Text Analysis and History

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Text Analysis and History

• Session Four Imagery

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Agenda

• Week 42 NO CLASS just work for you!
• The prose fiction module
• An introduction to imagery, symbol and related
  concepts in an historical context
• Group work imagery and symbolism in A White
  Heron
• Group presentations and general discussion

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The prose fiction module

• Motif and theme
• Story and plot, character and characterisation
• Point of view
• Imagery
• General summary Toni Morrison, Recitatif
• Evaluation Essay assignment (for the portfolio)

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Imagery, symbol and related concepts in the
context of history Imagery

• Broadest def.
• All the objects and qualities of sense perception
• Literal descriptions
• Allusions
• The vehicles of similes and metaphors
• motif

• 2. Broad def.
• Specific descriptions of visible objects and
  scenes
• 2. motif
• 3. Narrow def.
• Figurative language the vehicles of metaphors
  and similes ( 1.3)

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An Example Imagery broad senses

• Charlie Stove waited until he heard his mother
  snore before he got out of bed. Even then he
  moved with caution and tiptoed to the window. The
  front of the house was irregular, so that it was
  possible to see a light burning in his mothers
  room. But now all the windows were dark. A
  search-light passed across the sky, lighting the
  banks of cloud and probing the dark deep spaces
  between, seeking enemy airships. The wind blew
  from the sea, and Charlie Stowe could hear behind
  his mothers snores the beating of the waves. A
  draught through the crack in the window-frame
  stirred his night-shirt. Charlie Stowe was
  frightened. (Graham Greene, I Spy, p. 534)

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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) simile and metaphor

• Simile a statement of similarity
• Metaphor a statement of identity
• The tenor the subject
• The vehicle the metaphorical term itself
• My love is like a red, red rose (Robert Burns)

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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) simile and metaphor

• Theres a lipstick sunset smeared across the
  August sky (John Hiatt)
• Let us go, then, you and I when the evening is
  spread out against the sky like a patient
  etherised upon a table (T.S. Eliot, The Love
  Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
• He smiled like an open piano (Graham Greene)

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An Example simile

• When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed
  upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his
  father had left the house again so late at night
  and who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept
  him for a little while awake. It was as if a
  familiar photograph had stepped from the frame to
  reproach him with neglect. He remembered how his
  father had held tight to his collar and fortified
  himself with proverbs, and he thought for the
  first time that, while his mother was boisterous
  and kindly, his father was very like himself,
  doing things in the dark which frightened him.
  (Graham Green, I Spy, p. 537)

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William Blake, The Sick Rose (1794) literal or
metaphorical rose?

• O Rose, thou art sick.The invisible worm,That
  flies in the nightIn the howling storm
• Has found out thy bedOf crimson joyAnd his
  dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.

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William Blake, The Sick Rose (1794)
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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol

• Public symbols (cultural specific signification
  and value)
• Private symbols (writer specific signification
  and value

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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol
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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol
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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol
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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol
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Imagery, symbol and (cont.) symbol
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James Joyce, The Dead

• He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying
  to catch the air that the voice was singing and
  gazing up at his wife. There was grace and
  mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol
  of something. He asked himself what is a woman
  standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening
  to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a
  painter, he would paint her in that attitude. Her
  blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her
  hair against the darkness and the dark panels of
  her skirt would show off the light ones. (p. 2192)

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James Joyce, The Dead

• A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to
  the window. It had begun to snow again. He
  watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
  falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time
  had come for him to set out on his journey
  westward. Yes, the newspapers were right snow
  was general all over Ireland. It was falling on
  every part of the dark central plain, on the
  treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of
  Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into
  the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling,
  too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on
  the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay
  thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and
  headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on
  the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he
  heard the snow falling faintly through the
  universe and faintly falling, like the descent of
  their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

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Imagery, symbol and (cont.)

• Modernism