Furthermore, Tony Harrison’s V explores the relationship between centres and margins through language. Harrison uses language in order to not only give voice to the working class, but also to challenge dominant ideologies and dominant voices which are bound up with the use of Standard English. Previously discussed in reference to The Lonely Londoners, Standard English is associated with power and elitism and thus ‘places as subordinate all the utterances that are literally or figuratively between inverted commas’ (). This is challenged in V. in which the privileged voice of the eloquent bourgeois poet () and the working class ‘skinhead’ argue. Harrison was concerned with issues of articulation and voice, this is clear throughout his poetry and he discusses this in an interview: ‘And that the idea of articulation, expression, became for me absolutely vital …show more content…
with its use of other languages and references to the poet Rimbaud (Harrison, ), the play Hamlet (), and composer Herman Darewski (). Although, the use of ‘high culture’ is not as dense as in ‘Them and [Uz]’, it’s still problematic. It forces the reader to ask whether Harrison can ever truly represent the working class background he comes from because he has been ‘internally colonized’ by high culture (Liang, 108). Harrison is unable to communicate the voice of the margins effectively as he is part of the dominant discourse and ideology of high-brow culture. Furthermore, his act of representing a working class experience begins to sound as though the poet is acting in a colonialist manner. The poet tells the working class figure that the only reason he writes this poem is to give ‘some higher meaning to your scrawl’: …in which the poet cultivated with the notion of divine inspiration holds the belief that a poet must shoulder the mission of scattering the enlightenments over the mankind “to give the higher meaning to the scrawl”, and to “give them a hearing”. (Liang,
Negative experiences of belonging within the individual’s place of residence results in low self-esteem and develops the desire to escape and seek belonging elsewhere. We witness this in Herrick’s The Simple Gift in Longlands Road, when Billy says, ‘this place has never looked so rundown and beat’, which conveys his lack of connection to the place through pejorative colloquial personification of place. The “rundown and beat” nature of “place” parallels Billy’s perception of both himself and his home by using the pathetic fallacy of rain. Moreover, his hatred towards “Nowhereville” is expressed using coarse language and the symbolic action of vandalising the houses of his neighbours with pejorative colloquialism in ‘I throw one rock on the road of each deadbeat no hoper shithole lonely downtrodden house.’ This shows the place of residence is an important influence on creating a sens...
...art, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, "Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.”
...ly progressed from a way to tell stories about kings and gods to a way to tell stories about ordinary human beings. By moving our focus off of nobility, the language of plays became the language of every individual, and eventually, due to America’s “melting pot” culture, the language itself became individual. The unique language of American dramatic characters represents not only the diversity of the American people, but also the diversity of all human beings. These dramatically dissimilar differences were not typical of older plays when they were written, but now, they are what make American drama so valuable. Our acceptance and love for characters with different values than ours is representative of the love we can develop for those who are different from us. It represents the worldview that our current culture idealizes and strives to achieve: acceptance for all.
The main idea of this play is the powerful way language impacts people, by portraying their beliefs, theirs traditions and their individuality. By changing the language of their culture, it
“I look to poetry, with its built-in capacity for compressed and multivalent language, as a place where many senses can be made of the world. If this is true, and I’ve built a life around the notion that it is, poetry can get us closer to reality in all its fluidity and complexity.”
Rothenberg, Jerome and Pierre Joris, eds. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California, 1998.
A small glimmer of hope in an imperialistic world is only taken away in order to ensure equivalence in an imperfect society. Harrison Bergeron is a classic sociological tale written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. that is based on the sociological aspect of everyone being equal - not one individual could be above another. This short story focuses on the idea of symbolism by using masks and handicaps to force the social norm of being the same while foreshadowing the courage of being unique in a seemingly perfect world, all while displaying irony through the way in which our society runs today. This story relates to today’s society in that both are alike in that individuals want to break free from societies constraints of social norms.
“Poe’s Theory of Poetry.” The Big Read. Handout One. N.d.. 16. Web. 19 April 2014.
In his article "'Funeral Bak'd Meats:' Carnival and the Carnivalesque in Hamlet," Michael D. Bristol mingles Marxism and Bakhtin's notion of double discoursed textuality into an unique reading of Shakespeare's drama as a struggle between opposing economic classes. Bristol opens with a two paragraph preface on Marxism, highlighting Marx's own abnegation of Marxism: "Marx is famous for the paradoxical claim that he was not a Marxist" (Bristol 348). While he acknowledges some of the flaws inherent in Marxist criticism, Bristol uses the introductory paragraphs to assert the "enormous importance" of "the theory of class consciousness and class struggle" which Marxist theory includes (349). Having prepared readers for a discourse whose foundation lies upon "the most fundamental idea in Marxism," Bristol recasts Hamlet as a class struggle.
To this day, the discussion is still raging as to whether it is the great poet’s voice that is heard reading out lines from one of his timeless works. There is more than just an eye out for more evidence that may help settle the matter once and for all. What I know is that we all want it to be. We want to feel closer to this American literary Moses. To wallow in the knowledge that it was the great inventor, Thomas Edison making a wax cylinder recording of an equally great man reciting pieces of his masterpiece.
...human imagination and reality, the role of imagination in shaping that reality, and the role of the reader, as an observer as well as participant, in the understanding of poetry, of language shaping the world around him.
looks at the time and how the poet's father has lack of control of the
...relies on this basis, to establish a greater awareness and comprehension of 1960s society. Without this assumed knowledge of Hamlet, one cannot truly appreciate Stoppard’s play, which informs society about their nature and shortcomings.
In T.S Eliot's poem, Portrait of a Lady, he gives a glimpse into the upper class of post war society- something rather dispirited and forlorn. It is filled with people from the higher social standings and they are as soulless and empty as the lady in the poem. The upper class was also represented by the main character himself, who is truly unable to connect as a whole to his surroundings. He initially describes the world in the poem as dark, covered in smoke and haze – the scene that is in and of itself a mere half life, the individuality of the characters already swallowed by the abyss of ritual that has devoid of meaning. The truly shocking part that links this poem to the author’s previous poems is the underlying brokenness and the soullessness that the characters seem to inhabit. The main character of t...
From looking at The making of the English Working Class it seems quite obvious that E.P Thompson’s main arguments throughout his book are about the notion of ‘class’, in particular the ‘making of the working class’ ; and in order to evaluate his theories we must attempt to look at other historians opinions about his book, and his suggested theories, in order to come to an impartial evaluation.