Disciplina

Literatura em Lngua Inglesa III

Coordenador da Disciplina

Prof Prof. Salete Nunes

Edio 2014.1

Copyright 2010. Todos os direitos reservados desta edio ao Instituto UFC Virtual. Nenhuma parte deste material poder ser reproduzida, transmitida e gravada por qualquer meio eletrnico, por fotocpia e outros, sem a prvia autorizao, por escrito, dos autores. Crditos desta disciplina Coordenao Coordenador UAB Prof. Mauro Pequeno Coordenador Adjunto UAB Prof. Henrique Pequeno Coordenador do Curso Prof. Smia Alves Carvalho Coordenador de Tutoria Prof. Joo Tobias Lima Sales Coordenador da Disciplina Prof. Salete Nunes Contedo Autor da Disciplina Prof. Dolores Aronovich Aguero Setor TecnologiasDigitais - STD Coordenador do Setor Prof. Henrique Sergio Lima Pequeno Centro de Produo I - (Material Didtico) Gerente: Ndia Maria Barone Subgerente: Paulo Andr Lima / Jos Andr Loureiro Transio Didtica Dayse Martins Pereira Elen Cristina S. Bezerra Eliclia Lima Gomes Enoe Cristina Amorim Ftima Silva e Souza Jos Adriano de Oliveira Karla Colares Kamille de Oliveira Formatao Camilo Cavalcante Ccero Giovany Elilia Rocha Emerson Mendes Oliveira Francisco Ribeiro Givanildo Pereira Sued de Deus Stephan Capistrano Programao Andrei Bosco Damis Iuri Garcia Publicao Joo Ciro Saraiva Design, Impresso e 3D Andr Lima Vieira Eduardo Ferreira Fred Lima Gleilson dos Santos Iranilson Pereira Luiz Fernando Soares Marllon Lima Onofre Paiva

Gerentes Audiovisual: Andra Pinheiro Desenvolvimento: Wellington Wagner Sarmento Suporte: Paulo de Tarso Cavalcante

Sumrio
Aula 01: Introduction to Poetry ............................................................................................................... 01 Tpico 01:Introduction to poetry ........................................................................................................... 01 Aula 02: Early Poetry ............................................................................................................................... 18 Tpico 01: Medieval poetry ................................................................................................................... 18 Tpico 02: Elizabethan/Renaissance poetry (1450-1670) ..................................................................... 23 Aula 03: Romantic Poetry ........................................................................................................................ 33 Tpico 01: British romanticism (1775-1830)......................................................................................... 33 Tpico 02: American romanticism (1840-1864) .................................................................................... 43 Aula 04: Before Modernism ..................................................................................................................... 50 Tpico 01: Victorian poetry (1830-1901) .............................................................................................. 50 Tpico 02: Celtic Twilight (1885-1939) ................................................................................................ 61 Aula 05: Breaking Traditions .................................................................................................................. 66 Tpico 01: Modernism (1901-1945) ...................................................................................................... 66 Tpico 02: Harlem Renassaince (1918-1939) ........................................................................................ 74 Aula 06: Recent Poetry ............................................................................................................................. 86 Tpico 01: Postmodernism (1945-1989)................................................................................................ 86 Tpico 02: Conteporary or global poetry (1989-) ............................................................................... 100

LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 01: INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
TPIC 01: INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

MULTIMDIA
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PALAVRA DA COORDENADORA DA DISCIPLINA DE LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

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Ol, pessoal Sou a Salete Nunes e irei neste semestre coordenar a disciplina Literatura em Lngua Inglesa III. O material com o qual iremos trabalhar de autoria da professora Dolores Aronovich e apresenta um panorama amplo e muito bem estruturado da poesia em lngua inglesa. Esta uma disciplina com proposta de leitura de muitos poemas, dos mais variados estilos e autores, englobando no apenas poetas ingleses e americanos, mas tambm de outros pases de lngua inglesa. A disciplina est estruturada em seis unidades. A primeira unidade constitui-se uma introduo poesia em lngua inglesa. So apresentadas diversas definies, assim como parmetros e estratgias de anlise do poema e um glossrio, ao qual voc poder retornar sempre que surgir alguma necessidade de esclarecimento de termos. A partir da segunda unidade, seguiremos um percurso

cronolgico da produo potica em lngua inglesa, comeando no perodo medieval e expandindo at a poca contempornea.
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Dessa forma, a segunda unidade sobre a poesia medieval, englobando o perodo de mais ou menos o ano 1000 a 1450, passando em seguida para a poesia renascentista, explorando um perodo que se estende at mais ou menos 1670. Aqui est includa a poca elisabetana, que poca de Shakespeare, por exemplo. o momento para se estudar alguns dos 154 sonetos do bardo ingls. Na terceira unidade, damos um salto de um pouco mais de um sculo para comearmos com o Romantismo ingls, no final do sculo XVIII. Estudaremos alguns dos renomados poetas romnticos como Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley e Keats. Sero tambm estudados alguns poetas do Romantismo americano. A quarta unidade explora dois outros perodos, a Era Vitoriana, que abrange principalmente a 2 metade do sculo XIX e o Movimento Irlands, tambm conhecido Celtic Twilight, que se estende do final do sculo XIX at o final da dcada de 1930. Estudaremos aqui um dos principais poetas irlandeses, que William ButlerYeats. A quinta unidade aborda o Modernismo na poesia, que engloba a primeira metade do sculo XX, at o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, em 1945. Um outro movimento em relevo nesta unidade a Renascena do Harlem, ou Renascena Negra, que tem como um de seus principais representantes o poeta Langston Hughes. A sexta unidade explora a poesia que considerada ps-moderna, que a poesia produzida na segunda metade do sculo XX e que aos poucos vai se entrelaando como a poesia contempornea, do final do sculo XX e desses primeiros anos do sculo XXI. a poca das mltiplas tendncias e de estilos os mais diversos. a poca das mltiplas vozes, dos poetas que ecoam as vozes das minorias em diferentes pases de lngua inglesa, incluindo-se frica do Sul, ndia e pases do Caribe, por exemplo. Enfim, esperamos que vocs possam apreciar a leitura dos poemas e ao mesmo tempo exercitar o processo de anlise mais formal desse gnero que tanto nos encanta. Afinal de contas, como disse Robert Frost, poeta americano, a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Um semestre bem potico pra vocs

In this course we will look at several poems written originally in English throughout the ages, going over important literary movements. We must keep in mind that all divisions are arbitrary, but, even so, the course will be divided as follows:
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Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form in literature. It needs to say much in a few words. According to Laurence Perrine, it has intellectual, sensual (which appeals to all senses), emotional, and imaginative dimensions (523). It is difficult to define the origins of poetry, but it is assumed that the earliest poetry comes from oral tradition, before any writing system was created. Poetry is different from prose because of its sound and rhythm. It is making something common special. Fill up this glass would be prose. But Fill up this tree with rain is poetry. Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, however, says in one of his witty essays: The only thing poetry has always been good for is to make children hate school and jump with joy the day they no longer have to look at another poem. The whole world is in complete agreement on that subject. No one in their right mind ever reads poetry. Even among the literary theorists nowadays, it is fashionable to feel superior to all literature and especially poetry (32). Other poets agree. Marianne Moore starts one of her poems by saying about poetry: I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle (fiddle is fraud, and using the fingers to play the violin). On the following line she summarizes her passion for poetry: Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in / it, after all, a place for the genuine. Poetry, thus, is one element that humanizes and touches us, but we cannot admire what we cannot understand. Poetry is language in which every component element word and word order, sound and pause, image and echo is significant [...]. Poetry is language that always means more. Its elements are figures, and poetry itself is a language of figures, in which each component can potentially open toward new meanings, levels, dimensions, connections, or resonances. Poetry does this through its careful, intricate pattern of words. It offers language as highly organized as language can be. It is language so highly patterned that there is, ideally, a reason or purpose (or rather,
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many) for each and every word put into a poem. No word is idle or accidental. Each word has a specific place within an overarching pattern. Together they create meaningful and beautiful designs. (Wolosky 3). Hirsch says that poetry is a form of necessary speech (xii). Paul Celan makes a comparison, describing poetry as a message in a bottle. You find a bottle on the beach, and inside there is a note. You read it, and though it was not written directly to you, it is yours now. You must decide how to decipher it, and how to respond to it (Hirsch 1-2). Always consider the circumstances in which the poem is situated. Who is speaking, and to whom? Consider the poem's dimension. Its greatest relevance is in the idea transmitted, in the force of its words, or in its rhythm? How do the poetic elements (such as the rhyme, meter, alliteration) affect its message? How do the metaphors in the poem affect it? Whenever possible, try to reread the poem several times, and in each time focus on a specific element. For instance, read it focusing on its language. Reread it thinking of its ideas. Read it once again, now checking its meter. In order to understand and appreciate poetry, Perrine suggests reading the poem more than once, looking up words you don't understand, reading the poem out loud, savoring every word, paying attention to what the poem says, and reading the poem to your friends. This is what Emily Dickinson, one the greatest poets in the English language, says about poetry: If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know. Is there any other way (qtd. in Hirsch 355). Thus, as Hirsch points out, Reading poetry is a way of connecting through the medium of language more deeply with yourself even as you connect more deeply with another. The poem delivers on our spiritual lives precisely because it simultaneously gives us the gift of intimacy and interiority, privacy and participation (4-5). For Paul Valry, The power of verse is derived from an indefinable harmony between what it says and what it is. Indefinable is essential to the definition (qtd in Hirsch xi). However, even if poetry is indefinable, we still can try to define some of its elements. Perrine says: Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages, and in all countries, poetry has been written and eagerly read and listened to by all kinds and conditions of people [...]. Why? First, because it has given pleasure. People have read it or listened to it or recited it because they liked it, because it gave them enjoyment. But this is not the whole answer. Poetry [...] has been regarded as something central to existence, something having unique value to the fully realized life, something that we are better off for having and spiritually impoverished without. [...] Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. (517)
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Emily Dickinson Fonte [2]

TIPS
If you don't know how to read poetry aloud, learn. And the best way to learn is hearing poets reciting their own work. Listen (and read) Canadian Margaret Atwood (1939-) reciting her Siren Song (1976): http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=98 [3] She gives a brief explanation of what siren songs are, and then proceeds to read. Notice how she changes her tone of voice. Now listen to Jamaican poet James Berry (1927-) recite his My Arrival (1995), about his birth: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=112 [4] When there is a broken line but without any punctuation, you should not treat it like a full stop, but rather give it a slight pause. For instance, read this poem by American Ogden Nash aloud: A Word to Husbands (1964) To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, Whenever youre wrong, admit it; Whenever youre right, shut up.

OBSERVATION
Notice that there is no punctuation between the first and second lines. How do you read it, then? The answer is: with a very brief pause. But the end of line 2 has a comma, and the end of line 3, a semicolon. Do you read these lines differently from the first one? Read the poem aloud again, until you find its rhythm. Make no mistake: reading poetry is like reading in general. The more you read, the better you get at it. This is the same with poetry. Find time to practice. This site http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/search.do? method=form&searchTerm=short [5] has many short poems that you can read and listen to at the same time. There are three main classes of poetry: lyrical, narrative, and dramatic.
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Lyrical poetry Lyrical poetry is the one that expresses the feelings and/or the philosophical ideas of the author. Four kinds of lyrical poetry can be
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found: the sonnet (a fourteen-line poem written in the iambic meter), the ode (an irregular form used to express tributes), the elegy (a form that varies in length but deals with the subject of death), and the song (the most popular and variable in form, set to music). Lyric poems are usually short, personal poems which communicate emotion or mood, more than experience. The lyric poem walks the line between speaking and singing (Hirsch 10). Narrative poetry Narrative poetry tells a story, so it consists of the epic (a long poem dealing with deeds of a hero and/or of a people, as for example Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy; Beowulf and Milton's Paradise Lost in English), and the ballad (short or long songs, usually containing refrains, as in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). Dramatic poetry Dramatic poetry consists of plays written in verse form, as most of Shakespeare's production (although there are several prose moments in his plays).

In many societies there were two main kinds of oral narrative poetry, epic and ballad. Whereas the epic is much longer, the ballad contains stanzas (Hirsch 211). For Hirsch, most poems have both narrative and lyrical values: the impulse to tell a story, the impulse to sing. These impulses are not necessarily in harmony with each other. The point of narrative is to strengthen the bonds of consequence, the course of narrative is movement. [...] The goal of the lyric, on the other hand, is often to dramatize intense states of feeling. [...] Poems are lyrical precisely because they interrupt or interfere with narrative (Hirsch 242). An ode is a celebratory poem, a poem of admiration. In European literature it arrived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the rediscovery of classical forms. The ode always promises a certain elevated style. It reclaims its connection to the ancients. And it is haunted by the fact that the form once meant a poem sung to music (Hirsch 219). He continues: The writer of odes walks a tightrope, balancing a criticism of society with an affirmation of the vatic vocation of the poem who speaks to deep-lying individual powers within all of us. [...] The writer of modern odes tends to stand somewhere between complete isolation and mystic communion (221). In this ode, Robert Pinsky (American, 1940) celebrates television. Click here Ode to Television

Not a "window on the world" But as we call you, A box a tube Terrarium of dreams and wonders. Coffer of shades, ordained Cotillion of phosphors Or liquid crystal Homey miracle, tub Of acquiescence, vein of defiance. Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes Raster dance, Quick one, little thief, escort Of the dying and comfort of the sick, In a blue glow my father and little sister sat Snuggled in one chair watching you Their wife and mother was sick in the head I scorned you and them as I scorned so much Now I like you best in a hotel room, Maybe minutes Before I have to face an audience: behind The doors of the armoire, box Within a boxTom & Jerry, or also brilliant And reassuring, Oprah Winfrey. Thank you, for I watched, I watched Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not Through knowledge but imagination, His quickness, and Thank You, I watched live Jackie Robinson stealing Home, the imageO strung shellenduring Fleeter than light like these words we Remember in, they too winged At the helmet and ankles.

LOOKING UP CLOSE
Is Pinsky just celebrating TV, or can you find some criticism too? Does this look like an ode to you? We should never underestimate the capacity for tenderness that poetry opens with us (Hirsch 3). Here is a two-line poem by American icon Walt Whitman (1819-1892), whom you will see more of in the American Romanticism section: Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?
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Who is speaking? To whom? In what occasion? When and where does it take place? Can you state the main idea in one sentence? What is the tone? What is its diction? (choice of words). Hirsch (15) points out to the division into three classes that depends on who is speaking:
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A short glossary of literary terms

ALLEGORY

- symbolic embodiment of generalizations intended to reflect

experience
ALLITERATION- repetition of consonant sounds ALLUSION- reference to something. To refer to indirectly ANACHRONISM- chronologically out of place, out of time ANALOGY a close comparison between two things

repetition of a word or phrase. Ex: Water, water everywhere (Coleridge)

ANAPHORA

a digression in discourse, or addressing something (O love!, Oh, flowers!) ASSONANCE - repetition of vowel sounds
BALLAD- a song-like narrative poem BLANK VERSE - verse consisting of unrhymed iambic lines CAESURA- a pause in phrasing a metrical line, a cutting off COUPLET

APOSTROPHE-

- two successive lines of poetry that rhyme

DICTION word choice DISSONANCE an unpleasant combination of sounds ELEGY a poem of lamentation or sorrow after a person's death ENJAMBMENT

continuing a phrase from one line to the other without

punctuation
EUPHEMISM

using a mild, vague word to replace an offensive one. Ex:

at rest for dead - any person or thing that, by contrast, enhances the characteristics of another
FOIL

- a metric unit consisting of a stressed or unstressed syllable or syllables FORESHADOWING - giving hints about what will follow
FOOT

- verse wihtout a conventional metrical pattern and with an irregular rhyme, or none
FREE VERSE IMAGERY

- diction conveying poetic images. Something that is directly

associated with something else (ex: purity/virginity) INTERNAL RHYME - rhyme inside the line, as in we really DO love YOU
LOCAL COLOR

- description (with feelings) of environment and setting

LYRICS the words to a song

like or as METER rhythm, or the pattern repetition of strong and weak stresses in a line of verse
METONYMY OR SYNEDOCHE

METAPHOR - comparison not using

a part standing for the whole (as in crown

used to mean monarchy)

NARRATIVE POETRY - poems that tell a story ONOMATOPEIA - words that imitate sounds PARADOX

- a seemingly contradictory statement that may nevertheless be

true. Contradiction PARODY a poem that imitates or mocks another poem, written in a similar style PATHOS - a quality in sth or someone that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, sorrow PERSONIFICATION - giving an inanimate object human qualities POINT OF VIEW - selection of a narrative voice PROSE POETRY when the musical, rhythmic and symbolic characteristics of poetry are used in prose
RHYME repetition of the same or similar sounds (end rhyme, internal rhyme, slant rhyme) RHYME SCHEME - pattern of end rhyme SCANSION - analysis of rhythm in poetry SIMILE - comparison of unlike things using SLANT RHYME

like or as also called half or near rhyme. Rhyme that is inexact, as

in heart and card SPEAKER the imaginary person who speaks the words in a poem. Not the author! STANZA - a division in poetry emphasis given to a syllable or to a word in a line SYMBOL something standing for something else
STRESS TONE the speaker's attitude (sad, sincere, upset)

Let us follow Hirsch's adivce and learn about poetry from the poem (xii). Read the following poem by American modernist William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): The Young Housewife (1916) At ten A.M. the young housewife moves about in negligee behind
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the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car. Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf. The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

REFLECTION
Let us try to analyze the poem: a tentative interpretation of this poem is that the house belongs to the wife's husband, the car belongs to the speaker (a man passing by, a solitary watcher), so she herself seems to have very little. Property belongs to others, not to her. A car also shows mobility, something she lacks. Notice the opposition between the negligee, which is transparent, and the wooden walls. Why are there so many comparisons to leaves? First, a fallen leaf no longer belongs to a tree. It may also be a reference to a fallen woman, to sin, and to fading beauty. The speaker passes on top of the leaves. Can he be a stalker? Maybe he passes in front of her house every day, and perhaps his passing over the drying leaves suggests that someday he expects her to surrender. As the leaves make a crackling sound, he is noticed by the woman, who already knew she was being observed (she arranges her hair), and then he smiles and bows. Everything suggests that he will be back. Now let us look at how Edward Hirsch, a poet, analyzes Elizabeth Bishop's (American, 1911-1979) One Art. First read the poem:

One Art (1976) The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
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next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster. Hirsch calls the poem an instruction manual on loss, and points out that it is written in blank verse, and that the vocabulary is natural sounding and deceptively informal. He calls atttention to the rhyme in the first and third lines, which become a kind of refrain. Besides the multisyllabic rhymes (master and disaster) and the one-syllable rhymes (spent and meant), there are also half-rhymes, such as fluster and master. A Dickinsonian characteristic that Bishop adopted, according to Hirsch, is that she combines an enjambled line with an end-stopped one (as in the fourth stanza, And look! my last, or / next-to-last, of three loed houses went). This creates a sense of qualification, of hesitating forward movement and momentary rest (33). Although the poem seems simple, Bishop took six months and seventeen drafts to write it. Hirsch notices that Bishop starts with small losses and keeps moving to bigger ones. Losing is a progress, and the main key is in the third stanza (Then practice losing faster, losing faster). Losing places and names is not chaotic, but she changes tone when she mentions losing something important, as her mother's watch. For Hirsch, when Bishop uses And look!, she is making the reader a confidant. But only in the fifteenth line, after losing cities, rivers, and a continent, does the poet confess losing something she really misses, although it wasn't a disaster. Thus, at the same time that Bishop is increasing the importance of her losses, she is also reminding us that they were not catastrophic, using defense mechanisms. However, in the last stanza, Hirsch says, the lyric becomes a love poem (35). First Bishop, or the speaker in the poem, talks to her lover directly (Even losing you), then she pulls back. And finally she admits that losing her lover may look like disaster. For Hirsch, this is the first acknowledgment, after everything that has come before, that this final loss actually feels disastrous (36). By telling herself to Write it and repeating the word like, Bishop seems to be forcing an admission. Hirsch states: The process of recognition becomes the emotional discovery of this poem, the greater part of writing as well as reading it. The reader overhears what the poet is forcing herself to acknowledge. Thus the lyric psychologically enacts the experience of coming to terms with a universe of loss (36).

OBSERVATION

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Always pay attention to diction, which is the selection of an individual word, related to the author's style is the word formal or informal, for instance? The diction in poetry changed entirely during the 19th century, and, according to Fowler, this has been a change for the best (269). Diction has been, again and again, a revolutionary force in poetry. Thus, William Wordsworth announced his Romanticist revolution in his 'Preface to the Lyrical Ballads' as 'a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation.' Ezra Pound launched his Modernist experiments by denouncing the nineteenth century as a 'rather blurry, messy sort of period' and calling for a poetic idiom that would 'be harder and saner' (Wolosky 7). When you read poems, pay attention to the language chosen by the author. Why does s/he pick that specific word and not another? Briefly analyze Bishop's diction in One Art. She may have chosen some words because they rhyme (master / disaster / vaster), but some words are unnecessary to the rhyme scheme. So why does she use them? For instance, how is the choice of the word lovely in line 13 meaningful? Hirsch says that, when the Irish poet Mebdh McGuckian writes You smell of time as a Bible smells of thumbs, what he does is compare the smell of someone getting older to the odor of a Bible that has been paged through several fingers over the years (308). Bishop only uses one simile in One Art, exactly in the last line. Although similes and metaphors are similar, Hirsch points out some differences: Metaphor asserts an identity. It says 'A poem is a meteor' (Wallace Stevens); it says A equals B and in doing so relies on condensation and compression. By contrast, the simile is a form of analogical thinking. Notice the similes in this poem by Scottish Robert Burns (17591796): My love is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June: My love is like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune The poet is not saying that love is a red rose, but rather, that love is like a red rose. The comparison is not limited to the red rose. Similes, thus, have a more digressive quality (Hirsch 308-9). For him, Metaphor works by condensation and compression, simile by discursiveness and digression (289). Metonymy is a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with something else related to it. We write Hirsch says, instead of writing that In How to Read a Poem it is written that. Saying the heart to mean emotions is another example. Synecdoche is the most common king of metonymy. It replaces the whole for a part, as in hired hand to mean worker (Hirsch 292).

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As you read the following poem, think about when you first noticed you were a boy/girl, that you were one of them, part of the human race. What was your epiphany? How can the soul be both found and lost? Here is Elizabeth Bishop's discovery: click here (Visite a aula online para realizar download deste arquivo.).
OBSERVATION

How does the poem begin? It establishes a place (a dentist's office in Worcester, Massachusetts, during winter). While the speaker is waiting for her aunt in a room with strangers, she reads an issue of National Geographic. The photographs of nature disturb her, and the local inhabitants are part of that nature. What terrifies her most of all, apparently, are the naked women with their exposed breasts. She looks at the cover to fix the date, and then, from inside (inside where? From the other room or from inside herself?), comes an oh! of pain. Why do you think she is feeling pain? Now she is one with her aunt. She realizes she is not different from her foolish aunt. She is not yet seven years old but she begins to notice that she is part of the human race and, perhaps more importantly, of the female sex. We know this is an important moment for her because she tells us that nothing as stange had ever happened, or would ever happen. After this realization, the place becomes unbearable (too bright and too hot). But then she is back in the world where it is winter and it gets dark early. The date on the cover of the magazine is the same; the First World War goes on. Hirsch says, In one sense, nothing has changed, but in another sense, for her, everything has changed. She has both lost and reconstituted herself. She returns to the outer dark where it is still February 5 with a painful self-awareness and knowledge of human identity (241-2). Can you compare this poem, which also talks of losses, with One Art? Do not expect poetry to be always beautiful, or to pass a moral message. Even if poetry does that sometimes, it is not something it has to do. Perrine says that a poet always seeks to find the most meaningful word, which is not necessarily the most beautiful (549). Poetry, after all, does not have to elevate us. For instance, read this poem by American Langston Hughes (1902 -1967): Dream Deferred What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
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Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

REQUIRED STOP
Notice that he uses several similes here. All the comparisons using like are similes. Therefore, a dream deferred is compared to a raisin (uvapassa) that dries up in the sun, to a sore (an open wound) that festers (generates pus) and runs, to rotten meat that stinks, to syrupy sweet that crusts (becomes hard), and to a heavy load that sags (declines with weight). None of those are images of beauty. On the contrary, rotten meat and festering sores do not elevate our spirits at all. Nevertheless, the author uses strong and unforgettable imagery to talk about dreams that are postponed, and that may never happen. If we know that Hughes was a black poet living in a segregated nation, we may feel he is referring to dreams that black people may have dreams that only started igniting the hope of being fulfilled in the end of the 1960s, when protests of African Americans started being taken seriously. However, seeing this sadness and revolt in the poem would be a matter of interpretation. It would be a mistake to look at this possible theme as if the poem were a sermon. As Perrine points out, Readers who always look in poetry for some lesson, message, or noble truth about life are bound to be disappointed. Moral-hunters see poetry as a kind of sugarcoated pill a wholesome truth or lesson made palatable by being put into pretty words. What they are really after is a sermon not a poem, but something inspirational (521). Though poetry can be inspiring, as Hughes exemplifies, it is not part of its mission statement to be so. Perrine offers a series of general guidelines than can be helpful in analyzing a poem: click here 1. Who is the speaker? What kind of a person is s/he? 2. To whom is s/he speaking? What kind of person is s/he? 3. What is the occasion? 4. What is the setting in time (hour, season, century, etc)? 5. What is the setting in place (indoors or out, city or country, land or sea, region, country, hemisphere, etc)? 6. What is the central purpose of the poem? 7. State the central idea or theme of the poem in a sentence. 8. Discuss the tone of the poem. How is it achieved? 9. a) Outline the poem so as to show its structure and development, or b) Summarize the events of the poem. 10. Paraphrase the poem. [Describe the poem in your own words through prose, not verse] 11. Discuss the diction of the poem. Point out words that are particularly
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well chosen and explain why. 12. Discuss the imagery of the poem. What kinds of imagery are used? 13. Point out examples of metaphor, simile, personification, and metonymy and explain their appropriateness. 14. Point out and explain any symbols. If the poem is allegorical, explain the allegory. 15. Point out and explain examples of paradox, overstatement [or hyperbole], understatement, and irony. What is their function? 16. Point out and explain any allusions. What is their function? 17. Point out significant examples of sound repetition and explain their function. 18. What is the meter of the poem? 19. Discuss the adaptation of sound to sense. [How the sound and rhythm of the poem help to create senses. For example, as the poet Sappho says, Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear. Is the sound in that specific poem delicious to hear? Does this affect the meaning?] 20. Describe the form or pattern of the poem. 21. Criticize and evaluate the poem.

TIPS
In this course, you will read many poems, and the vast majority of this reading you will do by yourself. If you want to learn poetry, you should read each poem aloud, and read it more than once, always looking for something different at each new reading. For instance:
the first time you read a poem you may look for meaning; the second time, for rhythm and form; and the third time, for how this form interferes with the poem's meaning.

This will be the basis of your interpretation. Reading each poem three or more times seems like a lot of work, but this is the reason most poems adopted here are short. Also, they are exciting, full of emotion. Make an effort to love poetry: try not to just study the poem, but also to feel it.
What does it say to you? To your heart? To your soul? How does it touch you?

As Hirsch says, Poetry puts a spell on words (12). What spell does it put on you?

REFLECTION
As you analyze the poems in the following sections, return to this unit so that you can look for the figures of speech here and at the guidelines suggested by Perrine. Also, try to analyze the context in which each poem was written. What was happening at the time and place the poem was written?

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FORUM
Hirsch says about poetry, It plunges me into the depths (and poetry is the literature of depths) and gives a tremendous sense of another world growing within (9).
Is poetry the same for you? How do you experience poetry? Are you a habitual reader or writer of poetry? Do you agree that the kind of experience the kind of knowledge one gets from poetry cannot be duplicated elsewhere (Hirsch 6)? Robert Frost believes that a poem "begins in delight and ends in wisdom". Do you agree? Can you think of poems to back up your opinion? For Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry is something that cannot be defined without oversimplifying it. It should be like attempting to define the color yellow, love, that fall of leaves in autumn. What do you think? Can we explain poetry without oversimplification?

CHAT
What are your expectations for the course? Please introduce yourself and interact with your teacher, who shall explain how the course works.

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
Write a 2 or 3-page informal and personal essay, using first person, about your experiences with poetry, and your expectations from this poetry course.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABRAMS, M. H. et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Seventh Edition. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2000. BARNARD, Robert. A Short History of English Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. BEVINGTON, David, Anne Marie Welsh and Michael Greenwald. Shakespeare Script, Stage, Screen. New York: Pearson, 2006. BROWN, Stewart & MCWATT, Mark. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. Oxford: Oxford, 2005. CARTER, Ronald & MCRAE, John. The Routledge History of Literature in English Britain and Ireland. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. EAGLETON, Terry. How to Read a Poem. United Kingdom: Blackwell, 2007. FOWLER, Alastair. A history of English literature: forms and kinds from the Middle Ages to the present. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
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HARMON, William, ed. The Top 500 Poems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. HIRSCH, Edward. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. Orlando: Harcourt, 1999. KERMODE, Frank & HOLLANDER, John. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Volume II: 1800 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. LEHMAN, David, ed. The Oxford Book of American Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. LEVIN, David and Gross, Theodore L. America in Literature. Volume 1. New York: Wiley, 1978. LIMA, Luiz Costa, org.Teoria da Literatura em suas Fontes. Vol. 1 e 2. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizao Brasileira, 2002. MCARTHUR, Tom, ed. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford and New York: Oxford U P, 1992. MCFARLAND, Philip; BREAKSTONE, Sharon; PECKHAM, Morse. Reflections in Literature. USA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. MCMICHAEL, George, ed. Anthology of American Literature. New York: Mcmillan, 1974. OLIVER, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. Orlando: Harcourt, 1994. PERKINS, David, ed. English Romantic Writers. New York: Harourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967. PERRINE, Laurence. Literature, structure, sound, and sense. New York: Harcourt, 1983. SCHOLES, Robert et al eds. Elements of Literature: Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Film. Nova York, Oxford: Oxford U P, 1991. STEPTO, Robert. "Afro-American Literature." Columbia Literary History of the United States. Emory Elliott, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 785-99. TIMPANE, John & Watts, Maureen. Poetry for Dummies. Indiana: Wiley, 2001. WATKINS, Abichal & Pettinger, Tejvan. http://www.poetseers.org > February 2011. Poet Seers. <

WOLOSKY, Shira. The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ 2. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_op7bnbVEE5c/S8YF9PSoaI/AAAAAAAAAjA/by75OczaPhI/s320/Emily+Dickinson.jpg
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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 02: EARLY POETRY
TOPIC 01: MEDIEVAL POETRY

Discussing the divine comedy with Dante. Fonte [1] Even though in the Middle Ages (about 1000 to 1450) Catholicism and its language, Latin, dominated the scene, it was also during this period that European poets began to write in their native languages. It was during this time that Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, for instance. In English, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. The first epic poem in English is Beowulf, written anonymously between the sixth and tenth century. However, the language used is Old English, and it is impossible to understand without studying it as a foreign language (less than 15% of the English we use today has come from Old English). It looks like this: Hwt! We Gardena in geardagum, which means Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings.

Fonte [2]

A few hundred years later Middle English was employed, working as a transition between Old English and Modern English. Although Middle English is very different from the English spoken today, it can be undersood. The most famous work from that period is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is considered the precursor to short stories, albeit written in verse. His work circulated during his lifetime (84 manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales have survived). Geoffrey Chaucer (English, 1340-1400) is usually considered the third greatest English poet, losing only to Shakespeare and Milton. Chaucer is
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seen as the father of English literature, for he was the first to adopt English in his work, rather than French or Latin. The poem is a true portrait of English medieval life in what concerns its characters, their customs and attitudes. The characters can be divided into three groups: feudal, related to the land (knight, squire, etc), ecclesiastical order (monk, friar, clerk), and professional mercantile laymen (physician, lawyer, merchant, cook). Chaucer establishes the background of his stories with dramatic and picturesque details, an important development of his style. He superimposes the comic upon the tragic, though his tone is often serious. The dominant tone of the Prologue and of the whole work is that of amused tolerance.

OBSERVATION

Read part of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer [3] (Visite a aula online para realizar download deste arquivo.), put into Modern English by Michael Murphy. (until page 8, line 182). The setting of Canterbury Tales is Chaucer's own time (approximately 1340-1400). The work was intended to contain 120 stories, but the poet died and only 24 were completed.

Some characters of the Canterbury Tales include: The Knight a man usually of noble birth, raised to honorable military rank. He served as a heavily armed horseman. The Squire a member of the British gentry, ranking below a knight and above a gentleman; also a prominent landowner. The Squire could also be a young man who was a knight attendant before becoming a knight. The Yeoman either an attendant or officer in a royal household, or a small farmer who cultivated his own land. The Franklin in the 14th and 15th centuries, a middle-class landowner not of noble birth higher in rank than a Yeoman. Guild an association of men with common interests. These included the merchant guild, the trade guild (an association made of tradesmen), etc. The Shipman a sailor or seaman. The Parson the rector of a parochial church.

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The Plowman a person who makes furrows in the land by means of a plow or plough. The Miller a person who owns or runs a mill for grinding corn. The Manciple a tradesman or servant who bought provisions for a college or an Inn of Court. The Reeve the stewart of a manor, an administrative official who was estate manager. The Pardoner a preacher who raised money for religious works by soliciting offerings to which indulgences (pardons) were attached. This is a comic anonymous poem. Read the translation to Modern English followed by the original, written in Middle English. Identify the double meanings in the poem.
CLICK HERE

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For Harmon, this verse form is a striking demonstration of the art of diminution. Thanks to the flexibility of English syntax, 'a rest that peace begets' [produces, causes] means both 'rest begets peace' and 'peace begets rest' (43). This is a poem from the Middle Ages that is not hard to understand: (anonymous, around 15th century) Western wind, when will thou blow? The small rain down can rain. Christ, if my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again!
FRUM

Analyze some of the anonymous poems (My Gentle Cock, My Love in Her Attire, Weep You No More, Sad Fountains, Western Wind) included in this section. Answer some of Perrine's questions in the introduction. For instance, who is the speaker? To whom is s/he speaking? What is the occasion? What is the setting in time? What is the setting in place? State the central idea of the poem in one sentence. Discuss the tone of the poem. What kind of imagery is used?
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 How do the sound and rhythm of the poem help to create sense? Criticize the poem. Etc.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://bouncingponytail.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/discussing-thedivine-comdey-with-dante.jpg 2. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hAVZLKqz78/TKeoGJnclCI/AAAAAAAAA9Q/ciPljcsSWRs/s1600/Canterbury_Tales_ 480.jpg 3. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury/2genp ro.pdf
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 02: EARLY POETRY
TOPIC 02: ELIZABETHAN/RENAISSANCE POETRY (1450-1670)

The Renaissance is considered by many to have started before Queen Elizabeth was born and lasted long after she died. This period encompasses 1450 to 1670. In theory, the Elizabethan period goes from 1558 to 1603, that is, during her reign. However, Elizabethan and Renaissance have become interchangeable terms in many ways, so we will consider this period starting in 1450 and finishing in 1670. Historical context: After the War of the Roses, a bloody domestic conflict that consisted of several civil wars (1455-1485) for the throne of England, the Tudor dynasty was born, the most English and nationalist until then. When Henry VIII (who reigned from 1509 to 1547) created the Anglican Church, he also made England the first truly independent country, not subordinated to Rome. This allowed the artists to have freedom. His daughter, Queen Elizabeth, was so important for the country that the whole period is named after her. You may want to watch films such as The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Elizabeth (1998), and Elizabeth The Golden Age (2007) to know more about this period in history.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) Fonte: [1]

Elizabeth (1998) Fonte: [2]

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Elizabeth The Golden Age Fonte: [3]

CURIOSITY
The term Renaissance only came into play centuries later. Elizabethans knew they were living in a time of discovery. There was a sense of personal choice in human life, and with it the increased potential for tragic failure, and plenty of intellectual excitement. England was reinventing itself as Shakespeare began his writing career in the 1590s. It is not in vain that Shakespeare and Galileo were born in the same year, 1564, nor that Cervantes and Shakespeare died exactly on the same date, April 23, 1616. In the London of Shakespeare's time, the population was almost 200 thousand inhabitants. But they were not progressive: women were men's properties, and they were considered inferior notwithstanding the fact that they had a competent queen). Xenophobia, racism, and anti-semiticism were also common at the time. Although life was hard for the Elizabethans, with their long working hours, terrible sanitary conditions, threat of the plague, political intrigues, and religious conflicts, this was a time that saw the beginning of the bourgeoisie, class mobility, and the gradual end of feudal hierarchy (Bevington et al 15-17). In 1665 the plague reached London, killing more than 100,000 people. The following year, the Great Fire destroyed almost the whole city. Let us look at some of the most representative Renaissance poetry in English:

Fonte [4]

Chidiock Tichborne (1568-1586) was an unknown from a rich Catholic family. He joined a conspiracy to kill Queen Elizabeth, but was arrested and executed when he barely eighteen years old. The poem contains eighteen lines, one for each year of his life, and all the words except fallen

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are monosyllables (but the way it is written, syllable).

CLICK HERE

fall'n, is also only one

>>

Fonte [5]

Christopher Marlowe (English, 1564-1593) was considered Shakespeare's greatest rival (as you can see in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love). Marlowe was only 29 years old when he was killed in mysterious circumstances. This is the twelth most anthologized poem in English:
CLICK HERE

>>

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Fonte [6]

Ben Jonson (English, 1572-1637) is better known for his cynical poetry, but the following poem was written when his young son Benjamin died. Harmon says, As Jonson knew, 'Benjamin' means 'son of the right hand' or 'favorite.' He also knew that 'poem' means 'things made' or 'product,' so that one may speak of one's poetry as children and of one's children as poetry (158).
CLICK HERE

>>

Fonte [7]

George Herbert (Welsh, 1593-1633) wrote other works other than shape poems. But this is what he became more famous for. Notice the words that are in capital letters: altar, heart, sacrifice, altar. Why do you think the poet chose to leave those words capitalized?
CLICK HERE

>>

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Fonte [8]

William Shakespeare (English, 1564-1616) and Queen Elizabeth are intertwined names, forever connected. Shakespeare was only able to happen due to the social, cultural, intellectual and aesthetic circumstances that derived from two worlds, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Heliodora 22). Sonnets come from the Italian word sonetto, meaning little song. The first sonnets in English, produced in the sixteenth century, imitated the Italian ones. Shakespeare wrote more than 150 of them (and this represents only half of his poetry production), all fourteen lines long, written in iambic pentameter, with each line containing ten syllables, with the second syllable stressed. Most of them were probably written in the 1590s. This sonnet by Shakespeare is the fourth most anthologized poem in English:

This poem reminds us of our mortality, of how the clock is ticking.

And this is not a sonnet (you can see by its structure), but rather, a happy song sung by Ariel in The Tempest, when she is anxiously expecting to be freed from Prospero:

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Sir Walter Raleigh (English, 1552-1618). This poem was written the night before he was executed.

John Donne (English, 1572-1631) is most famous for this religious sonnet:

Fonte [9]

Katherine Fowler Philips (English, 1631-1664). Virginia Woolf could not find any women writers in Renaissance times, so much so that she imagined a Judith Shakespeare, the bard's sister who would secretly write in her room and produce as much fine work as her famous brother. In the twentieth century some women writers were discovered, among them Katherine Fowler Philips. Though none of them have become wellknown, they nevertheless wrote good poems.

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How does the poet see the institution of marriage for women? Robert Herrick (English, 1591-1674). This is another poem about seizing the day portrayed in the film Dead Poets Society:

Fonte [10]

Andrew Marvell (English, 1621-1678). To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem and also the eleventh most anthologized poem in the language. Metaphysical poetry is a term used to describe a group of British lyric poets of the seventeenth century who used creative metaphors. Its most important themes were love and religion, and it made fun of poetic absurdity. In the following poem the speaker is talking to a woman who took some time to notice his interest in her. Click here to see. To His Coy Mistress Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. [coyness = reluctance, hesitancy] We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
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Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast; But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart; For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's wingd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. Can you identify the seize the day (carpe diem) thematic in this poem?

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Fonte [11]

John Milton (1608-1674). His Paradise Lost (published for the first time in 1667, though written ten years before, and for the second time in 1674) is one of the greatest epic poems in English. It includes more than ten thousand lines of verse about Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden of Eden. Here are the first few lines from Book I (there are twelve books in all): Click here to see

You can read the full text of Paradise Lost here: http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/John_Milton/milton_contents.htm [12].

Fonte [13]

Anne Bradstreet (American, 1612-1672) cannot be officially considered part of the Reinassance or Elizabethan poetry, because she did not live in England. In fact, Bradstreet, a Puritan, lived in America when it was only a colony of imperial Britain, before it became the United States. She was the first woman poet to be published in what is not considered the US or England.

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CHAT
Compare medieval poems to poems written during the Renaissance. How are they different? Are there any similarities? Notice the language, the rhyme, figures of speech, as well as the choice of themes. If you can find other poems from those periods that are not included here, bring them to the discussion.

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
Choose a poem in English (from any literary period) and write a class plan showing how you would teach this poem to a high school class. Make sure to include the poem, author and year it was written in your class plan. How would you teach vocabulary? What would you focus on? What would you like to achieve by using this poem? Your class plan should include presentation and problematization, public (who is this class for?), objectives, methodology, general time schedule, and evaluation.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/mZ6OsJQgmWg/UPhzerAuCyI/AAAAAAAAAIE/hNQbzRc0Dfg/s1600/200 8-other_boleyn_girl-2.jpg 2. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MByIN7JNdvA/TULJVCpZY8I/AAAAAAAA DS0/3LtJlBxfY-w/s1600/Elizabeth.jpg 3. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/pt/9/9e/Elizabethedoldenage.jp g 4. http://greatneck.k12.ny.us/GNPS/SHS/dept/sskills/munshine/Literatur e/images/Tichy.gif 5. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dsEAS3ZfORk/Se9-kBli5I/AAAAAAAACBE/ET1qdUbAUfI/s400/ShakespeareMarlowe.jpg 6. http://www.notablebiographies.com/images/uewb_06_img0385.jpg 7. http://acad.depauw.edu/~hersh/Revista/issue8/Images/Herbert_clip_i mage003.jpg 8. http://pignoise.wikispaces.com/file/view/life14.jpg/32055605/189x264/ life14.jpg 9. http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/00/Philips.jpg/ 200px-Philips.jpg 10. http://course.cug.edu.cn/cugThird/Britain_America/britain/contents/I MG/616.GIF 11. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/john_milton.jpg 12. http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/John_Milton/milton_conte nts.htm 13. http://img.americanpoems.com/Anne-Bradstreet.gif
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 03 - ROMANTIC POETRY
TOPIC 01: BRITISH ROMANTICISM (1775-1830)

Between 1775 and 1830, great changes happened in the Western world:
the American Revolution, the emergence of the United States (1776), the French Revolution (1789), Napoleon's strength (after the French Revolution, he seized power through a coup d'etat in 1799 and established a military dictatorship), democratic and egalitarian ideals, intensification of national identity, development of the industrial system.

Understandably, the English rulers were terrified that what happened in France would be repeated in England. British Romanticism went approximately from 1780 to 1850. It began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth's "Preface" to the second edition (1800), in which he described poetry as "the spontanous overflow of powerful feelings," became the manifesto of the English Romantic movement in poetry. William Blake was the third main poet of the movement's early phase in England. In the second phase of British Romanticism (from 1805 to the 1830s), nationalism and, consequently, the focus on national origins, were emphasized. In this phase the most important poets were John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley.

Fonte [1]

Fonte [2]

Fonte [3]

Naturally, the Romantics did not see themselves as Romantics. In fact, the "big six names of British poetry" did not even see themselves as a group. However, there is no doubt that this new way of thinking changed people's lives. For Barnard, " With the shift in emphasis from man in society to man in solitude, the very words to express that solitude became dominant ones in poetry, and began to carry an emotional charge very different from that they held in the 18th century" (87). Nature became fundamental, for one. Wordsworth asked "What is a poet?", and answered that he is a "man speaking to men". "Poetry without egotism is comparatively uninteresting", Coleridge said, reinforcing the force of the individual. The
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essence of Romanticism included cultural nostalgia, wanting to go back to the Middle Ages, and classicism (Perkins 15). As the main beliefs of Romanticism, we could list: man is more than a thinking machine in a machine universe; the idea that we should not be content with clear and consistent notions at the expense of truth, and the notion that truth is bigger than logic. Reality was seen as too large and too diverse to be understood by cool reason. God is not outside the universe, but in it, and in us (that is, we can't use reason to understand). Man does not come into the world as a blank page to be written on, but as a spirit trailing clouds of glory, which contained an optimist belief: that each person was a part of God. The spirit is beautiful, but free will can change it. The secret of life is not in the head, but in the heart. Nature is perfection, the unspoiled hand of God. Romantic writers in general were fascinated by the Middle Ages. In this movement, "literature is strongly personal and subjective [...], the individual is of supreme importance, and feeling is superior to reason. [...] The poet has a high function but may be driven by the opposition of society into becoming an outcast rebel" (McArthur 875).

NOTE
As for the language, "a revolt against poetic diction led to a desire for more simple style in poetry. [...] Romantic poetry is generally characterized by the use of familiar words with few distortions of syntax. The poetry of nature in particular moved far from 18th century artificiality. [...] Coleridge's revolt was towards more solemn and incantory diction" (McArthur 875).

Barnard says of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge: "This close friendship of the two greatest poets of their time - a friendship of men very different in temperament and aspiration is unparalleled in the history of poetry; and the sparks ignited by the relationship started the revolution" (89). For Barnard, both poets had a short creative period: by 1807 most of Wordsworth's best work was gone [...]. Coleridge's period of poetic creativity was even shorter. Many critics [...] have associated the poetic drying-up [...] with the political swing to the right which both men underwent during the Napoleonic wars. Both became [...] pillars of conservatism." But Barnard dismisses this claim as wishful thinking: "If conservatism disqualified one from writing good poetry, the 20th century would lose all its major poets" (93). Considered one of the great poets in the language, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is more famous for three poems which are very different in technique: "The Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," and "Kubla Khan", which is the seventh most anthologized poem in English literature. Click here (Visite a aula online para realizar download deste arquivo.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge or access http://poetry.eserver.org/kubla-khan.html [6].
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Fonte [4]

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is seen as the greatest poet of nature. He found plenty of beauty in nature. He broke the tradition of writing for the upper classes, preferring to write in simple language for the everyday person. In this sonnet Wordsworth contrasts the material world to nature. The World Is Too Much With Us (1807)

William Wordsworth Fonte [5]

Harmon points out that "the form of this sonnet refers back to sixteenth - and seventeenth-century precursors. Some of the details refer back as well: the description of Proteus (the Old Man of the Sea) recalls Milton's description of the same figure; that of the sea-god Triton recalls Spenser's" (395). Wordsworth wrote the following sonnet for his daughter Catherine, who died at the age of three or four (depending on the sources). Surprised by Joy (1802)

FURTHER READING

Read an excellent analysis of this poem published 204 years later by The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/22/poem.of.the.week.wordswort [7]

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William Blake (1757-1827). If his "The Tyger" is not the most famous poem in English, it certainly is the number one in appearances in anthologies. The Tyger (1794) Blake

William Blake Fonte [8]

The Tyger: But is "the tyger" (an archaic way of writing tiger) a real tiger or a metaphor for good and evi? Pay attention to the comparison between lamb and tiger. Harmon says that "The Tiger" is "a song of experience, vividly and memorably. Its powerful rhythm seems pounded out on an instrument of percussion, something that beats like a heart or a hammer, both of which are named in the poem. The mighty beast is the whole world of experience outside ourselves, a world of igneous creation and destruction. Faced with such terrifying beauty, the poet can only ask; the poem is nothing but one wondering question after another" (360). The Sick Rose (1794) Blake

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Paraphrasing the poem, it would simply be: the dark secret love of the worm destroys the rose's life. How are the rose and the worm personified? Notice that the rhyme scheme is ABCB. Barnard tells the tale of Byron's good luck: "In 1812 Lord Byron (17881824) published the first two cantos of Childe Harold, and in his own words 'awoke one morning and found myself famous.' [...] Suddenly he was the darling of the fashionable and literary worlds, the popularizer and personification of Romantic values. Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose poetry and ideas had been greeted by the public with a scepticism verging on contempt, might justifiably have felt a twinge of jealousy" (98). Byron was as famous for his personal life as for his poetry. He is said to have been a nobleman, a millionaire, a genius, a hero, a sinner and a handsome man. She Walks in Beauty (1815)- Byron

The Byronic hero is "Handsome, licentious, moody, doomed, [carrying] on his shoulders the burden of upardonable nay, unmentionable sins and [shaking] his fist at the world order, the world's rules, even the Creator himself" (Barnard 99). We can find in Byron's poem "vulgarizations of almost every Romantic preoccupation the medieval, the outcast figure, love of nature, hatred of tyranny, preoccupation with the remote and savage" (Barnard 99). Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was "a literally insane radical, or a noble if impractical idealist. His character, and most of the central actions of his brief life, are still matters of dispute. Like all the second generation of Romantic poets he was a radical" (Barnard 100). Shelley, who was married to Mary Shelley (the author of Franskenstein, and daughter of famous feminist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft), drowned at his yacht when he was only 29. Ozymandias (1818)- Shelly
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The theme of this sonnet seems to be how all leaders fall. Ozymandias was the name given to Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great. Shelley was inspired by an image of his statue that he considered arrogant. For Barnard, "If Shelley's early death leaves us with some unanswerable questions about his likely development, the even more tragic early death of John Keats (1795-1821) leaves few queries in our mind about his stature. Even as it is, he is one of our greatest poets [...]. produced a variety of kinds of work [...]. But if we only had left to us the poems written in 1819 we would have no doubt that Keats is with Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, one of the indisputably great English poets" (102). Keats died when he was only 25, of tuberculosis. All his work was published in three years. He is seen as not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romanticists. He worshipped beauty, wrote what was in his heart, and reflected the splendor of the natural world. Although his work was accused of being indifferent to humanity and was condemned by critics at the time, today it is very influential. Keats' "To Autumn" is the third most anthologized poem in the English language. To Autumn (1819)

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According to Harmon, "Keats makes autumn 'the human season,' not much like the super-human creativity of spring or the otherworldly extremism of summer and winter. The poet here exploits to the full his matchless genius for sensual realization how things look and sound and also how they smell, taste, and feel" (536). Keats wrote five of the greatest odes (an irregular form used to express tributes) in English on the same year, 1819. This was the third ode, and it is very close to a classical spirit. Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, [deities = gods or godesses] In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? [loth = reluctant] What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
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What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? [timbrel = ancient percussion instrument similar to a tambourine] Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: [ditties = simple songs] Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, [bliss = ecstasy; happiness] For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed [boughs = tree branches] Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; [bid adieu = say goodbye] And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; [panting = breathing rapidly; longing for] All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, [cloyed = sweet in a distasteful way, rich] A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. [parching = dry, thirsty] Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, [heifer = a young cow] And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? [flanks = lateral sides] What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, [citadel = fortress] Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede [brede = ornamental embroidery] Of marble men and maidens overwrought, [overwrought = overdone, excessively elaborate] With forest branches and the trodden weed; [trodden weed = erva daninha pisoteada] Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste,
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Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe [woe = misery, misfortune] Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

LOOKING UP CLOSE
According to http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html [9], this ode contains the most discussed two lines in all of Keats's poetry '"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." The exact meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered them a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem. Scholars have been unable to agree to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed. Arguments can be made for any of the four most obvious possibilities, poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet to figures on the urn." Romanticism influenced some of the poetry of the Victorians. The early work of W. B. Yeats, for instance, is full of the Romantic spirit.

FORUM
In his "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads, published in 1802, Wordsworth wrote: all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man, who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the being to whom we address ourselves, if he be in a healthful state of association, must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections ameliorated. (You can read all of his Preface here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/Spring2001/040/preface1802.html [10])

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Analyze some of the poems in this section and see if they fit Wordsworth's definition of "good poetry.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ag5D7CmYeGU/SwLzT2laIaI/AAAAAAAAAA k/4IwYOwyF8Z0/s1600/john-keats.jpg 2. http://www.literaturaemfoco.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/lordbyron.jpg 3. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Percy_B ysshe_Shelley_by_Alfred_Clint.jpg/200pxPercy_Bysshe_Shelley_by_Alfred_Clint.jpg 4. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/SamuelT aylorColeridge.jpg/240px-SamuelTaylorColeridge.jpg 5. http://www.alysion.org/poems2/worldwithus.jpg 6. http://poetry.eserver.org/kubla-khan.html 7. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/22/poem.of.the. week.wordsworth 8. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/William _Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg/240pxWilliam_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg 9. http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html 10. http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/Spring2001/040/pre face1802.html
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 03 - ROMANTIC POETRY
TOPIC 02: AMERICAN ROMANTICISM (1840-1864)

The characteristics of American Romanticism are similar to those of British Romanticism, even though there are important differences. For starters, American Romanticism came later and lasted fewer years, roughly from 1840 to 1864 (when the Civil War started). And, naturally, the context in Britain and the United States was not similar at all. The US was a new nation, only sixty years after its independence from the island that controlled an entire continent.

NOTE
In 1810 the population of the US was 7 million people. Half a century later, in the beginning of the Civil War, it had increased to 31 million. There was a new confidence in the air, a new hope, and the feeling that America was indeed the land of opportunity. Religion, which had been so strong some decades ago, gave way to a much less puritanical and more spiritual era. The concept of natural aristocracy had been replaced by the belief that all white men are created equal. However, during this period the contrast between rich and poor also grew. New York became the largest city in the country, supplanting Boston and Philadelphia. There was a pursuit for simplicity and utility. Powdered wigs were retired. The level of education and literacy also rose: in 1794 five magazines were published in the US; by 1825 there were 100; by 1860, more than 500. Literature ceased to be primarily didactic, a servant of politics and religion. The great age of American politics by the Founding Fathers had ended. Novels, short stories, and poems replaced sermons and manifestoes as America's principal literary forms (McMichael 462). This is how McMichael summarizes the period: America, from the early 1800s to the Civil War, was a land of paradoxes, a land stirred by spiritual dreams and shaped by the realities of a growing materialism. [...] Intense individualism and soaring optimism had deteriorated into their natural consequences: selfishness, pessimism, and a frivolous addiction to the pleasures of despair and woe. [...] Yet Romanticism remained one of the glories of the age. It accelerated the spread of democracy to the downtrodden and the poor. It revitalized art and established new ways of perceiving humanity and the universe. (4634) American Romanticism was a nationalistic movement, with its writers seeing themselves as part of a cultural revolution. Rapid industrial expansion, the movement westward, the right to vote (only for white men) all of these contributed to the country's faith in itself. Thus, the main
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characteristics of Romanticism were: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism, the idea that the natural world is good, and that man's society is corrupt. As we can see, there are some contradictions present in those characteristics. This is represented by the verses of a major poet of the time,

Walt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes)". With The Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge launched an aesthetical revolution in England. Ralph Waldo Emerson translated their thoughts to an American context in 1837, while Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne borrowed Gothic techniques from Europe and released these demons in American soil (Levin & Gross 804). American Romanticism still valued imagination over intellect, like the British Romantics. But with a twist: "man is alone, a creature not so engulfed and shaped by an established and class-oriented society [...]. In American literature, Emerson and Thoureau cherish their solitude in nature; [...] Poe creates solitary figures who live with their haunted imagination and the memory of their lost love" (Levin & Gross 804).

CURIOSITY
This kind of Romanticism, as well as part of British Romanticism, had close connections with the Gothic. We cannot forget that one of the main names of American Romanticism is Edgar Allan Poe. Gothic works are characterized by sinister and supernatural events, and are much more related to medieval practices than to the modernism that the twentieth century would bring. Walt Whitman (American, 1819-1892) is seen as the father of free verse. When he published Leaves of Grass in 1855, it was considered obscene for its sexuality. But more than being sexual, "Song of Myself," the long poem that occupies most of the book, was sensual that is, it deals with all of our senses. Whitman is also hailed today as America's first poet of democracy. Harold Bloom says of Whitman: "If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary works as candidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. [...] None of Walt Whitman Fonte [1] those [...] are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass". Song of Myself Section 52 (1855)

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An elegy is a poem with Greek roots, and it is used to express sorrow and to salute an important dead person. It usually follows three stages to deal with the loss: first the speaker expresses his or her grief for the person's death, then that person is idealized and celebrated, and finally there is consolation. This is one of the most famous elegies in English, written by Walt Whitman for president Abraham Lincoln's murder in 1865:

For Hirsch, this poem is about "releasing the soul back into the universe and in this sense it has the character of an archaic or primitive poem with a nineteenth-century diction. It is also a romantic poem in the way, like other romantic poems, it points to a threshold or visionary experience. It makes a poetic crossing" (246).

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According to Hirsch, "the lyric poem rejuvenates the capacity for wonder within us. We cannot live what we cannot feel. It instills the culture of the soul back into us" (258). When I heard the learn'd astronomer (1865)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. To the Reader at Parting Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face, We must separate awhile--Here! take from my lips this kiss; Whoever you are, I give it especially to you; So long!--And I hope we shall meet again. Emily Dickinson (American, 1830-1886). Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are an integral part of Romanticism, but they were so ahead of their times that they are sometimes seen as early modernists. Since they also lived and wrote during the Victorian period, some scholars consider them Victorian writers. Thus, both have been called Romantics, Victorians and Modernists. They are more often regarded as Romantics. As much as Whitman was an extrovert, Dickinson was an introvert and a reclusive. Most of her friendships were through letters. She was very prolific, writing about 1,800 poems, though very few were published during her lifetime. Notice her use of half rhyme.
VERSO TEXTUAL

I'm Nobody! Who Are You? (1861) I'm nobody! Who are you? Are youNobodytoo? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd banish usyou know! How drearyto beSomebody! How publiclike a Frog To tell your namethe livelong June To an admiring Bog! [bog = brejo, lamaal] Painhas an Element of Blank (1862)

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Painhas an Element of Blank It cannot recollect When it beganor if there were A day when it was not It has no Futurebut itself Its infinite contain Its Pastenlightened to perceive New Periodsof Pain. Faith Is a Fine Invention (1860) Faith is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency. A Word Is Dead A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close (1896) My life closed twice before its close -It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Transcendentalism was a kind of anti-materialist idealism that privileged human contact with nature. It was a part of Romanticism, or "Romanticism in puritan soil," as it was sometimes called. It shared three large beliefs: intuitive knowledge (ability to read, for example, was seen as natural); divinity in man and nature (it rejected traditional religion and used the word oversoul rather than God); the worth of man cannot be taken for granted God, man and nature are the same. Some of the sayings were "Each man is his own priest", and "make your own bible". Other transcendentalist traits included individualism, plain living, simple life, high thinking, earthly logic, and going beyond the physical. Thoureau and Emerson were the fathers of transcendentalism and fought a difficult battle: that against the materialism of American society.

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Henry David Thoureau (1817-1862) is more famous for Walden, his prose journal about living in the woods, and for his "Civil Disobedience" essay, than for his poetry. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, Thoureau and Emerson were very good friends.

MEN SAY THEY KNOW MANY THINGS

Henry David Thoureau Fonte [3] Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that blows Is all that any body knows. My Life Has Been the Poem My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "seems sometimes to have invented, or at least envisioned, American literature as an entity unto itself rather than as a tributary of a mainstream English or British tradition" (Lehman 27). He influenced poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and some of those who came later, like Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Fonte: [4]

CHAT
When you think of the word romantic, what comes to mind? Do the common use of this word and your perception match Romantic Poetry?
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How is Romantic Poetry (in both its British and American applications) romantic, after all? Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Read Poe's most famous poem. Note how some words, such as "Nevermore", are repeated throughout the poem. How does this simple word acquire more emotional intensity with the progression of the poem? Poe makes abundant use of alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds, as in "take thy form from off my door") in this poem. What effect does it cause? The Raven (1845) (Click here (Visite a aula online para realizar download deste arquivo.) or access http://www.poetry-online.org/poe_the_raven_sad.htm) [6]

Edgar Allan Poe Fonte [5]

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
In his famous essay, "The Philosophy of Composition" (read here: http://www.poeticbyway.com/philo.htm [7]), Poe describes how he wrote "The Raven." First he explains what he intended the effect of the poem to be, then he selected a topic and poetic devices, and finally he chose the form of his stanzas and other details. Write a two or three-page essay describing what Poe says of his process when writing "The Raven," and briefly analyze if he succeeded in his intentions.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Walt_W hitman_edit_2.jpg/200px-Walt_Whitman_edit_2.jpg 2. http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer 3. http://www.marfdrat.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/300pxHenry_David_Thoreau1.jpg 4. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Ralph_ Waldo_Emerson_ca1857_retouched.jpg/220pxRalph_Waldo_Emerson_ca1857_retouched.jpg 5. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Edgar_ Allan_Poe_2.jpg/210px-Edgar_Allan_Poe_2.jpg 6. http://www.poetry-online.org/poe_the_raven_sad.htm 7. http://www.poeticbyway.com/philo.htm
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

49

LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 04: BEFORE MODERNISM
TOPIC 01: VICTORIAN POETRY (1830-1901)

The Victorian Age is almost a second English Renaissance, though it is constantly associated to adjectives such as repressed and old-fashioned. However, some authors think that if there is one adjective to describe this period, it is earnest (meaning serious, sincere, enthusiastic, determined). What differentiates Victorians from Romantics is a sense of moral responsibility (which extends, of course, to imperialism). In the 18th century, Paris was the most important city in the Western world. In the second half of the 19th century, that title went to London, which had 2 million inhabitants when Queen Victoria was empowered, and 6.5 million when she died (in 1851 the population of the United Kingdom was 21 million people).

The Victorian Age Fonte [1]

CURIOSITY
Taking the throne when she was eighteen, Queen Victoria reigned 64 years, from 1837 until 1901. One of her most famous quotes was We are not amused, which might refer to the fact that she gave birth to nine children in eighteen years children, in fact, that she disliked, comparing them to frogs. The queen's husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, and Victoria remained in mourning until her death, forty years later. According to the Norton Anthology, the most important development of the age was the shift from a way of life based on the ownership of land to a modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing (Abrams 1043). England was the first country in the world to become industrialized, but at a huge social cost. During the Victorian period, social classes were strictly divided: - Upper classes included royalty (the Queen), nobility, aristocracy (ladies, gentlemen), families of new capitalists (nurse Florence Nightingale is an example). - Middle classes consisted of professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers, writers, and members of religious orders; while lower middle classes included teachers and governesses. - The underclasses, or the deserving poor, consisted of the unemployed, victims of injury or illness, criminals, and prostitutes (as can be seen in films such as From Hell and Sweeney Todd). We should not forget that slave trade had been abolished in Britain and British colonies in 1807, and the end of slavery only came in 1833.

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Britain was at war every year during the Victorian era. By 1890, one fourth of the world's globe was under British domination, and the domains of the empire overseas were justified by its righteousness people believed they were doing the right thing. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), an Englishman born in one of Britain's colonies, India, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, became a symbol of British imperialism. He is the creator of the term white man's burden. Read his poem, which says a lot about the Victorian period and its values:
Fonte [2]

The White Man's Burden (1899) Take up the White Man's burden-- [burden = something heavy that is carried, cross] Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile [bind = supply, secure, unite] To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, [harness = arreio, as in horse] On fluttered folk and wild-- [fluttered = agitated, restless] [folk = common people] Your new-caught, sullen peoples, [sullen = quiet, too serious] Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide, [abide = endure, tolerate] To veil the threat of terror [veil = cover, conceal, disguise] And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly [sloth = preguia] [heathen = pagan] [folly = evil, foolishness] Bring all your hopes to nought. [nought = nothing] Take up the White Man's burden-No tawdry rule of kings, [tawdry = vulgar, indecent] But toil of serf and sweeper-- [toil = labor] [serf = slave] [sweeper = varredor] The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, [tread = walk on] Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.
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Take up the White Man's burden-And reap his old reward: [reap = obtain, collect] The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought he us from bondage, [bondage = subjection, slavery] Our loved Egyptian night?" Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-- [stoop = bend, submit] Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness; [cloke = cloak, cover] [weariness = being tired and weak] By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the White Man's burden-Have done with childish days-The lightly proferred laurel [proffer = offer] [laurel = symbolic victory prize] The easy, ungrudged praise. [ungrudged = not reluctant] Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers! The phrase white man's burden was used to justify imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries not only by Britain, but also by the United States (Kipling, in fact, begged the US to develop the Philippines). The idea was that whites were responsible for uplifting, elevating and civilizing nonwhite people. Poetry was not literature's strongest suit during the Victorian period. Great novels, on the other hand, flourished: Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre in 1847 Emily Bronte published Wuthering Heights in the same year Tackeray wrote Barry Lyndon in 1844 and Vanity Fair in 1848 Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland in 1865 Robert Louis Stevenson published Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891 Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892 Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891
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Kipling himself wrote the vastly popular The Jungle Book (Mowgli, o Menino Lobo) in 1894.

English novelist (author of Wuthering Heights, her only novel) and poet Emily Bronte (1818-1848) wrote the following poem when she was only 19 years old. Spellbound(1837)

Fonte [3]

The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow, But a tyrant spell has bound me [spellbound = fascinated by a spell, encantado] And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow, And the storm is fast descending And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me; [drear = depressive] I will not, cannot go. The poem is written in the present tense. Hirsch describes reading it as a child and being arrested by it: I couldn't tell if the poem as a charm inviting the storm into the world or a spell warding it off (62). Lord Alfred Tennyson (English, 1809-1892) is still one of the most popular poets in the English language. During Queen Victoria's reign he was Poet Laureate (that is, an official poet). Tears, Idle Tears (1847) Tears, Idle Tears (1847)

Fonte [4]

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, [idle = inactive, lazy, not in use] Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, [beam = sun ray; also side of a ship] [glitter = sparkle]
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That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; [verge = margin, border] So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; [casement = batente, as in window] So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. [glimmering = unsteady] Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned [fancy = whim] [feigned = fabricated, pretended] On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more. Harmon calls attention to the fact that Tears, Idle Tears is an unhrymed song, although the terminal phrase in every fifth line returns as a refrain (649). Notice how this lyric poem does not rhyme.

THE EAGLE (1851) >>

The Eagle (1851)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; [clasp = hold or grip firmly] [crag = penhasco] Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. [azure = a light purplish blue] The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [crawl = move slowly, engatinhar] He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. [thunderbolt = lightning accompanied by thunder]

FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL (1869) >>

Flower in the Crannied Wall (1869)

Flower in the crannied wall, [crannied = having crannies, fissures, openings, as in a wall] I pluck you out of the crannies, [pluck = pull out, remove] I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flowerbut if I could understand
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What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans, English, 1819-1880) is one of the most famous writers of the Victorian period. She adopted a male penname so she could be taken seriously as a writer.

COUNT THAT DAY LOST >>

Count That Day Lost

Fonte [5]

If you sit down at set of sun And count the acts that you have done, And, counting, find One self-denying deed, one word That eased the heart of him who heard, One glance most kind That fell like sunshine where it went -Then you may count that day well spent. But if, through all the livelong day, You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay -If, through it all You've nothing done that you can trace That brought the sunshine to one face-No act most small That helped some soul and nothing cost -Then count that day as worse than lost.

ROSES >>

Roses You love the roses - so do I. I wish The sky would rain down roses, as they rain From off the shaken bush. Why will it not? Then all the valley would be pink and white And soft to tread on. They would fall as light As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

Dover Beach (1851) Dover Beach (1851) The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
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Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow [turbid = agitated, dark] [ebb and flow = fluxo e refluxo] Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. [girdle = belt, band] [furled = rolled up] But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. [shingle = thin material used to cover roofs of houses]

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain [darkling = in the dark] Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

FURTHER READING
According to Poet Seers, Matthew Arnold (English, 1822-1888) was in tandem with Victorian values in what concerned morality and faith, but his inner feelings are also evident: This poetic transparency has had an influence on many other poets such as W. B. Yeats and even Sylvia Plath.
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(You can hear Dover Beach here, though not recited by Arnold: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15625 [6])

OBSERVATION

For Poet Seers, the main theme in Dover Beach is how isolated a person can feel without faith. Harmon says that Dover Beach can be the first distinctively modern poem, perhaps even qualifying as 'modernist' in the way it places an isolated neurotic on the edge of a highly charged symbolic scene. The lines are broken and uneven; some of the transitions are abrupt, almost surrealist (707). This is the ninth most anthologized poem in the English language. Robert Browning (English, 1812-1889) is another of the most important Victorian poets. He was married to Elizabeth Barret Browning, whose poem we will read in the exercise in the end. The Year's at the Spring (1841)

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn;

Fonte [7]

Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; [dew-pearled = covered by moisture, or orvalho] The lark's on the wing; [lark = a bird, cotovia] [wing = lateral petal of a flower] The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven All's right with the world!

Can you notice the abcdabcd rhyme-scheme in the poem? Spring (a) rhymes with wing (a), morn (b) rhymes with thorn (b), and so on.

PARTING AT MORNING (1845) >>

Parting at Morning (1845) Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me.

Walter Savage Landor (English, 1775-1864)

DEATH STANDS ABOVE ME (1853) >>

Death Stands Above Me (1853)

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Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear: Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a world of fear.

In this poem by Christina Rossetti (English, 1830-1894), what literary device is used the most? A Birthday (1861)

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a waterd shoot; [shoot = a leaf; a section of a stream; a channel] My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; [thickset = fat, stout] My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; [halcyon = calm; golden, prosperous] My heart is gladder than all these [gladder = happier] Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; [dais = raised platform, tablado] [down = soft feathers] Hang it with vair and purple dyes; [vair = fur] [dye = tingimento] Carve it in doves and pomegranates, [pomegranates = a fruit, rom] And peacocks with a hundred eyes; [peacock = pavo] Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

As you can see, the device Rossetti uses the most in this poem is the simile. The simile compares one thing to another by using the word as or like. The simile asserts a likeness between unlike things, it maintains their comparability, but is also draws attention to their differences, thereby affirming a state of division (Hirsch 40).

Oscar Wilde (Irish, 1854-1900), the well-known playwright (The Importance of Being Earnest) and novelist (The Picture of Dorian Gray), is also considered a successful Victorian poet. To My Wife With a Copy of My Poems (1881)

I can write no stately proem [stately = dignified, majestic] [proem =

Fonte [8]

introduction, preface] As a prelude to my lay;

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From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles [waft = cause to go gently] On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

FORUM
Famous poetry has been a source of inspiration for parody [rewriting that imitates or mocks a work for comic reasons or ridicule] for ages. Read a sonnet by one of the most important Victorian poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English, 1809-1861). Sonnet 43 How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. To whom does this appear to be dedicated? Who is speaking, and to whom? In what ways does she love that person? Explain. There is book called Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse (1994), by Henry Beard. In it, the author chooses famous poems and parodies them, as if they were written by the poet's cat. Read To a Vase: To a Vase (1994) By Elizabeth Barrett Brownings Cat

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How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if Im in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone thy shards together fits, Ill break thee once again when thou art glued. To whom is this dedicated, and by whom? How does it parody the original sonnet by Browning? What does it say about the original poem and about how cats behave? Criticize the parody. Why do you think parody is a common device in literature, music, art and cinema?

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
Choose any poem you have read so far in this course and write a parody of it. Make sure to reproduce the original poem you are parodying. Be creative and try to make it as fun as possible.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://rodriguez9-2.pbwiki.com/f/vicpic%20women.jpg 2. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Kiplingc ropped.jpg/240px-Kiplingcropped.jpg 3. http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/Public_Domain_Photos/BronteE .jpg 4. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Alfred_ Lord_Tennyson_1869.jpg/240px-Alfred_Lord_Tennyson_1869.jpg 5. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/81/George_Eliot_a t_30_by_Fran%C3%A7ois_D%27Albert_Durade.jpg/200pxGeorge_Eliot_at_30_by_Fran%C3%A7ois_D%27Albert_Durade.jpg 6. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15625 7. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Robert_ Browning_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_13103.jpg/220pxRobert_Browning_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_13103.jpg 8. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Oscar_ Wilde_portrait.jpg/240px-Oscar_Wilde_portrait.jpg
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 04: BEFORE MODERNISM
TOPIC 02: CELTIC TWILIGHT (1885-1939)

The term for the Irish Literary Movement (also called the Irish or Celtic Renaissance, or the Irish Literary Revival) comes from the title of W. B. Yeat's The Celtic Twilight, a collection of stories and poems based on Irish folk-tales published in 1893. Half a century before the Celtic Twilight, Ireland had been devastated by the Great Famine (1845-1852), which constitutes a dividing line in Irish history. Because the English had prohibited Catholics (80% of the population) to own land (this law was abolished in the beginning of the nineteenth century, but recovery was slow), Ireland lived of a monoculture of potatoes. When a plague hit the potato plantations, people starved to death or migrated, especially to the US. The Great Famine was so terrible that the population of Ireland decreased in 25%. Gaelic was still the language in the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it declined after the Famine and with the implementation of a national school system. Towards the end of the century, with the uprising of nationalist ideals, Gaelic began to be taught in Irish schools again. This historical background has a strong influence on the Celtic Twilight. Only in 1898 Ireland had a local government which could control local affairs, although the country was still dominated by British rule. The Celtic Twilight began when the various forms of native Irish English were suddenly discovered to be not only the most legitimate, but the richest and most complete expression of Irish life. The sound of the speaking voice becomes the genuine source of modern realism. Individual character is revealed most fully and most faithfully through individual speech: judge a man by his words. This love for the Gaelic language was closely allied with a strong political nationalism. The Celtic Twilight was responsible for starting the Abbey Theater (founded by Yeats and Lady Gregory), an important theater until today, and for producing some great plays, especially by Yeats and J. M. Synge. In poetry, its main name (and one of the most celebrated poets in the English language) was undoubtedly Yeats, but we will take a brief look at some other, minor poets. The movement faded with the development of realism in Irish literature at the turn of the century, although it continued until the late 1920s, and some consider that the movement lasted till Yeats' death, which coincided with the beginning of World War II. In some aspects the Celtic Twilight can be seen as a reaction against modernism. Since the revival had a passion for the medieval, it looked at the modern as antagonistic to the archaic (and the
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Gaelic folk tales which inspired it were definitely archaic). Nevertheless, the greatest name of the movement is considered a modernist by many. W. B. Yeats (Irish, 1865-1939) received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. According to the Webster Literary Dictionary, The years from 1909 to 1914 marked a decisive change in his poetry. The otherwordly, ecstatic atmosphere of the early lyrics cleared, his verse line tightened, his imagery became more sparse and resonant, and he began to confront reality with a new directness (1222). W. B. Yeats Fonte [1]

A COAT (1912) >>

A Coat (1912) I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. [wrought = created] Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise [enterprise = initiative] In walking naked.

A DEEP-SWORN VOW (1919) >>

A Deep-Sworn Vow (1919) Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; [vow = promise, juramento] Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, [clamber = to climb with difficulty] Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face.

The Second Coming (1919) is probably Yeats' most well-known poem, or at least his most anthologized. It describes the climate in Europe after the end of the First World War (1914-1918). In order to do so, he alludes to Christian topics such as the Apocalypse and the second coming of Christ. But whose second coming is he really refering to? The Second Coming (1919) The Second Coming (1919) Turning and turning in the widening gyre [gyre = hurricane] The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. [reel = cambalear] The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, [vexed = irritated] And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? [slouch = walk with an awkward posture] The following poem belongs to his last phase. It was writen during the Spanish Civil War and the trouble arising in Germany, which would lead to World War II in 1939. It was the last lyric poem written by Yeats. Politics (1938) In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

How is the epigraph by Thomas Mann related to the rest of the poem?

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This is a short comic poem by J. M. Synge (Irish, 1871-1909), dedicated to someone who criticized his most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World, first produced in 1907. The Curse [curse = maldio] To a sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of The Playboy Fonte [2] Lord, confound this surly sister, [confound = damn; cause to be ashamed] [surly = grosseira] Blight her brow with blotch and blister,[blight = ruin] [brow = eyebrow, forehead, facial expression] Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver, [blotch and blister = manchas e bolhas] [cramp = hold together with a cramp, cibra] In her guts a galling give her. [guts = intestine] [galling = irritation] Let her live to earn her dinners In Mountjoy with seedy sinners: [seedy = dirty, sordid] Lord, this judgment quickly bring, And I'm your servant, J. M. Synge. Austin Clarke Fonte [3] Austin Clarke (Irish, 1896-1974) is considered one of the most important Irish poets after Yeats. The Planter's Daughter (1929)

When night stirred at sea, And the fire brought a crowd in, They say that her beauty Was music in mouth And few in the candlelight Thought her too proud, For the house of the planter Is known by the trees. Men that had seen her Drank deep and were silent, The women were speaking Wherever she went -As a bell that is rung Or a wonder told shyly, And O she was the Sunday In every week.

CHAT
Not only poetry, but every work of art is representative of the time and place it was made. How does the poetry produced during the Victorian

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Age, in England, and during the Celtic Twilight, in Ireland, fit this description? Use some poems as examples.

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://www.bookjive.com/wiki/images/thumb/d/d4/WilliamYeats1.jpg/ 200px-WilliamYeats1.jpg 2. http://www.heniford.net/4321/uploads/Alluploads/por_SyngeJohnMilli ngton.jpg 3. http://www.poetryconnection.net/images/Austin-Clarke.jpg
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 05: BREAKING TRADITIONS
TOPIC 01: MODERNISM (1901-1945)

To some, Modernism is seen as the period between 1890 to 1940. We will see it as something strictly belonging to the twentieth century, beginning in the first year of the century and lasting until the end of World War II. Others see modernist poetry as finishing in the beginning of WWII, with the arrival of confessional poetry (Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell etc), but we will not make this differenciation. Poetry during this time is considered more intellectual, less personal. Modernists reacted against Victorian poetry, and praised poetry for the layperson ironically, very much what Wordsworth had written in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads more than one century before (see British Romanticism). Just like the Romantics, modernists were also inspired by earlier poets, like the Greeks. John Timpane and Maureen Watts give a good summary of what made the twentieth century poetic: The 20th century was the Century of Poetry. The world had never seen such an explosion of styles, such a diversity of audiences, such a widening of the poetic horizon. What made the 20th century so poetic? The first half of the 20th century endured an economic depression preceded and followed by the trauma of two world wars. These three events called into question almost everything people knew about the world. So did the global triumph of technology: the automobile and airplane, the atom bomb, and the coming of the computer and the internet. Several of these innovations radio, telephone, and television, in particular helped spread information and learning. That started to change society, very rapidly so, especially after World War II, when the world saw the rise and expansion of middle-class society in many countries. Poets were able to be in touch with one another's work more quickly and easily, which led to new influences and new combinations of tradition, style, and even subject matter. (Timpane & Watts 120) In Modernism, the meaning of a poem sometimes bounced among images rather than being stated straightforwardly. This required a more agile reader capable of following a series of complex associations. It also helped create the public image of modern poetry's difficulty (Timpane 117). The main characteristics of Modernism are: a time of experimentation and innovation in poetry, in which poets believe that the old ways of writing cannot address the chaos of life; a break with the past; a fascination with psychology; the dominance of open-form verse over traditional forms; and an interest in more audacious themes (Timpane 120).

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Although Ezra Pound (American, 1885-1972), one of the main names in modernism, asked poets to Make it new!, several of his poems seem old in both his technique and choice of subject. Pound defended imagism in poem. That would be presenting an image, with plenty of concentration, going straight to the point. Look at what he did in this important little poem: In a station of the metro (1915)

Although Ezra Pound Fonte [1]

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

For Harmon, this is the quintessential distillation of the principle of the Image. For poets of the Imagist school, which flourished between 1910 and 1920, the ideal of poetry is a clear presentation of the visual (950). When Pound first wrote this poem, it had thirty lines, but he started reducing it to leave only the essential. What is left is an image. Since Pound does not use the words like or as, it is not a simile, but it is still a metaphor. After all, he is comparing petals on a tree (bough are the tree branches) to the faces appearing at a subway station. Before, during and after WWII, Pound spread anti-semitic ideals and favored fascist leader Mussolini over the Allies, making him the most controversial name in Modernism. When he was going to be condemned for treason by an American court, he pleaded insanity and was sent to a mental hospital for more than ten years. He then returned to Italy in 1959.
SALUTATION (1913)

O generation of the thoroughly smug [smug=feeling offensive satisfaction with oneself; complacent] and thoroughly uncomfortable, I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun, I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth and heard ungainly laughter. grace] And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am; And the fish swim in the lake and do not even own clothing. [ungainly = clumsy, without

T. S. Eliot (American who lived in London most of his life, 18881965) is, together with Pound, one of the main names in Modernism. According to Timpane, he combined French symbolism, a wide reading in the classics, English literature (especially the metaphysical poets of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras), and a frightening
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T. S. Eliot Fonte [2]

sensitivity to the modern world to create a new kind of poetry (124). He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Like his friend Pound, Eliot was also accused of anti-semitism.

STOP AND CHECK

Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, albeit long, is one of the most influential poems in the English language. The first lines in Latin come from Dante's Inferno and mean: If I thought that I was replying to someone who would ever return to the world, this flame would cease to flicker. But since no one ever returns from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy." Is this poem really a love song? Click here to read (Visite a aula online para realizar download deste arquivo.). The poem's protagonist, Prufrock, is probably a middle-aged man who complains of the missed opportunities of his life. According to Lehman, after the first three lines of the poem the romantic mood set by the opening couplet collapses, and modern poetry begins (342). The setting is an impersonal modern city. The individual is spiritually tired, conflicted between his rational thoughts and his emotions. In his important essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot wrote: poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not an expression of personality, but an escape from personality. Another of Eliot's famous poems is The Waste Land (1922), of which he said, I wasnt even bothering whether I understood what I was saying. To me it was only the relief of a personally and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmic grumbling. For Hirsch, The Waste Land is a poem of the living dead originally entitled He Do the Police in Different Voices. 'The Waste Land' is an open structure of fragments, a poem without a fixed center, and it has no single interpretation or truth, no single narrator or narrative thread to hold it together. It disseminates the self. It contains scenes and vignetettes from a wide variety of times and places: agitated scraps of conversations, parodies, intertextual allusions, unattributed and often broken quotations, a medley of radically shifting languages, a disturbing cacophony of voices. The result is a poem with the feeling of a nightmare (141). Since it is a long poem, we will just read the first few lines (but you can go on reading it here: http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html [3]): April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
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With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
VERSO TEXTUAL

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70

FORUM
Even people who do not read poetry often tend to use poetry in special occasions (funerals, weddings, graduations etc). Why do you think that happens? How can a poem written decades ago express what one person feels during one of those rituals? Talk about your personal experiences. Do you or your family use poetry in your rituals? What modernist poems from this unit (both from the Harlem Renaissance and from Modernism) would you use for a wedding? For a funeral? For a graduation? For a baptism? For any other special occasion? Point out what poem you would choose and why you would select that specific poem.

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
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Watch this scene from the 1994 British film Four Weddings and a Funeral: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA [4]

In the wake, a man recites a poem (in fact, an elegy) by W. H. Auden to honor his lost love.

Funeral Blues (1936) Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

In the 2005 American film Must Love Dogs, a W. B. Yeats' poem is recited by an older man about to get married again. Watch the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itCIn_3YB_c [5]

Brown Penny (1910)

I whispered 'I am too young,' And then, 'I am old enough'; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. 'Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair.' Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
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I am looped in the loops of her hair. O love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon. Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon.

Write a 2 to 3-page essay comparing these two scenes. How is poetry used by the characters in each film? Do they achieve their purpose? Both poems belong to the literary period known as Modernism. Briefly compare the two poems. Do they represent a break in tradition? Do they make it new?

SOURCE OF IMAGES

Carl_Sandburg [6] Robert_Frost [7] wstevens [8] amy-lowell [9] Young_Dorothy [10] D_H_Lawrence_passport [11] Dylan_Thomas [12] AudenLibraryOfCongress [13] mmoore [14] troethke [15] Christopher_Okigbo [16] Scholes4 [17]

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Ezra_Po und_2.jpg/200px-Ezra_Pound_2.jpg 2. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/87/T.S._Eliot% 2C_1923.JPG/180px-T.S._Eliot%2C_1923.JPG 3. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA 5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itCIn_3YB_c 6. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Carl_Sa ndburg_NYWTS.jpg/220px-Carl_Sandburg_NYWTS.jpg

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 05: BREAKING TRADITIONS
TOPIC 02: HARLEM RENAISSANCE (1918-1939)

As we know, the American Civil War (1861-1865) was fought between the South and the North of the United States. The agricultural South wanted to maintain slavery and separate itself from the rest of the country. When the North won the war, slavery ended, but not notions of race and, consequently, racism. Institutionalization of segregation started in 1880 and continued until 1965 (almost one century of segregation!). After the Civil War, African-Americans were the majority in three Southern states, and more than 40% of the population in other four. White supremacists reacted violently to maintain their power, through the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. A common phrase after the Civil War was separate but equal, when, in fact, there was very little equality. In theory, black men were allowed to vote (women of any race could only start voting from the 1920s onwards). In practice, however, most states had laws that forbid the majority of blacks and poor whites from voting. In 1900, 90% of blacks lived in the South, in states that had fought for the maintenance of slavery. Between 1890 and 1940, millions of AfricanAmericans were killed and brutalized, several often in public lynchings. Today, after history has been revised, we know that many of the incidents that were called riots (i.e., blacks rebelling against whites) were in fact massacres. During the first half of the 20th century, the largest internal population shift in American history took place. Starting in 1910, more than five million African-Americans left the South and moved north and west, expecting to find better opportunities. By 1920, there were 300 thousand black people living in Harlem. The concentration of blacks in New York led to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, also called the New Negro Movement. It was characterized by a rejection of the values of white Americans and Europeans, and a celebration of African ties. Most black migrants faced a definite change in lifestyle, going from a rural background to an urban reality. They created a new, and strong, middle class, proud of being black. The Harlem Renaissance (which did not only include literature, but arts in general) emerged toward the end of World War I, in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then diminished in the mid-1930s (with the market Crash and the Depression), but lasted until the beginning of the Second World War. It marked the first time that mainstream publishers and critics took black literature seriously. Even though this movement was extremely important, in hundreds of anthologies about American literature until the 1960s, African-American writers were forgotten (especially black women). Robert Stepto says, If
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The Harlem Renaissance Fonte [1]

indeed the 1920s saw a flourishing of Afro-American art and culture so great that we call it a 'renaissance,' we might at least expect histories of the 1920s to provide some account of that activity (788). Instead, what happens is total omission. Some historians ignore Negro writers but acknowledge the 'Negro theme'. And even those historians who do acknowledge black writers claim that their significance is more social than literary (Stepto 790). Many black writers during the Renaissance were accused of not revolutionizing the form, as white modernists were doing. Stepto complains: There is a profound difference between asking, as the extrinsic historian tends to do, 'What is the Afro-American contribution to literary modernism?' and asking whether literary modernism, as traditionally conceived, can 'contain' Afro-American writing or give form to any part of its history. The first question accepts literary modernism as an established canonical entity [...]. the second assumes that we should focus on those black writers who followed paths of their own, and in effect challenged, by resisting them, the impulses and models of modernism (786). Historians criticize how some black writers used the sonnet forms: black writers pouring 'black content' into 'white forms', writing sonnets while the world of poetry is undertaking fresher tasks (after all, it's the period of modernism). Stepto contests this with an example: it can be said that the basic logic of the Italian form invites black poets to explore what Du Bois would have called the 'twoness' of the Afro-American condition: two citizenships, two 'warring souls,' two ways of seeing reality, two time frames-one past and one present, or, better, one present and one future (796). When reading some of the works by the main poets of the Harlem Renaissance, keep this twoness in mind: these writers were black and American an America that only started accepting blacks in the end of the 1960s, and only after many protests. The three following writers preceeded the Harlem Renaissance, but were influential in defining the movement. James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing for president Lincoln's birthday. The poem became so popular in the black community that it is known as the Negro National Anthem. Later Johnson called the Harlem Renaissance the flowering of Negro Literature. Lift Every Voice and Sing (1900) Lift ev'ry voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list'ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
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Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won. Stony the road we trod, [trod = past of treat, walk on]

Bitter the chast'ning rod, [chastening = used to punish] [rod = vara] Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet [weary = tired] Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? [sigh = suspirar, but also long for] We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, [slaughter = massacre] Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last [gloomy = depressing; also dark] Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou who hast by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. [might = power]

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, [lest = for fear that, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; para que no] Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land. Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was a good friend of Frederick Douglass (author of the famous autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave). Dubar died of tuberculosis when he was only 33. He was one of the first black poets to become recognized nationally. Phyllis Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day, Few are my years, but my griefs are not few, frustration] Ever to youth should each day be a May-day, Warm wind and rose-breath and diamonded dew Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day. Oh for the sunlight that shines on a May-day! Only the cloud hangeth over my life. Love that should bring me youth's happiest heyday
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[grief = trouble,

[heyday = greatest

period; prime] Brings me but seasons of sorrow and strife; quarrel] Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day. Sunshine or shadow, or gold day or gray day, Life must be lived as our destinies rule; Leisure or labor or work day or play day Feasts for the famous and fun for the fool; Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day.

[strife = fight,

Alice Ruth Moore, or Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935), was married to Paul Laurence Dunbar from 1898 to 1901. Amid the Roses There is tropical warmth and languerous life quiet; dreamy] Where the roses lie In a tempting drift Of pink and red and golden light Untouched as yet by the pruning knife. trimming] And the still, warm life of the roses fair That whisper "Come," With promises Of sweet caresses, close and pure Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air. odor, or air] There are thorns and love in the roses' bed, And Satan too Must linger there; So Satan's wiles and the conscience deception, seduction] stings, Must now abide -- the roses are dead remain] [languorous =

[drift = flow, current] [pruning =

[whiff = passing

[linger = remain, persist] [wile = trick, [sting = hurt] [abide = continue,

Claude McKay (Jamaican, 1889-1948) is such an important poet that historians claim that the new Negro verse began as early as 1912, when Claude McKay first arrived from Jamaica (Stepto 794). Although McKay was writing at a modernist time, this sonnet does not include any innovations. In fact, it resembles Shakespeare and Milton (what though comes from Paradise Lost). Harmon points out: This poem so successfully transcends its origins (in a Harlem race riot in 1919) that it became a rallying cry for the British as well as the Americans in the Second World War (998). If We Must Die (1919)

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If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, imprisoned] While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed out] In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! the same race] [foe = enemy] Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! The City's Love (1922) For one brief golden moment rare like wine, The gracious city swept across the line; Oblivious of the color of my skin, forgetful] Forgetting that I was an alien guest,

[hog = a kind of pig] [penned =

[mock = ridicule] [shed = lost, poured

[kinsmen = men of

[blow = golpe] [pack = group]

[oblivious = indifferent; [alien = foreign; strange;

opposed] She bent to me, my hostile heart to win, Caught me in passion to her pillowy breast; The great, proud city, seized with a strange love, Bowed down for one flame hour my pride to prove. Langston Hughes (American, 1902-1967) is a leading name in the Harlem Renaissance. Alhtough one characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance was a move toward so-called "high art" in black writing, rather than the use of folk idioms, Langston Hughes insisted on making powerful use of the blues. Lehman says that Hughes adapted the blues to his poetic purposes, remarking, 'The mood of the Blues is almost always despodency, but when they are sung, people laugh. Bad Morning Here I sit With my shoes mismated. Lawdy-mercy! I's frustrated! I, Too (1925) I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen
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When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-I, too, am America. Madam and Her Madam I worked for a woman, She wasn't mean-But she had a twelve-room House to clean. Had to get breakfast, Dinner, and supper, too-Then take care of her children When I got through. Wash, iron, and scrub, Walk the dog around-It was too much, Nearly broke me down. I said, Madam, Can it be You trying to make a Pack-horse out of me? She opened her mouth. She cried, Oh, no! You know, Alberta, I love you so! I said, Madam, That may be true-But I'll be dogged If I love you!

[dogged = stubborn, determined, persistent]

Let America Be America Again (1938) Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.)
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Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme conspirar, plot] That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, flowers] But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? speak low and inarticulately] And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? vu] I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. cicatrizes] I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-hold, grasp] And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. powerful] [crush = esmagar] I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain = mixed, caught] Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! take; obtain unscrupulously] Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! cobia] I farmer, bondsman [bondsman = fiador] I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. = traded without exchanging money]
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[connive =

[wreath = ring of

[mumble = [veil =

[scars =

[clutch =

[mighty =

[tangled [grab =

[greed =

am

the

to

the

soil.

[bartered

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings ousadia] In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned trench; deep wrinkle; sulco] That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, pasture full of grass]

[daring = [furrow =

[grassy lea =

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came [torn = arrancado] [strand = margin, but To build a "homeland of the free." also encalhe] The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? public assistance] The millions shot down when we strike? start moving; fazer greve] The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-The land that never has been yet-And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, fundio] [plow = arado] Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-The steel of freedom does not stain. manchar; discolor] From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, sanguessuga] We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain,
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[on relief = [strike = attack;

[foundry =

[stain = [leech =

America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-promise] America will be!

[swear this oath = make this

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, anguish] The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, podrido] [graft = extortion] We, the people, must redeem action] [redeem = redimir] The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-All, all the stretch of these great green states-And make America again!

[rack = [rot = [stealth = secret

In the sense of the role and identity of the black poet, the Harlem Renaissance was not a monolithic movement. One good example is the dispute between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen (1903-1946). Cullen believed that an African-American poet should be free to write in mainstream established traditions, and need not racialize poetry. "I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet," he said, and used the sonnet. Langston criticized this attitude as a betrayal of racial identity and an imitation of whiteness. Even though both are great poets, they had different viewpoints.
1 - COUNTEE CULLEN 2 - JEAN TOOMER 3 - ARNA BONTEMPS 4 - YET DO I MARVEL

Cullen was a lyric poet who followed Romantic tradition like Keats and Shelley and resisted Modernism. Raised in a white community, he went to Harvard for his master's, and was criticized for not speaking from experience. His first book talked about race, but his second one avoided the issue. His marriage to W. E. B. DuBois's daughter symbolized a union of two generations, but it ended in divorce. Incident (1923)

Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee; I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, bigger] And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
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[glee = happiness, joy, delight]

[whit = the least big, so: he wasn't

I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember. Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was an American poet who "passed" as white, married white women, left Harlem, and was criticized for that and for his "ambivalence toward his blackness". He strove for racial unity and fought against segregation. Portrait in Georgia (1923)

Hair--braided chestnut, [chestnut = reddish brown] coiled like a lyncher's rope, Eyesfagots,

[braided = tranado] [coiled = forming rings] [fagot = a bundle of sticks and branches

bound together] Lips--old scars, or the first red blisters, Breath--the last sweet scent of cane, And her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame.

Reapers (1923) Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones ceifeiro] Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones foice] In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, cortador] [weeds = plants] And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds. surprised, scared] [squeal = guinchar] His belly close to ground. I see the blade. Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade. darkness] Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) was a black (male) American poet, not as famous as his colleagues. God Give to Men [reaper = [scythe =

[mower = [startled = [blade = lmina] [shade = partial

God give the yellow man an easy breeze at blossom time. Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover [slanting = oblique, inclined] every land and dream of afterwhile.
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[eager = anxious]

Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs giratria] to whirl in tall buildings. Allow them many ships at sea, and on land, soldiers and policemen. For black man, God, no need to bother more but only fill afresh his meed again] [meed = reward; wage] of laughter, his cup of tears. God suffer little men the taste of soul's desire.

[swivel chair = cadeira [whirl = rotate, spin]

[afresh = once more; anew;

In the following poem there are two names from Greek mythology. Understand who they are: Tantalus = A king condemned for his crimes. He was submersed in water for eternity, with grapes hanging over him, but when he tried to drink the water or eat the fruit, they receded from him. Sisyphus = the King of Corinth was condemned forever to roll a gigantic stone up a hill. When he got near the top, the stone would roll down, making him start again. Both of them are symbols of futility and frustration. Yet Do I Marvel I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why [quibble = argue, complain] The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors made in His image] Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus is baited by the fickle fruit, [fickle = volvel] declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn diffuse] With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. force] Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
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[stoop = bend; descend] [mole = toupeira] [flesh that mirrors = skin

[baited = tempted]

[doom = condemn]

[strewn = disperse, [petty = trivial] [compel = drive, [marvel = wonder;

also amaze] To make a poet black, and bid him sing! invite]

[bid = order;

While a group of white Americans (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein) were the Lost Generation, we could say that the black writers who made the Harlem Renaissance were the found generation. Not only because, for the first time, some minimal attention was being paid to black writers, but also because these authors were discovering an America that did not seem provincial at all to them.

CHAT
The poetry of the Harlem Renaissance is considered very modern in its content, but not so much in its form. However, it was produced during the Modernist Period. How do you think the Harlem Renaissance poetry is and is not part of modernism? Compare the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance to that of the Celtic Twilight. How were those periods revolutionary?

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

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Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 06: RECENT POETRY
TOPIC 01: POSTMODERNISM (1945-1989)

The mark of Modernism was anxiety, but the mark of Postmodernism was irony. Many people believe we are still living in the postmodern period, which begins after the end of the Second World War and ends (if it ends at all) in the last year of the eighties, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War was officially over. What happened during this almost half a century? Plenty: the world was divided into two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, two antagonistic nations that never battled directly, but measured their power in conquering and influencing countries and through the threat of the atom bomb. Everybody knew that, if the bomb were used, that would mean not only World War Three, but also our last war ever, since the planet would come to an end. Thus, the feeling during much of this period was one of despair and uncertainty. Several revolutions occurred during this period. The sixties saw protests from women, blacks, and gays, and also against a repressive education in schools and universities and against the Vietnam War. With the spread of the birth control pill, women experimented a new freedom, which to some meant the sexual revolution. The hippies defied capitalism and experimented with drugs. This lasted more than a decade, but by the beginning of the eighties a strong reaction against the rights of minorities began. This is sometimes called the backlash, and it is possible that we are still living its conservative effects today. Capitalism and individualism flourished, culminating in the Yuppies (nickname for young urban professionals) who thrived in the eighties. Their goal was to make and spend as much money as possible, as if there was no tomorrow. In literature in general, this period marked the appearance in the global scene of writers from around the world. Beginning in the sixties, the literary canon was disturbed with the introduction of several minority writers. As it began to be unacceptable that all the literature produced and studied came from heterosexual white men, it also became unacceptable that the only art of value was American (or British). English literature was invaded by several postcolonial writers, many of whom used the English language to be heard. We are going to see several of these poets in this and the following section.

1 - OODGEROO N. 2 - SYLVIA P. 3 - ALLEN G. 4 - CHARLES B. 5 - OGDEN N. 6 - LUCILLE CLIFTON 7 - GWENDOLYN B. 8 - MARJORIE O. M.

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Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Australia/Aboriginal woman, 1920-1993) was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish poetry. The Aborigenes in Australia, like all natives elsewhere (including our indians in Brazil), were nearly extinguished by the white colonizers. Not surprisingly, Aborigenes have dark skin. The ones who live today are impoverished. Municipal Gum (1960) Gumtree in the city street, Hard bitumen around your feet, betume; asphalt] Rather you should be In the cool world of leafy forest halls And wild bird calls Here you seems to me Like that poor cart-horse Castrated, broken, a thing wronged, Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged, Whose hung head and listless mien express [mien = appearance, aspect] Its hopelessness. Municipal gum, it is dolorous To see you thus Set in your black grass of bitumen-O fellow citizen, What have they done to us? Sylvia Plath (American, 1932-1963) had a turbulent life. She married English poet Ted Hughes, had two children, and committed suicide, becoming an icon. In the words of a confessional poet, Robert Lowell, her poems were "personal, confessional, felt, but the manner of feeling is controlled hallucination, the autobiography of a fever."
Fonte [2]

Fonte [1]

[bitumen =

The Hanging Man (1960) By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet. The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid: A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket. A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree. If he were I, he would do what I did.
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Allen Ginsberg (Beat and Postmodern American poet, 1926-1997) was as much part of the Beat Generation as other iconic authors like Jack Kerouac (On the Road). "Howl" is his epic poem, but it is too long for us to read here. Making the Lion For All It's Got A Ballad A lion met America in the road they stared at each other two figures on the crossroads in the desert. America screamed The lion roared They leaped at each other America desperate to win Fighting with bombs, flamethrowers, knives forks submarines. The lion ate America, bit off her head and loped off to the golden hills that's all there is to say about america except that now she's lionshit all over the desert. Charles Bukowski (American born in

Fonte [3]

Germany, 1920-1994) is well-known for his life of bars and prostitutes. There are two films that show his life, Barfly (1987), with Mickey Rourke, and the documentary Born Into This (2003). Consummation of Grief
Fonte [4]

I even hear the mountains the way they laugh up and down their blue sides and down in the water the fish cry and the water is their tears. I listen to the water on nights I drink away and the sadness becomes so great I hear it in my clock it becomes knobs upon my dresser it becomes paper on the floor it becomes a shoehorn
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a laundry ticket it becomes cigarette smoke climbing a chapel of dark vines it matters little very little love is not so bad or very little life what counts is waiting on walls I was born for this I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. Ogden Nash (American, 1902-1971) was one of the masters of light verse, humorous poetry that is often rhymed. Fleas

Adam
Fonte [5]

Had'em

I Didn't Go To Church Today

I didn't go to church today, I trust the Lord to understand. The surf was swirling blue and white, The children swirling on the sand. He knows, He knows how brief my stay, How brief this spell of summer weather, He knows when I am said and done We'll have plenty of time together. Lucille Clifton (American, 1936-2010) was a celebrated feminist poet who emphasized the female body. Hear her joy (and the public's) when she recites "Homage To My Hips." [7] Homage to My Hips these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places. these hips are free hips. they don't like to be held back.
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Fonte [6]

these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they want to do. these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top! Gwendolyn Brooks (American, 19172000) was the first African-American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1950. Listen to her [9] talk about her inspiration for "We Real Cool," her most famous poem, and how it has been received. It was banned in some schools because of the sexual connotation of the word jazz. We Real Cool (1960) The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. Marjorie Oludhe-Macgoye (English/Kenyan poet, 1928-) is considered by critics "the mother of Kenyan literature", since her work is closely connected to the birth of Kenya as a country. The following poem tells the story of a poor rural girl who serves as a slave to some relatives. She dies during childbirth, and the food served at her wake contrasts to what was given to her in life. The poem resembles a song because of its rhythm and repetition of the last line. A Freedom Song (1971)

Fonte [8]

Fonte [10]

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Atieno washes dishes, Atieno plucks the chicken, Atieno gets up early, Beds her sacks down in the kitchen, Atieno eight years old, Atieno yo. Since she is my sister's child Atieno needs no pay. While she works my wife can sit Sewing every sunny day: With he earnings I support Atieno yo. Atieno' sly and jealous, Bad example to the kids Since she minds them, like a schoolgirl Wants their dresses, shoes and beads, Atieno ten years old, Atieno yo. Now my wife has gone to study Atieno is less free. Don't I keep her, school my own ones, Pay the party, union fee, All for progress! aren't you grateful Atieno yo? Visitors need much attention, All the more when I work night. That girl spends too long at market. Who will teach her what is right? Atieno rising fourteen, Atieno yo. Atieno's had a baby So we know that she is bad. Fifty fifty it may live And repeat the life she had Ending in post-partum bleeding, Atieno yo. Atieno's soon replaced; Meat and sugar more than all She ate in such a narrow life Were lavished at her funeral. Atieno's gone to glory, Atineo yo.

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Brown explains: Caribbean poetry has grown in both volume and stature throughout the 20th century from something that hardly existed at least as far as the literary mainstream was concerned into a body of wordculture (embracing both oral and written dimensions) that is generally acknowledged to be among the richest, most accessible, and yet technically adventurous libraries of contemporary verse (xvii). Before the end of the 19th century, Caribbean poetry was important only historically or sociologically. The voices that spoke out of those early poems were the voices of strangers or exiles (Brown xvii). The Caribbean is a region of 31 countries, four colonial languages, and 300 years of immigration. Derek Walcott (Saint Lucian, 1930 -) Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Sea Canes (1971) Half my friends are dead. I will make you new ones, said earth. No, give me them back, as they were, instead, with faults and all, I cried.
Fonte [11]

Tonight I can snatch their talk from the faint surf's drone through the canes, but I cannot walk on the moonlit leaves of ocean down that white road alone, or float with the dreaming motion of owls leaving earth's load. O earth, the number of friends you keep exceeds those left to be loved. The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver; they were the seraph lances of my faith, but out of what is lost grows something stronger that has the rational radiance of stone, enduring moonlight, further than despair, strong as the wind, that through dividing caves brings those we love before us as they were, with faults and all, not nobler, just there. Alice Walker (American, 1944-), author of the bestselling novel The Color Purple (1982). Before You Knew You Owned It

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Fonte [12]

Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given out Take only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart Or greater than a star; Tame wild disappointment With caress unmoved and cold Make of it a parka For your soul. Discover the reason why So tiny human midget Exists at all So scared unwise But expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. Adrienne Rich (American, 1929-2012) Power (1974) Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth

Fonte [13]

one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on this earth in the winters of this climate. Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her fingerends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.

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James Wright (American, 19271980) Hook (1977) I was only a young man In those days. On that evening The cold was so God damned Bitter there was nothing. Nothing. I was in trouble With a woman, and there was nothing There but me and dead snow. I stood on the street corner In Minneapolis, lashed This way and that. Wind rose from some pit, Hunting me. Another bus to Saint Paul Would arrive in three hours, If I was lucky. Then the young Sioux Loomed beside me, his scars Were just my age. Ain't got no bus here A long time, he said. You got enough money To get home on? What did they do To your hand? I answered. He raised up his hook into the terrible starlight And slashed the wind. Oh, that? he said. I had a bad time with a woman. Here, You take this. Did you ever feel a man hold Sixty-five cents In a hook, And place it Gently In your freezing hand? I took it. It wasn't the money I needed. But I took it. Maya Angelou (American, 1928-) Still I Rise (1978) You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies,
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Fonte [14]

Fonte [15]

You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. your

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise
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Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. Pat Parker, American (1944-1989), black lesbian poet, died of breast cancer. For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend (1978) The first thing you do is to forget that i'm Black. Second, you must never forget that i'm Black. You should be able to dig Aretha, but don't play her every time i come over. And if you decide to play Beethoven--don't tell me his life story. They made us take music appreciation too. Eat soul food if you like it, but don't expect me to locate your restaurants or cook it for you. And if some Black person insults you, mugs you, rapes your sister, rapes you, rips your house, or is just being an ***-please, do not apologize to me for wanting to do them bodily harm. It makes me wonder if you're foolish. And even if you really believe Blacks are better lovers than whites--don't tell me. I start thinking of charging stud fees. In other words, if you really want to be my friend--don't make a labor of it. I'm lazy. Remember. Shel Silverstein (American, 19321999) Messy Room (1981) Whosever room this is should be ashamed! His underwear is hanging on the lamp. His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair, And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp. His workbook is wedged in the window,
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Fonte [16]

Fonte [17]

His sweater's been thrown on the floor. His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV, And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door. His books are all jammed in the closet, His vest has been left in the hall. A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed, And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall. Whosever room this is should ashamed! Donald or Robert or Willie or-Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear, I knew it looked familiar! Dennis Brutus (South African, 19242009), activist against Apartheid. Somehow We Survive (1982) Somehow we survive and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither. Investigating searchlights rake our naked unprotected contours; over our heads the monolithic decalogue of fascist prohibition glowers and teeters for a catastrophic fall; boots club the peeling door. But somehow we survive severance, deprivation, loss. Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark hissing their menace to our lives, most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror, rendered unlovely and unlovable; sundered are we and all our passionate surrender but somehow tenderness survive Grace Nichols (Guyana, 1950-) The Fat Black Shopping (1984) Woman Goes be

Fonte [18]

Shopping in London winter is a real drag for the fat black woman going from store to store in search of accommodating clothes and de weather so cold Look at the frozen thin mannequins fixing her with grin
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Fonte [19]

and de pretty face salesgals exchanging slimming glances thinking she dont notice Lord is aggravating Nothing soft and bright and billowing to flow like breezy sunlight when she walking The fat black woman curses in Swahili/Yoruba and nation language under her breathing all this journeying and journeying The fat black woman could only conclude that when it come to fashion the choice is lean Nothing much beyond size 14

PORTFOLIO ACTIVITY
Write a 2 to 3-page essay comparing these two poems about abortion. Since it is an essay, you must include introduction, development and conclusion. If you use any sources, include it in your bibliography. Gwendolyn Brooks (American, 1917-2000)
THE MOTHER (1945)

The Mother (1945) Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
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If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?-Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

Sharon Olds (American, 1942-)

THE END

The End We decided to have the abortion, became killers together. The period that came changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the crash was not a surprise. We went to the window, looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming curved shears of glass as if we had done it. Cops pulled the bodies out Bloody as births from the small, smoking aperture of the door, laid them on the hill, covered them with blankets that soaked through. Blood began to pour down my legs into my slippers. I stood where I was until they shot the bound form into the black hole of the ambulance and stood the other one up, a bandage covering its head, stained where the eyes had been. The next morning I had to kneel an hour on that floor, to clean up my blood, rubbing with wet cloths at those glittering translucent spots, as one has to soak a long time to deglaze the pan when the feast is over.

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LITERATURA EM LNGUA INGLESA III

UNIT 06: RECENT POETRY
TOPIC 02: CONTEMPORARY OR GLOBAL POETRY (1989-)

It is very difficult to separate Contemporary Poetry from Postmodernist Poetry, since many people still believe we are living in a postmodern age. However, if Postmodernism goes until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Global era is exactly what it says it is: a period when we are all connected virtually through the internet. For Timpane, worldwide influences join together in poetry to mix traditions, ethnicities, and even genders (136). In the Global Era, you can find poetry that rhymes and poetry that doesn't. Forms are joining with other forms, new with old, to make all sorts of hybrids. Prose poetry (which has been around since at least 1842) is a hallmark of the Global period [...]. And performance poetry is challenging written poetry as the premirer poetic form of the age (136). You could already perceive a difference in themes in Postmodernist Poetry. Poems tend to become more personal, or at least they sound that way because we have the inclusion of black women in the canon. Poetry from marginal countries (that is, that is not from the center, but from the periphery) also has its own agenda, talking about freedom and representation. This continues in contemporary poetry.

A.R. Ammons (American, 1926-2001) Their Sex Life (1990) One failure on Top of another.

Jack Prelutsky (American, 1940-) Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens (1990) Last night I dreamed of chickens, there were chickens everywhere, they were standing on my stomach, they were nesting in my hair, they were pecking at my pillow,
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they were hopping on my head, they were ruffling up their feathers as they raced about my bed. They were on the chairs and tables, they were on the chandeliers, they were roosting in the corners, they were clucking in my ears, there were chickens, chickens, chickens for as far as I could see... when I woke today, I noticed there were eggs on top of me.

Louise Gluck (American, 1943-) A Fable (1990) Two women with the same claim came to the feet of the wise king. Two women, but only one baby. The king knew someone was lying. What he said was Let the child be cut in half; that way no one will go empty-handed. He drew his sword. Then, of the two women, one renounced her share: this was the sign, the lesson. Suppose you saw your mother torn between two daughters: what could you do to save her but be willing to destroy yourselfshe would know who was the rightful child, the one who couldnt bear to divide the mother.
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Fonte [1] Michael Ondaatje (Canadian born in Sri Lanka 1954-) Author of The English Patient. Bearhug (1991) Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing, then something else, walk slowly round the corner to my son's room. He is standing arms outstretched waiting for a bearhug. Grinning. Why do I give my emotion an animal's name, give it that dark squeeze of death? This is the hug which collects all his small bones and his warm neck against me. The thin tough body under the pyjamas locks to me like a magnet of blood. How long was he standing there like that, before I came?

Lucille Clifton (American, 1936-2010) wishes for sons (1991) i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish them no 7-11. [cramps = clicas]

[7-11 = a convenience store]

i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you [clots = mass of coagulated blood]
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wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-) was born in Birmingham, one of the largest English cities, but grew up in Jamaica. Listen to the poet recite City River Blues [2].
CITY RIVER BLUES (1996)

City River Blues (1996) Went to the river Seeking inspiration, Saw dead fish floating Dead men boating And condoms galore Sat by the river Wondering, From where cometh Dat bloody smell, For if I waz wize And I could tell The world would know. This is our river It runs through our lives This is our river Our shit-coloured river, It's had it But it's ours. This river speaks Every boot had a body Every shirt had a friend, And the old boys
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[condoms = camisinhas; galore = a lot of]

Say they shall all meet Where every river ends. Here by this river Joe Public wrote songs And ships came From far away, Capitalism lived here, Ships left from here, To cheat someone, Somewhere. This river is on the map The Queen came here, The King came here, Hitler bombed it, Joe Bloggs bombed it, A hundred factories Bomb it every day, But this river won't go away, They say. Went to the river Seeking inspiration, Got eco-depression, Got stopped and searched, Got called a coon, [coon = a racist term used agaisnt black peple] Got damned lungs, Got city river blues.

Fonte [3]

Gillian Clarke (Welsh, 1937-). This poem centers around a childhood memory of the poet watching her mother save a girl who nearly drowned. Listen to her recite her poem: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do [4]
COLD KNAP LAKE (1997)

Cold Knap Lake (1997) We once watched a crowd pull a drowned child from the lake.

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Blue-lipped and dressed in waters long green silk she lay for dead. Then kneeling on the earth, a heroine, her red head bowed, her wartime cotton frock soaked, my mother gave a strangers child her breath. The crowd stood silent, drawn by the dread of it. The child breathed, bleating and rosy in my mothers hands. My father took her home to a poor house and watched her thrashed for almost drowning. Was I there? Or is that troubled surface something else shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows where satiny mud blooms in cloudiness after the treading, heavy webs of swans as their wings beat and whistle on the air? All lost things lie under closing water in that lake with the poor mans daughter.

Seamus Heaney (Irish, 1939-). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. You can hear him recite some of his poems here: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do [5]
MID-TERM BREAK (1997)

Mid-Term Break (1997) I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying-He had always taken funerals in his stride-And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
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When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble," Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Fonte [6]

Charles Simic (Serbian-American, 1938-) Prodigy (1999) I grew up bent over a chessboard. I loved the word endgame. All my cousins looked worried. It was a small house near a Roman graveyard. Planes and tanks shook its windowpanes. A retired professor of astronomy taught me how to play. That must have been in 1944. In the set we were using, the paint had almost chipped off the black pieces. The white King was missing
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and had to be substituted for. Im told but do not believe that that summer I witnessed men hung from telephone poles. I remember my mother blindfolding me a lot. She had a way of tucking my head suddenly under her overcoat. In chess, too, the professor told me, the masters play blindfolded, the great ones on several boards at the same time. Listen to him recite his poem www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do [7] Fork (2004) This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird's foot Worn around the cannibal's neck. As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless, and blind. Fork:

Fonte [8]

Ken Babstock (Canadian, 1970-) Public Space (2001) Wandering wordless through the heat of High Park. High summer. Counting the chipmunks who pause and demand the scrub stand by till their flitty, piggybacked equal signs can think through this math of dogwood, oak-whip, mulch. Children glue mouths to ice cream and chips, punch and kick at the geese, while rug-thick islands of milt-like scum sail the duckponds copper stillness Over-fat, hammerhead carp with predator brains... We can wreck a day on the shoals of ourselves. Cramped, you broke last night and wept at the war, at the ionized, cobalt glow that fish-tanked the air.
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Were here to be emptied under the emptying sky, eyes cast outward, trolling for the extraordinary.

Wole Soyinka (Nigerian man, 1934-) Nobel Prize winner in 1986. In the Small Hours (2002) Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes, Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins Of marooned mariners, captives Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman Dispenses igneous potions ? Somnabulist, the band plays on. Cocktail mixer, silvery fish Dances for limpet clients. Applause is steeped in lassitude, Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers And artful eyelash of the androgynous. The hovering notes caress the night Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play. Departures linger. Absences do not Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze As exhalations from receded shores. Soon, Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn The notes hold sway, smoky Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

Lisa Bellear (Australian, 1961-2006) To no one: And Mary did time (2003) Dear someone out there who may or may not give a damn

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Im not a liar Im not a thief But you dont give a damn, dont wanna get close, worried it might rub off, typical welfare come social worker wanna beezes To whomever might give me a passing accidental glance, to whomever might have the guts to stop and say hello I didnt mean to kill my baby daught I wasnt right I was sick Dear anyone to anyone who just might care I didnt know I just didnt know Im still not sure

Barolong Seboni (Botswana, 1957-) All the Same (2004) Me mahogany colour of strength mopped and topped by kinky curls of Kgalagadi ancestry but hairy all the same
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nostrils wide Receptive like antelope of the savannas nose broad trait of species negroid but nosey all the same heart shape of the continent of people denied people cheated people mistreated people robbed people rising haven risen able to feel love need all the same you frigid pink blanc mange crowned by sisal freely flowing to the nape coppertoned in the glint of the golden orb regal in the domain of sky blue eyes emerald treasures of lands forgotten lips ruby of empires of antiquity heart shape of new
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generations wanting to understand to want wanting all the same all other things being equal do you want to be my friend?

Chinua Achebe (Nigeria, 1930-) is well known for his first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), the most widely read novel in modern African literature. A Mother in a Refugee Camp (2005) No Madonna and Child could touch Her tenderness for a son She soon would have to forget. . . . The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea, Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there Had long ceased to care, but not this one: She held a ghost-smile between her teeth, And in her eyes the memory Of a mothers pride. . . . She had bathed him And rubbed him down with bare palms. She took from their bundle of possessions A broken comb and combed The rust-colored hair left on his skull And thenhumming in her eyesbegan carefully to part it. In their former life this was perhaps A little daily act of no consequence Before his breakfast and school; now she did it Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

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David Lehman (American, 1948-) Last Class (2006) Thus what we've learned is that our greatest poets were death-obsessed loners who seldom enjoyed the pleasures of lovers despite living in a constant state of sexual excitation. They started as revolutionaries and atheists, or they went to Harvard and voted Republican and mowed the yard. The night sky was starry and told them stories. Many didn't drive. They walked to work, writing poems in their heads, or stayed in their rooms, stayed out of trouble, prayed to a god no longer believed in. They felt like jerks in company, not knowing how to behave. They masturbated a lot, grew expert in solitude, pain, the power of a primal hurt and a witty epitaph on a well-kept grave.

Mary di Michele (Canadian, 1949-) War Smells Like Shit (2007) From After Pasolini Black the hours when stars glitter in the obsidian sky above while on the horizon, the rising moon spills milky light. I dont know if well ever see each other again. A day has passed; my youth has passed. All day I sat among the dry vineyards, in my body the wasteland of boredom. Everything here smells of endings, of shit and firing squads. I haunted the unplowed fields, picked a primrose here and there, breathed in the green. The snows of mount Cavallo seemed to float in the azure. Alone I wandered the fields, walking, walking, walking the
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endlessly empty fields Everything smells of gunpowder and shit but the earths a bitch flowering anyway from all that shit in blossoms blue and yellow, in tender buds on the alders. I want to spit as far as the farthest mountains on the borders of my country, into the sea hidden behind them, I want to spit into the faces of these villagers, these Italians, these Christians. Everything smells of firing squads and dirty feet (What keeps me tied to this earth? I must stink myself.) I dont know if well ever see each other again.

Sindiwe Magona (South African woman writer, 1943-) She was a housemaid who completed her secondary education by correspondence. After that she attended college, including Columbia University, in the US. Hands Off My Brain! (2009) Lure me not into your Black Studies Department Where I will learn of your Interpretation of the meaning Of my existence. Not so soon. Not so soon. Not when I can still smell My blood on your knuckles. Lure me not into your fine Institutions. The knowledge of my hurt; The bleedings from the beatings The losses, the deaths, the decay Of my institutions all these sorrows Are branded deep in my psyche. You trampled on my dreams; Sowed sorrow in my soul; Tore my whole world to shreds. But my spirit has survived; And I will teach you The meaning of my existence. Lure me not into your fine institutions; My very living is university par excellence. I have overcome slavery, apartheid, and wholesale
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Plunder at your hand. Let me tell the story I, who have lived it, know it best.

CHAT
Compare modernist poetry (that you have seen in the previous unit) to postmodernist poetry. What are the most striking diferences and similarities? Also compare postmodernist poetry to global or contemporary poetry.

FORUM
Listen to how Felix Dennis (English, 1947-) recites Downsizing (2004) [9] and to how Benjamin Zephaniah (English, 1958-) recites Reggae Head (1996) [10]. How can the way the poet recites his or her poetry contribute to the poem? In this case, both are reading anti-establishment poems. What in their voice helps us understand the poems they are reading? Talk about these two poems based on how the poets recite them.

FONTS

http://www.poets.org/images/authors/ACF7F.jpg [11]

http://www.poets.org/images/authors/jpreluts.jpg [12]

http://www.poets.org/images/authors/lgluck.jpg [13]

http://www.poets.org/images/authors/lclifton.jpg [14]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Charles_Simic.jpg/18

-Charles_Simic.jpg [15]

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/wole_soyinka.jpg [16]

http://alsblog.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/lisa.jpg [17]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/arts/photos/2007/06/13/chinuaachebe-cp-3115743.jpg [18]

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/dimichele/poet2.jpg [19]

http://www.synnovation.co.za/images/new/RIMG2367.jpg [20]

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http://www.newhambooks.co.uk/images/BenjaminZephaniah.jpg [21]

FONTES DAS IMAGENS

1. http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/375901/Michael+Ondaatje.jpg 2. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do? poemId=13374 3. http://www.literaturewales.org/client_img/gillian11.jpg 4. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do? poemId=1508 5. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1392 6. http://www.poets.org/images/authors/27_csimi_2.gif 7. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do? poemId=5560 8. http://diasporadialogues.com/writers/profiles/2011/06/26/ken_babstoc k.jpg 9. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do? poemId=11718 10. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do? poemId=13372 11. http://www.poets.org/images/authors/ACF7F.jpg 12. http://www.poets.org/images/authors/jpreluts.jpg 13. http://www.poets.org/images/authors/lgluck.jpg 14. http://www.poets.org/images/authors/lclifton.jpg 15. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Charles _Simic.jpg/180px-Charles_Simic.jpg 16. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/wole_soyinka.jpg 17. http://alsblog.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/lisa.jpg 18. http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/arts/photos/2007/06/13/chinua-achebe -cp-3115743.jpg 19. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/dimichele/poet2.jpg 20. http://www.synnovation.co.za/images/new/RIMG2367.jpg 21. http://www.newhambooks.co.uk/images/BenjaminZephaniah.jpg
Responsvel: PROF. Salete Nunes Universidade Federal do Cear - Instituto UFC Virtual

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