Class Notes: Week 1 (9/13/10-9/17/10)

Week 0 (9/7/10-9/10/10):

close reading:

• Read and analyze every word!
• Read for diction, style, structure, figurative language, themes, etc.
• Annotate, annotate, annotate!
• a good source: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html

close reading texts annotated:

• Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (translated by David Wyllie):Gregor Samsa wakes up from a dream and is transformed into some sort of bug. His life as a traveling salesman is on the verge of a drastic change.
• excerpt from “Song of Myself” (Leaves of Grass) by Walt Whitman: strong commentary on the necessity of democracy and freedom
• Chapter One of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth can’t have Christmas presents because their family is very poor. Their father is off somewhere serving the army.
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Alice follows a strange rabbit with a pocket watch and goes down the rabbit hole.

Week 1 (9/13/10-9/17/10):

critical approaches:

• http://www.cla.purdue.edu/blackmon/102cs2001/critical.html

Perrine’s:

poetry: language condensed to artistic effect

good literature is like the vast wilderness: can’t tame it, no one meaning, there may NOT be an answer

if it takes more time to read than explain->prose-e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

if it takes less time to read than explain->poetry-e.g. “The Eagle” (Tennyson)

poems read:

• “Kitchenette Building” (Gwendolyn Brooks)
• “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” (William Carlos Williams)
• “Naming of Parts” (Henry Reed)

denotation: dictionary meaning or meanings of the word

connotation: what the word suggests beyond what it expresses: its overtones of meaning

imagery: representation through language of sense experience

diction: CHOICE of words=extremely important

• gaunt->skinny-> thin-> slender-> svelte (thin=middle; moving towards “gaunt” is pejorative; moving towards “svelte” is honorific)

concreteness versus abstraction:How specific is the naming?

• clothes->pants->jeans->Levis (more concrete in the direction of “Levis”)
• specificity isn’t always good
• level changes depending on desired effect

precision: Is it exactly the right word?

• again, how much depends on desired effect and appropriateness

elevation versus colloquialism

• continuum: slang (margins of society)->colloquial language->elevated diction->epic diction (historic moments)
• example of epic diction=Homer’s works or John Milton’s Paradise Lost (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/)

dialect, jargon (technical language), regionalisms(“milk” versus “melk”), etc.

• e.g.-scuppernong-Why not just grape? (Harper Lee)
• regional humor, expressions

Overall Connections:

• This week we basically applied the concepts of “close reading,” which we learned in the previous week. Each word matters, so we are examining diction very closely.
• Edith Hamilton’s Mythology as well as the Bibletie directly into our critical approach wiki, which focuses on the archetypal and mythological approach.
• We are also applying close reading in AP Government. We are examining John Locke’s treatises and the Declaration of Independence for similarities, especially similarities between exact phrases.