Literary Criticism: Form and Race
Table of Content
Type/Chapter
出
處
Titles
Examples
th-
Some 19 Century Poems on Death
and Separation
Chap 1.
New Criticism
 Theory
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
 Examples
 Ref. Examples 北島的詩
--
I
IX
Chap 2.
Structuralism
Chap 3
Structuralist Narratology
Chap 4-1.
Ref. Chap 4-2.
 Examples


Theory+Example
II
“The Work of Representation” III
3. Semiotics
4. Discourse, Power & Subject
Bishop’s “Sestina”& “The Map”
“The Lesson”
“The Purloined Letter”
 Theory
Ref. Chap 6.
Ref. Chap 7
Examples
Ref.
VII
Deconstruction
II
Jameson
on
Postmodern VIII
Culture
“Hong Kong Prayer” & other -poems
"The Blind Man"
IX
IV Postcolonialism
 Theory
Chap 8
IV
V
VI
“Text Play” Includes Daffodil
poems
Wordsworth’s and Dickenson’s X
poems
“The Babysitter”
XI
Ref.
I
出
處
s

II. Structuralism & Semiotics
 Theory
Titles
III. Postmodernism & Poststructuralism
Ref. Chap 5.
I. New Criticism

p.
Type
Chap 9

Examples
Postcolonial
Criticism
and XII
Theory
"English, National
XIII
Identity and Cultural Heritage."
Excerpts from Robinson Crusoe XIV
& Jane Eyre
-"Good Advice is Rarer than XV
Rubies"
"Columbus in Chains"
XVI
"My Man Bovanne"
魚骸
VII
XVII
p.
Sources:
I.
II.
Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.
2nd Ed. (Bressler, Charles E.
Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999.)
X.
Reader's Guide to Contemporary Theory (Raman Seldon.
Harvester, 93)
XI.
Pricksongs and Descants.
American Library, 1969.
III.
Hall, Stuart.
Excerpt from "The Work of
Representation."
36-64.
Representation:
Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices. Ed. Stuart Hall.
London: Sage, 1997.
IV.
Elizabeth Bishop. The Complete Poems: 1927-1979.
NY: The Noonday P, 1995.
V.
IX.
“The Blind Man.
D. H. Lawrence.
The Heath
Introduction to Fiction. 4th Ed. Ed. John J. Clayton.
Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath & Co, 1992.
“The Lesson.”
Toni Cade Bambara.
The Heath
Introduction to Fiction. 4th Ed. Ed. John J. Clayton.
Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath & Co, 1992.
VI.
“The Purloined Letter.” Edgar Allan Poe. from The
American Tradition in Literature. George Perkins ed. 8th
Ed. McGrawHill, 1994.
VII. Re-Reading Literature: New Critical Approaches to the
Study of English.
Sue Hackman & Barbara Marshall.
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990.
VIII. 詹明信 (Fredric Jameson)﹒
《後現代主義與文化理論》
，唐
小兵譯，台北：合志， 1990.
Practicing Theory and Reading Literature (Raman
Seldon. Kentucky, 89)
Robert Coover.
XII.
Literary Theory: The Basics.
Routledge, 2001.
NY: New
Hans Bertens.
XIII. Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students.
Eaglestone. NY: Routledge, 2000.
NY:
Robert
XIV. Texts and Contexts: introducing literature and language
study. Adrian Beard. NY: Routledge, 2001
XV.
East, West.
Salman Rushdie. Toronto: Vintage, 1996.
XVI. Kincaid, Jamaica.
Giroux, 1983.
XVII. 〈魚骸〉．
Annie John.
黃錦樹．
NY: Farr, Staus and
Some 19th-Century Poems on Death and Separation
Neutral Tones
WHEN we two parted
Thomas Hardy—1898
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
George Gordon Byron 1813
WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years, How should
I
greet thee?
With silence and tears.
For Byron’s relationship
with Lady Caroline Lamb, please
see http://englishhistory.net/byron/lclamb.html
The Going
Thomas Hardy (Dec. 1912)
Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!
Never to bid good-bye,
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.
Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness,
Of perspective sickens me!
You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.
Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
"In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited.
Well, well! All's past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing—
Not even I—would undo me so!
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
William Wordsworth 1799
1. Composed in Germany. Coleridge wrote of this poem in a letter of April
1799: "Some months ago Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime
Epitaph ... whether it had any reality, I cannot say.--Most probably, in some
gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his Sister might die."
Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy (Dec. 1912)
(Lines on the loss of the 'Titanic')
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'...
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great -A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said 'Now!' And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) –Three poems
WHEN I AM DEAD, MY DEAREST
Dec 1848
After Death
The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where thro' the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say:
"Poor child, poor child:" and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm tho' I am cold.
The Bourne
Underneath the growing grass,
Underneath the living flowers,
Deeper than the sound of showers
There we shall not counter the hours
By the shadows as they pass.
Youth and health will be but vain
Beauty reckoned of no worth:
There a very little girth
Can hold round what once the earth
Seemed too narrow to contain.
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Christina's brother and editor, William Michael Rossetti,
commented: "This celebrated lyric ... has perhaps been oftener
quoted, and certainly oftener set to music, than anything else
by Christina Rossetti." And indeed there is a Chinese song,
called〈歌〉—lyrics by 徐志摩，and music by 羅大佑。
Elizabeth Bishop
Sestina
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
The Map
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?
The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
But secretly, while the grandmother
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
busies herself about the stove,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
the little moons fall down like tears
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
from between the pages of the almanac
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
into the flower bed the child
-the printer here experiencing the same excitement
has carefully placed in the front of the house. as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous
stove
Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,
and the child draws another inscrutable
lending the land their waves' own conformation:
house.
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
-What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.