Theory 2 Flashcards
What two aspects of a lute song effectively ground the musical phrase structure?
- poetic metre
- stanzaic form
- they both constitute a repetitive structure
How do the music and words of a lute song work in harmony?
- music can respond to the emotive dimensions of the semantic content
What kind of latency might we say a piece of drama has?
a latent performativity
How can a piece of drama be opened to music through the integration of forms?
Other forms can be nested within a dramatic text
What is a libretti?
A libretti is a script which supports musical expression
If people are having an argument in a text - what questions should you ask yourself?
- are they importing certain ideas?
- which difference does it make when abstract ideas are discussed in person, does it make them more grounded?
- how does the way that the individuals in a text argue prove their view?
What is the likeliest way that you will need to begin a conclusion? and why?
More likely you need to begin saying ‘text 1 and text 2 contrast in their discussion of…’ because it is already implicit that they share a common concern
What is the golden rule when there seems to be an indeterminacy/ complication in what an author is saying?
- do not presume to know how the individual is taking the complication or giving their two cents on the issue - look at what they have said and do not infer more
Consider the senses, list them and their adjectives
Touch, sight, smell, hear, taste - tactile, visual, olfactory, aural, gustatory
Why should we be careful about using the word ‘scene’?
It can close down questions about the nature of whatever experience an individual is having - ie. is it a vision, interaction, occurrence?
When approaching your second extract, what is one of the first comparative questions you should be asking? Where is the easiest starting point to answer this?
What has changed between these two extracts? The easiest to identify is if the mode of address has changed ie. have we gone from the perspective of an individual and shifted into an argument/ discussion ie. a shared or communal arena?
What are the four key signs of irony?
- if a different style/ tone is used than the expected one
- understatements
- cynicism
- hyperbole
When someone is having an experience, what are the questions you should be asking?
- how do they attempt to process it?
- do they try to structure it?
- does the experience seem to overtake them or does it feel uncontrollable?
What is a good way of identifying where the focus and attention rests in a text?
Identify the turning point ie. a line/ moment of change
- identify where the attention is drawn
- don’t worry about covering the whole piece, it is far more important to hone in on a key moment or the crux
How would you characterise a Beckett sentence typically?
- sentences that can be straight-forward and semantically dense
When a sentence is both straight-forward and semantically dense what effect can this have?
- they can become unsettling
- they are surprisingly resistant to a single interpretation
Sounds can be associated with denotation. What key phrase summarises this?
Some sounds have ‘recognisably stronger semantic associations’
Give an example of sounds that exist on the indeterminate boundary of sound and language
‘ow’ and ‘ouch’
Why do ‘ow’ and ‘ouch’ complicate the idea of language’s musicality?
they have direct associations without direct denotative ‘sense’
When you have a sound like ‘oh’ - what happens?
You have several ‘sonic possibilities jostling for attention’
What does Hortus conclusus mean?
enclosed garden
Who did Hortus conclusus refer to in Medieval and Renaissance poetry and what significance did this have?
title of the Virgin Mary
- derives from the Song of Songs
- represented Mary’s closed-off womb ie. untouched and protected from sin
List some of the emblematic objects associated with the Immaculate Conception
- enclosed garden
- tall cedar
- well of living waters
- olive tree
- fountain in the garden
- rosebush
In what 13th century allegorical dream vision poem was the setting of the garden as a place of seduction, erotic pursuit and love making introduced?
Roman de la Rose
What was a typical courtly love trope that arose as a result of the Roman de la Rose?
sensual indulgence in a garden was the typical courtly love trope ie. in Roman de la Rose there is the ‘Garden of Pleasure’
If someone is spying on someone else what might you say they are?
voyeuristic
Who was Charon and what significance does the obol coin have?
the obol was the coin placed on the mouth of a person before burial to give Charon so he would sail them across the Styx
Give some connotations of the colour blue
- sky and sea
- depth and stability
- trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, heaven
- calming effect
What are additional questions that can often supplement the question?
- is this the right word to use in reference to what is occurring here?
- how do we understand this word?
- how are you defining it and how do others define it?
Is a preface always written under the actual name of a speaker?
- no
- think of the ironic distance between Shelley and his preface in Alastor or in a more extreme case the paradoxical paratext of Martin Scriblerius
What kind of voices are present in a work?
‘authorial voice’
‘character’s voice’
‘narrator’s voice’
What was so special about a unicorn horn?
it was thought to render poison harmless
What animal is linked with Venus?
a rabbit
What significance does a palm often have?
victory over death and fruit bearing Christian life
What kind of twist does the fountain of youth often get?
An erotic twist
How would you summarise the historical relationship between verbal and visual modes?
scholarship has historically thought there to be
competition between the verbal and the visual modes, vying for artistic supremacy
How has scholarship shifted its view of the competition between verbal and the visual modes?
Dynamics between the modes have since, however, been thought of as an exchange or encounter
How do you feel about paragonal discourse surrounding ekphrasis?
that paragonal discourse limits ekphrastic study, to the extent that it has choked a scholarly
discourse focusing on how one mode can enhance the experience of the other
How might the verbal mode support the visual mode?
- the versatility of poetry might provide a wider conceptual landscape that it is profitable to approach a piece of visual art with
- the artistry of a piece of visual art might be acknowledged but then enhanced
Why should we hesitate before talking about the ‘scene’ of a painting?
- because we might want to talk about both the ‘bordered image and the extended image as it exists beyond the frame’
How might we phrase a particular initial discussion of something?
initial exposition of the nature of “suffering, etc.”
How might we phrase something being given additional respect with age?
is given elevated importance by the respect of age
How might we discuss/ look for relationships between ideas?
‘x is elevated above y’
‘x is given precedence above y’
‘x is contrasted to y’
‘author strikes/ establishes the distinction between x and y’
When a writer lifts figures out of their two-dimensional state in a painting, what becomes enhanced?
enhances a
viewer’s ability to empathise and imaginatively engage with them
If you want to push analysis further with the pondering over a metaphor, what do you want to say?
If the ‘x’ are a further metaphor for ‘y’
What did Icarus suffer from?
- ambition
- a hubristic inability to conceptualise failure/ limitations
What might a painting be doing?
prompting us towards an inward reflection on the nature of our viewership
When thinking about how a text draws your attention to one part or one theme and obfuscates another - what tools would you use?
- consider the tone, is it at odds with the content, is it designed to overlay or obscure the textual meaning with a particular atmosphere
- consider the syntax, what is emphasised? where does the rhythm lie?
Why might ‘stasis’ be an insufficient way of speaking about a painting?
- consider whether that is complicated in some way ie. whether there is a strange/ complicated form of stasis, whether an image is full of movement etc.
Due to the static nature of a painting, what can it only depict?
static nature of a visual representation means it can only depict a suspended moment in time
Instead of a paragonal framework between visual and verbal modes, how might we now discuss them?
- ekphrasis scholarship discusses the visual and verbal modes in dialogue, having an encounter, or perhaps in collaboration
Why does Krieger argue that poetry is favoured in the paragonal framework of visual and verb modes?
- poetry can incorporate the visual aspects of painting through language ie. like recreating spatial stasis and the illusion of organised simultaneity
How might you argue against Fowler’s idea that our experience of visual artworks is a process: an act of ‘reading’ that unfolds in time?
- the gaze around a picture is spatial, and is not bound by a definitive structure - whereas poetry must be read in a linear fashion
- *the way the mind builds the images are much more temporally complex than in a picture though
How does Stephen Cheeke argue that the poem supplements the painting?
Stephen Cheeke - the poem knows something or tells something that had been held back by the silent image.
Why might we have to rethink the idea that we get a completely unmediated view of a picture/ piece of visual artwork?
- we are being influenced both by general scanning habits and by particular cues in the picture acting on our attention
How can a piece of music create a spatial effect?
distances can be evoked by volumes, heights by tones and pitches etc.
How might we say that the female gaze contrasts to the male gaze?
- the female gaze achieves a more holistic, well-rounded view, instead of an anatomised dissection of form etc.
What problem does Felski see with the theological way we treat literature?
- we treat literature as in a sacred realm, different and distract from the one that readers inhabit
- we become distanced from the uses of literature to its readers
- how we identify with characters, or how we get aesthetic pleasure etc.
What is the key idea of James Phelan in ‘Teaching Narrative as Rhetoric: The Example of Time’s Arrow’?
Phelan’s key idea: teach narrative as rhetoric
Why is it fitting that we teach narrative as rhetoric?
- narrative is focused on an act of telling, with designs on an audience
- while numerous individual differences exist in our reading experiences, so does considerable overlap
- when readers have overlapping experiences, they are experiencing the effects of those designs
Phelan believes that there are two sets of audiences that receive a text - what two are these?
- flesh-and-blood, ‘us’ subjective reader
- ‘authorial audience’, the hypothetical reader for whom the narrative is designed
Give an example in which James Phelan’s distinction between textual and readerly dynamics becomes useful?
Narratives with a surprise ending, for example, are governed mutually by textual and readerly dynamics:
- the aim is to shock the authorial audience (readerly dynamics)
BUT: - the surprise arises from the text itself (textual dynamics)
When we consider ethics within a text, what layers of ethical implications might we consider?
ethics of the told = the ethical judgements we make about the characters and their interactions
ethics of the telling = the ethical judgements and values that we detect underlying how the narrative is communicated
ie. the reader might find something out about the ethical state of a character, but the narrator of the text himself might also find something out about the ethical state of a character - more destabilising across the text
In Freud’s 1914 work ‘Remembering, repeating and working through’ he coins the term ‘abreaction’ - what does it mean?
the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion (achieved by reliving the experience ie. through hypnosis or suggestion)
What are the three restrictions to the process of abreaction according to Freud?
- the patient is resistant to unlocking the forgotten circumstance (if there was no resistance then the circumstance would be remembered without difficulty)
- connections to the memory have to be uncovered from the childhood, might have been forgotten or non-conscious (dreams might uncover the deeply buried memories)
- without ‘remembering’, there is a repetition of the actions but towards the psychoanalyst
In Freud’s 1914 work ‘Remembering, repeating and working through’ he coins the term ‘transference’ - what does it mean?
part of the compulsion to repeat, acted towards the psychoanalyst
As part of the transference process, the resistance is overcome - what is then possible according to Freud?
the memories can be awakened and ‘remembered’
What does pace have to do with the overcoming of resistance in Freudian terms?
resistance has to be identified and then the patient is allowed to work through at their own pace
In Freud’s 1920-1922 work ‘Beyond the pleasure principle’, what is effect of unpleasure and how must it be relieved?
‘unpleasure’ creates a tension that then must be relieved by the release of pleasure (this excitable tension must be kept to a minimum)
Why should the pleasure principle become the reality principle?
the pleasure principle can be dangerous if over-indulged and the reality principle allows for a degree of toleration of the unpleasure
How might a patient deal with traumatic neurosis according to Freud and how might this relate to the Fort Da game?
in dreams etc., the patient is brought back to situations of their trauma to aid healing
Fort/ Da game - the child has to rehearse the renunciation of the instinctual satisfaction that must be endured when the mother leaves
(his rehearsal put him in an active position instead of passive tolerance)
What is the relationship between repression and the pleasure principle?
repression is caused by the pleasure principle, that resists the reliving of the unpleasant experiences - there must be an appeal to the reality principle in this case
What kind of resistance to psychoanalysis does Freud identify in his 1925 work, ‘The Resistances to psychoanalysis’?
psychoanalysis causes difficult emotions for people, similar to that caused by the discoveries of Darwin (who stripped down the barrier between men and beasts)
“psychological blow to men’s narcissism”
How does Freud define the concept ‘sublimation’?
psychologically repressed material is elevated into a ‘grander’ or more ‘noble’ form ie. sexual urges sublimated into deep longing or intense religious experience
In psychoanalytic terms, what purpose do dreams serve?
dreams are safety valves through which repressed fears, desires, feelings are given an outlet to the conscious mind
In psychoanalytic terms, when dreams provide an outlet for repressed fears, desires, feelings what is this called, give a definition?
‘dream work’ - real events/ desires are transformed into dream images
What are the two aspects of dream work?
displacement - one person/ event is represented by another created by association
condensation - a number of people/ events/ meanings are combined and represented as a single image in the dream
In psychoanalytic terms, what is the imago?
the imago is an unconscious prototype
it governs how the subject apprehends others