Text Analysis and History

Text Analysis and History Session Four: Imagery

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

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

Broadest def.: All the objects and qualities of sense perception Literal descriptions Allusions The vehicles of similes and metaphors = motif 2. Broad def.: Specific descriptions of visible objects and scenes 2. = motif 3. Narrow def.: Figurative language – the vehicles of metaphors and similes (= 1.3) Imagery, symbol and related concepts in the context of history: Imagery

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

Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): simile and metaphor • Simile – a statement of similarity • Metaphor – a statement of identity • The tenor – the subject • The vehicle – the metaphorical term itself • My love is like a red, red rose (Robert Burns)

Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): simile and metaphor • There’s a lipstick sunset smeared across the August sky (John Hiatt) • Let us go, then, you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table (T.S. Eliot, ”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”) • He smiled like an open piano (Graham Greene)

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

William Blake, ”The Sick Rose” (1794): literal or metaphorical rose? • O Rose, thou art sick.The invisible worm,That flies in the nightIn the howling storm: • Has found out thy bedOf crimson joy:And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.

William Blake, ”The Sick Rose” (1794)

Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): symbol • Public symbols (cultural specific signification and value) • Private symbols (writer specific signification and value

Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): symbol

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

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

Imagery, symbol and … (cont.): • Modernism

Text Analysis and History