An Introducing to Literary Studies

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elements into the setting (see the italicized phrases in the following
passage) which will later re-surface in the perspectival narratives of
the respective mental reflections of the characters.
Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. [& ] For
having lived in Westminster how many years now? over
twenty one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or walking
at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity;
MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 27
an indiscernible pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart,
affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There!
Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour,
irrevocable. The leaden Circles dissolved in the air. Such fools
we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. [& ] in the triumph
and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane
overhead was what she loved; life; London-, this moment of
June. For it was the middle of June. The War was over.11
Virginia Woolf consciously borrows from the visual arts, attempting
to integrate formal elements of cubism into literary practice. The
simultaneous projection of different perspectives in the
characterization of a figure is a central concern of cubist art, which
also tries to represent an object as seen from a number of perspectives
in space simultaneously.
This example once again highlights the fact that the various levels
of fiction, including plot, setting, point of view, and characters, tend
to receive full meaning through their interaction with one another. In
the interpretation of literary texts, it is therefore important to see
these structural elements not as self-contained and isolated entities,
but rather as interdependent elements whose full meaning is only
revealed in the context of the other features and overall content of the
text. Ideally, the structural analysis of these levels in literary texts
should not stop at the mere description of these features, but rather
show to what ends they are employed.
2
POETRY
Poetry is one of the oldest genres in literary history. Its earliest
examples go back to ancient Greek literature. In spite of this long
tradition, it is harder to define than any other genre. Poetry is closely
related to the term lyric, which derives etymologically from the
Greek musical instrument lyra ( lyre or harp ) and points to an
origin in the sphere of music. In classical antiquity as well as in the
Middle Ages, minstrels recited poetry, accompanied by the lyre or
other musical instruments. The term poetry, however, goes back to
the Greek word poieo ( to make, to produce ), indicating that the
28 MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES
poet is the person who makes verse. Although etymology sheds light
on some of the aspects of the lyric and the poetic, it cannot offer a
satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon as such.
Most traditional attempts to define poetry juxtapose poetry with
prose. The majority of these definitions are limited to characteristics
such as verse, rhyme, and meter, which are traditionally regarded as
the classical elements that distinguish poetry from prose. These
criteria, however, cannot be applied to modern prose poetry or
experimental poetry. Explanations of the genre which combine poetic
language with linguistic elements other than rhyme and meter do
more justice to non-traditional forms such as free verse or prose poems.
These approaches examine as lyric phenomena the choice of words as
well as the use of syntactic structures and rhetorical figures. Although
these elements dominate in some forms of poetry, they also appear in
drama or fiction. In spite of the difficulties associated with the
definition of poetry, the above-mentioned heterogeneous criteria
outline the major qualities that are conventionally attributed to
poetry.
The genre of poetry is often subdivided into the two major
categories of narrative and lyric poetry. Narrative poetry includes
genres such as the epic long poem, the romance, and the ballad, which
tell stories with clearly developed, structured plots (see Chapter 2,
�1: Fiction). The shorter lyric poetry, the focus of the following
comments, is mainly concerned with one event, impression, or idea.
Some of the precursors of modern poetry can be found in Old
English riddles and charms. These cultic and magic texts, for example
the following charm Against a Wen , which is supposed to help to
get rid of boils, seem strange today, but were common in that period.
Wen, wen, little wen,
here you must not build, here have no abode,
but you must go north to the nearby hill
where, poor wretch, you have a brother.
He will lay a leaf at your head.
Under the paw of the wolf, under the eagle s wing,
under the claw of the eagle, may you ever decline!
Shrink like coal on the hearth!
MAJOR GENRES IN TEXTUAL STUDIES 29
Wizen like filth on the wall!
Become as small as a grain of linseed,
and far smaller than a hand-worm s hip-bone and so very small
that you are at last nothing at all.12
These religious or magical charms form the beginning of many
national literatures. It has already been mentioned in the discussion of
the primordial roots of literature that the magical-cultic dimension
contributed decisively to the preservation of texts in early cultural
history.
The next step in poetic expression abandons these overtly cultic
origins and uses music as a medium, as for example the Middle
English anonymous Cuckoo Song (c. 1250), which could be
accompanied by an instrument.
Cuccu Cuckoo
Summer is icumen in, Summer has come,
Lhude sing, cuccu! Sing loud, cuckoo!
Groweth sed and bloweth med The seed grows and the meadow
blossoms,
And springth the wode nu; And the wood springs;
Sing cuccu! Sing, cuckoo!13
In this Middle English example, the onomatopoeia (verbal
imitation of natural sounds) of the cuckoo s calling is clearly audible.
The acoustic dimension is a typical feature of poetry, one which
continues in modern pop songs. Singers like Bob Dylan (1941 ) are
often counted among the poets of the late 1950s and 1960s because the
lyrics of their songs are comparable with poems.
In the Old English period, ancient forms of poetry such as the
elegy, which laments the death of a dear person, were newly adapted.
Thomas Gray s (1716 71) Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard
(1751) or Walt Whitman s (1819 92) When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom d (1865 66) are examples from later periods. The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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