August
th
27 ,
2013
Chapter III:
Denotation and Connotation
• Denotation-the dictionary meaning of the
word
– Example: snake is "any of numerous scaly,
legless, sometimes venomous reptiles; Having a
long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most
tropical and temperate regions."
• Connotation- what a word suggests beyond
what it expresses; its overtones of meaning
– Example: snake could include evil or danger
Chapter III:
Denotation and Connotation
• A words connotations is developed
from its past history and
associations
• A Poet often takes advantage of the
fact that the word has more than
one meaning by using it to mean
more than one thing at the same
time
Chapter IV: Imagery
• Types of Imagery:
–Auditory- sound
–Olfactory- smell
–Gustatory- taste
–Tactile- touch
–Organic- internal sensations
–Kinesthetic- movement or tension
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
– Preludes
by T. S. Eliot.
SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
a
• A fourteen line poem with
a specific rhyme scheme.
• The poem is written in
three quatrains and ends
with a couplet.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
b
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
a
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
b
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
c
• Each quatrain develops a
specific idea, but one
closely related to the
ideas in the other
quatrains.
• It is the most flexible in
placement of the volta.
• Shakespeare often
places the "turn," as in
the Italian, at L9
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
d
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
c
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
d
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
e
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
f
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
e
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
f
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
g
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
g
Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
•
•
•
The Italian sonnet is divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyming sounds.
The first 8 lines is the octave and rhymes:
abba abba
The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or three rhyming
sounds, arranged in a variety of ways:
cdcdcd
cdeced
cddcdc
cdcedc
cdecde
•
•
•
the poem is divided into two sections by the two differing rhyme groups.
A change from one rhyme group to another often signifies a change in subject matter.
This change occurs at the beginning of L9 in the Italian sonnet and is called the volta, or
"turn”.
JOHN KEATS
Keats
• John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He
was one of the main figures of the second
generation of romantic poets along with Lord
Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his
work only having been in publication for four
years before his death.
• Keats lost his parents at an early age. He was eight
years old when his father, a livery stable-keeper,
was killed after being trampled by a horse.
• His father's death had a profound effect on the
young boy's life. In a more abstract sense, it
shaped Keats' understanding for the human
condition, both its suffering and its loss.
• This tragedy and others helped
ground Keats' later poetry—one that
found its beauty and grandeur from
the human experience.
• Although his poems were not generally well
received by critics during his life, his reputation
grew after his death, so that by the end of the
19th century he had become one of the most
beloved of all English poets.
• The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual
imagery, most notably in the
series of odes. Today his poems
and letters are some of the most
popular and most analyzed in
English literature.