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Gender in literature
Gender in literature
Themes of the Victorian era
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The responder’s sense of belonging and exclusion from the text is evoked from the discourse between responder and the text – further influenced by the composer’s purpose, values and textual features. Gaita manipulates the Romanticised representation of the loving father in opposition to the troubled mother figure Christine to evoke a sense of belonging in the reader to the filial biography “Romulus, My Father”. Conversely, Gary Crew’s “Strange Objects” barricades the reader through the repellent protagonist and postmodern textual techniques. Whereas in the epic ballad “The Lady of Shallot”, Tennyson’s Victorian contextual values of gender and class may conflict with that of the responder, thus affecting their sense of belonging to the text.
Gaita’s retrospective and remorseful tone builds an empathetic link with the reader so as to develop a sense of belonging to the memoir, “Romulus, My Father”. This ‘perioautobiography’ belongs to the genre of life writing, the author writing around and about the self. Thus, it can be viewed as a form of catharsis and ‘scriptotherapy’ for composer Gaita; as evident through his and Romulus’ regret in not being accepting of Christine’s mental disorder, “No doubt we were ignorant of the nature of such illness, as many people still are today.“ Additionally, this demonstrates the transforming attitudes over time towards mental illness and belonging. Susan Green describes in Genre: Life Writing “the narrative of life enables a writer or reader to better understand themselves and their relationships.” Despite the barriers of subjectivity and bias conventional of the autobiographical form, Gaita utilises this genre of life writing to induce pathos, influencing the responder’s sense of belonging to th...
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...ng. However, an educated audience will be able to appreciate and connect to the poem The Lady of Shallot through its textual integrity of Tennyson amalgamation of textual form, features and structures to convey his contextual concerns.
The composer’s form, features and structure in the texts “Romulus, My Father,” “Strange Objects and The Lady of Shallot” impact on the responder’s sense of belonging to the text. Additionally, the interaction between the responder and the text through the characterisation, disparities in gender and class values as well as social ideologies is revealed to consequently influence the responder’s intrinsic sense of belonging to the text. Paradoxically, the emotional response of the audience evoked by the text, whether it is admiration or contempt, unintentionally demonstrates a connection of belonging binding the responder and text.
Although Prize Giving highlights the superiority of the male Professor over the rest of the girls, there is a role reversal towards the end of the poem where the titian haired girl establishes power over him. Through her sexuality and musical talent, the girl asserts dominance in the final stanza and causes the professor to feel inferior for the first time, which comes as an uncomfortable shock to him (Harwood, pg.29). The poem of Father and Child which was published in Harwood’s 2nd Volume of poems continues to suggest a possible social change through the use of a child. Here, Harwood defeminises the child refusing to sentimentalise little girls by referring to the protagonist as a “wisp-haired judge” despite only being seven. The poem then links this to King Lear through the words “Old king” while reversing the relationship and position of power between father and daughter (Harwood, pg.111). These hints for change arise from the female children rather than the adults showing that although Harwood often represents women as subordinate to men, there is a possibility for change through the new
A composer’s construction of distinctive voices in a text plays a crucial role in portraying how life experiences shape an individual’s identity, world view and response to their environment and others. It is through the careful selection of language techniques that composers represent how individuals respond to life experiences, thereby positioning the responder to think about the significant issues of the world, as it can shape the individual’s perception, persona and interpretation. Both Merele Day’s 1990’s detective fiction nobel ‘The life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’ and the 1980’s poem ‘Stealing’ by Carol Ann Duffy confronts us with various characters related with crime giving us an intuition into the motivation and perspectives of unique individuals. Day presents both Claudia Valentine, a subverted representation of the hardboiled detective and also Harry Lavender a typical criminal mastermind. Likewise Duffy presents an ambiguous individual who glamourises criminal acts against society. Eventually expressions within the two texts ensure that readers understand the actions taken by each protagonist.
Composers of texts repeatedly have the common aim of persuading the audience into agreement or seek to gain empathy. The deliberate intention of the composer to inflict an incongruous perspective through the use of medium is represented through personalities, events and situations. Particularly, in both Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s infamous 1941 Four Freedoms speech, composer perspectives presented on historical events can be distorted, shaped, and reshaped to uniquely evoke a passionate response in the audience. Subtleties in the presentation of form overt a strong authenticity to text and provide a sustained theatrical license for the composer.
In his novel, Hosseini writes with a deceivingly simple form of prose. Instead of assaulting the audience with his extravagant vocabulary, he entices them with the minds of his characters. Leaving the audience with feelings of empathy and repulsion, the work exhibits Hosseini’s adept abi...
Writing a journal from the perspective of a fictional eighteenth century reader, a mother whose daughter is the age of Eliza's friends, will allow me to employ reader-response criticism to help answer these questions and to decipher the possible social influences and/or meanings of the novel. Though reader-response criticism varies from critic to critic, it relies largely on the idea that the reader herself is a valid critic, that her critique is influenced by time and place,...
By reading a certain print texts, readers are manipulated into accepting or rejecting additional texts. The short story “The Altar of the Family” written by Michael Welding shares many comparisons with the feature article “Boys to Men” written by Stephen Scourfield, and by reading one the reader can make clear understanding of the other. Symbolism, genre and certain values and attitudes are present in both the texts and will be further examined in the following essay to show that a readers understanding of particular print texts is shaped by the reading of previous texts.
Chopin’s use of symbolism throughout the text establishes a method of conveying the opposition of structural gender roles in Victorian society to readers in a magnificent way.
Tucker, Herbert F. “Maud and the Doom of Culture.” Critical Essays on Alfred Lord Tennyson. Ed. Herbert F. Tucker. New York: G. K. Hall, 1993. 174-194.
middle of paper ... ... adulterated voice on the soundtrack. Texts and their appropriations reflect the context and values of their times. Within Shakespeare’s Othello and Geoffrey Sax’s appropriation of Othello, the evolution of the attitudes held by Elizabethan audiences and those held by contemporary audiences has been shown through the context of the female coupled with the context of racism.
In “The Fatal Sisters” Thomas Gray has created a monologue pregnant with references to history, geography, and mythology. These reappearing references and allusions enrich the text, as they allow a closer look at the political situation surrounding eleventh century Britain. The poems’ sixteen stanzas exhibit an ABAB rhyme scheme, which provides for systematic organization and positive aesthetic effects. Closer examination of the setting, tone, and imagery of the poem permits insight into the text’s content and artistic genius.
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Blunden, Edmund and Heinemann, Eds. “Tennyson.” Selected Poems. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1960. p.1. print.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are representative works of two separate movements in literature: Modernism and Post-Modernism. Defining both movements in their entirety, or arguing whether either work is truly representative of the classifications of Modernism and Post-Modernism, is not the purpose of this paper; rather, the purpose is to carefully evaluate how both works, in the context of both works being representative of their respective traditions, employ the use of symbolism and allusion. Beckett’s play uses “semantic association” in order to convey meaning in its use of symbolism; Woolf’s novel employs a more traditional mode of conveying meaning in its own use: that is, the meaning of symbols in Mrs. Dalloway is found within the text itself. Woolf’s novel exists as its own entity, with the reader using the text as the only tool in uncovering any symbolic meaning, while Beckett’s play stimulates the audience in such a way that the audience projects their own meaning in the symbols presented.
Description and narrative are the chief modes of this poem. Nevertheless, at critical moments the actual utterance of the anonymous characters is invited in ("Yes, sir,/ all the way to Boston"). The binder of these varied procedures is the speak...
Logan, Thad Jenkins. "Twelfth Night: The Limits of Festivity." Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. N.p.: Rice University, 1982. 223-38. Vol. 22 of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rpt. in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.