
2. The English or Shakespearean sonnet :
 three quartetts (quatrains) and one final couplet
 the rhyme pattern is most commonly abab cdcd efef gg.
 Couplet often provides suprising/ironic twist
 Argumentative structure
 Arranged in loose cycle
 William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets
 Characters: poet speaker, dark lady-sexual lover, young man-spiritual love, rival poet
 Themes: transience, immoral poetry, love in all its aspect
Structural Levels of the Lyric text
Story Level
 Characters
 Action
 Space/Time
Discourse Level
 External form
 Suprasegmental level
 Phonetic level, Morphological level
 Semantic level, Syntactic level
 Communicative level (mediation)
External form: Aufbau
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Number of stanzas  Stanza: unit of lines marked through typographical spaces
Lines (per stanza)
Number of syllables / verseline
Metre
Rhyme scheme
Historically fixed form? (eg. ottava rima, sonnet etc.)
Suprasegmental Level: Meter and Rhythm
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Suprasegmental level: level below levels, which can be divided up into separate units /phonemes
Meter: Regular (unchanging) sequence of stress vs. unstress
Stress:
Stressed syllable is longer because more air pressure is used
full vowel (vs. schwa)
stressed words: nouns, verbs, adjectives
functional words like on, and, in, of… are usually unstressed
How to describe a Meter:
 Scan/study the text
 Underline the ikts: stressed positions: U, unstressed: I
 Establish type of foot (foot= metrical unit)
 Establish number of feet (=number of syllables)
 In case of irregularities: apply maximization principle, if the most iambic then its iambic
Number of lines per stanza:
2 lines: couplet
3 lines: tercets
4 lines: quatrains
5 lines: quintains
6 lines: sestet
8 lines. Octave
Meter: the scheme of stressed and unstressed syllables that forms the basis structure o a poem
Metrical foot: smallest unit of the verse
 Iamb xx : stress on second syllable  da DUM: away
 Trochee xx: first syllable stressed  DUM da: hollow
 Dactyl xxx  DUM da da: merrily
 Anapaest xxx  da da DUM: understand
 Spondee: xx  DA DUM
Iamb:
Shall 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.
Trochee:
Hark, the hour of ten is sounding
Hearts with anxious fears are bounding
Hall of Justice crowds surrounding
Breathing hope and fear.
Dactyl:
Cannon to right of them
Cannon to left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered.
Anapest:
I conceive you may use
any language you choose
to indulge in without impropriety
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I wandered lonely as a cloud
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Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold (Keats, „On First Looking…“)
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Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble (Shakespeare, Macbeth)
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And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
(Byron, “The Destruction of Sennacherib“)
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Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
(Shelley, „Ozymandias“)
1. Shall I compare thee to a summer`s day 
2. Intro her mutiny / Rash and undutiful 
3. Dark behind it rose the forest 
4. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse 
5. To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
6. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.  (oldalt a megoldasok)
Number of Feet per line:
Away= 2 syllables but 1 metrical foot
2-dimeter
3-trimeter
4-tertrameter
5-pentameter
6-hexameter
7-heptameter
8-octameter
Shakespeare  Iamb, pentameter
Prose Rhythm: natural prose sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables is irregular!
 Stressed syllables: autosemantics= noun, verb, adjective
 Unstressed syllables: function words= on, and, in, of
 Mark accents (stressed syllables) with ´
 Any enjambement(s) continuation of asentence without a pause after the end of a line
Rhythm deviates from the metre
 I WANdered LONely as a CLOUD
 X X´ X X´ X X X X´
 you don´t have a stress of a metrical rhythm but on a rhythmical one
Verse rhythm: interplay between metre and prose rhythm, between abstract metrical pattern and
natural prose
 Cf. general principle: interplay between individual subsystems
Interplay: összjáték
 Tension between abstract, regular metrical norm and concrete realisation
 IMPORTANT: Describe AND functionalise !
Interplay: gives every author it´s own footprint,
Interplay:
 Aesthetic appeal through fulfilling and disappointing expectation
 Counteracts monotony (variatio delectat!)
 Expressive function
 Emphasis: rhythmical focal points can mark semantic focal points (schaffen Sinnbeziehungen.)
 Equivalence between discourse and story:
Iconicity, onomatopoeia [‚Þnәumætәu‘pi:ә], Objektmimesis
- The river glideth at its own swéet will
(Wordsworth, „Composed Upon Westminster Bridge“)
 Uniqueness: interplay gives poem its special phonetic ‚footprint‘;
creating a poem‘s unique sound space
Function of additional accent:
 disharmony
 illustrates effect wind has on flowers
 illustrates imperfect state of nature (vs. friend‘s perfectioThe phonetic level:
Rhyme: sameness of sound after last stressed vowel
 If verses rhyme, they are connected phonetically
 Usually the preceding consonant differs
 Correspondence(kapcsolat, összefüggés) through sameness of sound
Functions of Rhyme
 Marking the verse a different unit
 Correspondence between rhyming words / verses
 Interplay with structure and content of the poem
Rhyme structures:
 Continuous rhyme: aaaa bbbb
 Rhyming couplets: aa bb cc
 Alternate / crossed rhyme: abab cdcd
 Chain rhyme: aba cdc
 Embracing rhyme: abba cddc / aba cdc
 Trail rhyme: aabccb
Half-rhymes:
 Consonance: boot-boat
 Assonance: dice – eyes
 Eye-rhyme: river – rider
 Moasiac-rhyme: see in me – mistery – still can´t see
 Alliteration: same beginning-sound of a word: bed – best, living - laughing
 Onomoatopoeia: sounds (animal)
 End rime: at the end of the line
 Internal rhyme: within lines
Repetition:
 Anaphora: beginning
 Epiphora: at end
 Epanalepsis: closely together
 Anadiplosis: word ends and starts the line
 Polypton: Fenomenally- fenomenal
Syntactic figures:
 Metaphor: using two unlike things to describe something
 Vehicle + tenor  bird (vehicle)  feather represents hope (tenor)
 Simile  I wandered lonely as / like a cloud.
 Euphathism: nicer way of say something
 Hyperbole: Übertreibung
 Personification:
 Paradox:
Other sound patterns
 Alliteration: repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words (consonants)
 Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds
 Consonance: repetition of consonant sounds
Types of rhyme:
 Masculine rhyme: one identical syllable/ends in one stressed syllable (ran - man)
 Feminine rhyme: two identical syllables/ends in one or more unstressed syllables (Niger - tiger)
METAPHOR:
 figure of speech (rhetorische Figur)
 Figurative language (uneigentliches Sprechen)
 rhetorical comparison that leaves out the comparison particle not: *All the world‘s LIKE a
stage; but: „All the world‘s a stage“ (Shakespeare, As You Like It)
 implied analogy between concepts which, on the surface, do not seem to have anything in
common
 creates semantic tension (deviation!); cannot be understood in its basic way (its ‘denotation’) but
needs to be understood in a non-conventional way
 Transfer of meaning
 Something is seen IN TERMS of something else
The lovers bathe in gladness
 Bathe’: vehicle (subject whose attributes are borrowed)
 Type/intensity of feeling: tenor (subject to which attributes are ascribed)
 Totality, completeness: tertium comparationis (attributes that tenor and vehicle have in
common)
 Based on sensual rather than on cognitive experience (‘verbal imagery’); often used to structure
abstract concepts via concrete ones
Poem´s Methaphorical Structure
 Implications: What does the choice of a particular vehicle imply?
 Isotopies: Which semes (units of meaning) are repeated ? (SH 18: golden mean; extreme states;
light)
 Areas of reference: Which areas of experience do a poem‘s metaphors belong to? (SH 18: law;
nature)
 Structure within each individual metaphor
 Relationship/dynamic between a poem‘s metaphors
Types of methapors
 Synaesthesia: special type of metaphor; unites various senses („And the hapless soldier‘s
sigh/runs in blood down palace walls“ Blake, „London“)
 Personification: spec. type of m.; anthropomorphising something (=making it human/ animate)
 Simile: (Vergleich) cf. metaphor, comparing something  you are like him
 Metonymy: vehicle is closely associated with the tenor
 For euphemism, hyperbole, irony, litotes, oxymoron, and paradox see reader p. 123.
Shall 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 wand'rest 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.
Discourse Level of Sonnet 18
 Characters: speaker (poet) & addressee (young handsome man?)
 Written discourse; metapoem (=poem about poetry) („eternal lines“, „so long lives THIS“)
 Action: poet proposes to compare addressee to summer‘s day in order to illustrate young man‘s
perfection; comparison is found to be inadequate (not temperate, not perfectly beautiful, not
immortal); young man will be immortalised through this very poem.
 Action (abstract version): Attempt at comparison (ultimately dismissed) & implicit praise of
friend; prophesy of immortality & implicit praise of poetry
 Discourse type: Argumentation (logical, abstract) which uses description (visual, concrete)
 Metre/rhythm interplay (selection): l. 3: illustrating disharmony; ll. 13-14: parallelising semantic
focal points and central argument (“lóng líves thís“/“thís gíves lífe“)
Suprasegmental Level:
Couplet gives you the message at the end
Themes and Norms:
Themes
 Transience vs. immortality
 The real vs. the ideal
 Nature vs. art
 Praise of art; metapoetry
Norms
 Secular, non-metaphysical: death is the end
 Renaissance ideal of golden mean
 Ambivalent stance vis-à-vis petrarchism
 Celebration of art
DRAMA
Impersonation:
 present, happening in the present
 physical (eroticism)
 not telling, but showing,  no element of telling, SHOWING MODE!
 Iconic – arbitrary relation between language used and motion
Generic features:
 Drama uses language and non-linguistic channels of communication
 Acoustic (language, sounds, music ...)
 Visual (set, lighting, costume, make-up, gestures, facial expressions, position, movement, ...)
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Multimediality: uses language and also non-linguistic elements, both auditory and visual
Synchronic presence of multiplicity of signs
 involves all senses
 information-packed
 high audience activity
 can be like a room without 4th wall  illusionist
Performativity: Written text, genre of literature, but will be shown (preformed) to audience
 Drama needs to be staged!
 Drama needs to have an audience
 Dramatic text vs. performance
 Text as blueprint, score or recipe
 Theatre studies: actual performance
 English studies: dramatic text; implied performance
 Staging: variable vs. invariable elements
 Each performance: unique and ephemeral event
Collectivity: drama is a collective formation:
 Collectivity of production (unique)
 Actors
 Director
 Costume designer
 Scene designer
 Dramaturg
 Collectivity of reception
 Audience as unique collective
 collective reception vs. solitary reading
 Theatre as ‘cybernetic machine’ (feedback effect actors – audience)
Drama: Absoluteness of dramatic texts
 Unmediated  doesn´t contain a mediator, level of mediation is missing
 Sender: Author, historical author
 Addressee: Real reader, Audience
 Dramatic text: intratextual level of communication
Immediacy
 It is immediate  takes place here and now
 performance is unmediated  no mediation, no narrator = absolut
 unfolds in the here and now  “on the stage it is always now”
 no narrative guidance (no explaining, summarising, commenting)
 Exception: epic drama (=Brechtian drama)
 Audience as eye witnesses, experience story as it unfolds (vs. narrative fiction: past tense, sense
of closure, of narrating with hindsight)
Epic theatre: Bertold Brecht
 Uses affects like alienation or estrangement effect
 Attempts to prevent the audiences emotional involvement
 He doesn’t want people to know what happens but how it happens
 Plot: climatic catharsis by using effects
 can be achieved is by having actors play multiple characters
 "break the fourth wall" by speaking to the audience, use of a narrator
 why? Wanted to go home and realize this was a play how to make the word a better place
Components of the play
 Primary text: dialogue, what people say in direct speech, dialogue
 Secondary text: other parts, play´s title, list of characters, stage directions
Internal vs. External System of Communication (SOC)
 Internal SOC: character  character
 External SOC: play total  audience
 Dramatic language simultaneously directed at internal AND external system of communication
 Related issues:
 Distribution of information (exposition, soliloquy)
 Discrepant awareness (dramaticirony)
Dramatic language
 Dramatic language is ultimately always constructed or made up and it often serves several
purposes
 It´s a contract even if it’s a dialogue
 Doing things with words/speech acts, action through dialogue
 More artificially drawn out
Exposition
 prehistory of dramatic plot which is vital for the understanding the play
 Character providing background information of dramatic plot that helps us understand the play
 Before the play starts, at the very beginning of the play, generally in the first act
 Common knowledge for characters
 Isolated: all the information is given away in one go, at once  makes it look articifial
 Integrated: information is given during the play, much more elegant and realistic
 Monological: exposition by one figure within or outside the action (epic theatre)
 Dialogical exposition through protatic figure (sole purpose is to facilitate exposition)
confidant(e) as dialogue partner
 The dialogical exposition can help diminish the rift between exposition and action proper
Closed vs. Open ending:
 Closed ending – resolution of all open questions and conflicts (plot lines) – ‘poetic justice’
 Open ending – refuses to supply an ending in which all conflicts are resolved (frequently used
in modern plays)
Dialogue
 Basic structure of a dramatic text
 Close to real-life but still a literary construct
 Function: progression of action
 Duologe: 2 characters
 Trialoge: 3 characters
Soliloquy (German: Monolog), Possible functions:
 Soliloquy(magánbeszéd): speech of a character who is alone on stage or not
 Lot of self-characterization  but implicit!
 Thinking aloud on stage
 Represents consciousness
 Dialogical tendencies characters address others (dead father) but he is not there, charac. is alone
 Provides direct insight into character‘s subjective perspective
 Reveals intentions, motives, thoughts, feelings, world view etc.
 Provides information about events not shown on stage
 Links scenes. Drives the plot, creates empathy in audience, creates expectations & suspense
Aside:
 Character speaks away from other character
 Exemplifies artificiality
 Three types:
1. Monological: characters voice in his head, nobody hears it
2. Dialogical: character tells a secret to another character
3. Spectators: to the audience
Discrepant (ellentétes) awareness
 Uneven distribution of information
- audience knows more/less than character A/all characters
- character A knows more/less than character B/all characters
 leads to dramatic irony: when audience knows more than a character
 Essential tool for
- Creating interest, empathy, suspense
- driving action forward
- placing audience in privileged/ignorant position
 Dynamic pattern of information distribution throughout the play
Dramatic irony:
 Audience knows more than character
 character‘s comment has additional meaning which character is unaware of
Verbal irony or wit
 comedy of manners
 Repition of unusual similes, metaphors, and paradoxical language
Types of Characters
multi-dimensional & dynamic (round character): life-like imitations of unique human beings with
individual psychological make-up
mono-dimensional & static (flat character): representatives of different human types, social groups
or world views
Characters and Action:
 Aristotle: characters less important than plot
 Characters and plot are interdependent: c drive p; p changes c
 Characters can be seen as
 Life-like imitations of unique human beings with individual psychological make-up
 Representatives of different human types, social groups or world views
 Plot-relevant agents
o characters‘ intentions drive plot
o characters carry plot functions (protagonist, helper, desired object, obstacle…)
 But: plot also driven by external forces (chance, ill fate etc.)
 For general info on character and plot analysis see lecture 3
Tragedy:
 From happiness to unhappiness (peripeteia=reversal of fortune)
 From ignorance to knowledge (anagnorisis)
 Noble (aristocratic) hero with tragic flaw/fatal mistake (hamartia)
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 ‚High‘ genre, elevated style, noble protagonists (aptum=Ständeklausel)
 Threeunities
 Freytag triangle (see session 3)
Comedy:
 Happy ending
 Humor
 About human folly or social norms
 Social integration: communal dance at the end
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Rites of Spring: victory of younger generation over older generation (Frye)
Intrigue, disguise, mistaken identities
Joshua Reynolds. [Actor] David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy. 1760-61
• Aggressive, excluding laughter vs. welcoming, understanding laughter
Subjective Distortion:
 Careful: character’s opinion, world view etc. ≠ overall norm, world view of the text !!
 A play‘s underlying norm/ideology/world view can only be gaged by considering the sum total of
all the information provided by the text