poem

Definition of literry
Literature is literally “acquaintance with letters” (Latin littera meaning “an individual written character/letter”). The term has come to identify a collection of texts. As a proper noun it refers to a whole body of literary work
 We are concerned more with imaginative or creative writing. The kind of writing that is not real.
 A text is a creation of the poet/author/dramatist available to an audience and meant to create an impact – intellectual and emotional
 Words are the literary artist’s tools. Literature is verbal art.

Why we atudy literry
 We study literature because it enriches us; for wisdom, for entertainment, for an understanding of diverse human experiences.
 We study literature because it is profound, beautiful and moving.
 We study literature because it is an excellent way to sharpen your close reading skills, enable critical thinking, and refine our general sense of art appreciation
 There are many critical ways to approach a text including the formalist, biographical, historical, textual, psychological, mythological, sociological, deconstructionist, feminist, or reader-response, semiotic etc.
• Formalist critics focus on the formal elements of a text. They examine the relationship between form and meaning, emphasizing how a work is arranged. This kind of close reading pays special attention to diction, figures of speech, plot, characterization, narrative technique, rhyme schemes, metre etc. Formalists look at how these elements work together to give shape to a work while contributing to its meaning. Information that goes beyond the text - biography, history, politics, economics, and so on - are regarded as extrinsic

Theory of literary

 mitative theory
Aristotle (384-322BC Poetics), mimesis, recreation, representation; art refines nature, learn about nature
 Expressive Theory
Artist expresses his/her feelings
 Affective theoIry
Work of art arouses emotion in / affects the reader

What is good literature and what is bad literature?
Lasting impression Fleeting
Stretches the imagination, complex Formulaic, simple
Aesthetically pleasing, artistic Ordinary, no real aesthetic value
Message traverses culture and Immediate value, no
time permanence
Accepted into the ‘canon’ Not on the list
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare-1

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare-2
high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square, but whether it was
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare-3
spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.

Example: from The Elder Edda, "Words of the High One"
The coward believes he will live forever
If he holds back in the battle.
But in old age he shall have no peace
Though spears have spared his limbs.
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great deed.
(The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems from the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. 13th century.)
Critically thinking about and reading literature
 ANALYZE: What does the passage mean, literally?
 INTERPRET: What does it mean figuratively? How do you read it and what suggests that this is a valid interpretation?
 QUESTION: What problems are suggested by the reading? What philosophical question(s) does the reading inspire?
 SYNTHESIZE: How does this reading compare or contrast in content/form with what you've read before?
 EVALUATE: The writing. What criteria do you use to establish this judgment? What defines a first rate poem, play, story etc?
 Elder Edda -2ANALYZE, LITERAL MEANING (paraphrase):
This excerpt tells us that only cowards would think to save their own lives rather than fight the battle to the end. But surviving thus, the coward will not have any piece of mind; he'll be tormented right into old age.
 It's better to die, since every living thing is mortal anyway. But the great deed is immortal. So, it's better to die in battle and possibly achieve great deeds rather than preserve mortal life. INTERPRET, SYMBOLIC MEANING
The battle may be symbolic of life itself. Just living life may be a battle but, this poet tells us, only cowards choose to turn their back on it. If we let life pass us by and not seize the moment then we'll have nothing in old age but regrets. Better to perform the ‘great deeds’ without fear of loss.
Life and death also equated with success and failure, loving and losing, sadness and happiness etc.
 QUESTION
What are ‘great deeds’? Personally, culturally, historically?


 SYNTHESIZE (excerpt from Homer’s The Iliad, Book IX)
Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting,
and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses,
but a man's life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted
nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth's barrier.
For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.
And this would be my counsel to others also, to sail back
home again… (Achilles’ response to Odysseus)
 EVALUATE


Other questions:
Assuming this writer considers great deeds to be extreme valor in battle? Who is great then, the Iraqis, the Americans, both, neither?
Has there been anyone to perform a great deed in 1998?
SYNTHESIZE
Here's a neat little contrast to the sentiment described above. This passage is by Homer from the Illiad (Book IX), the famous ancient Greek epic of the Trojan War:
Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting,
and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses,
but a man's life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted
nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth's barrier.
For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.
And this would be my counsel to others also, to sail back
home again…
The Iliad, Book IX (Lattimore, trans.)
This passage contradicts the first. How can I reconcile them? Does my knowledge of their contradiction help deepen my understanding of each? If I read the first passage with an awareness of the second, I probably have to form a mental argument in order to go along with the writer's proposition. I either agree or disagree and attempt to formulate why. All people are mortal; when they die they are utterly forgotten over time. The only way to live on beyond one's lifespan is to accomplish something valuable, something that will inspire others who come after. Great deeds are inspiring; they are the only path to immortality. Therefore, accomplishing great deeds is valuable at all costs, even the supreme cost, one's life. Or, I may say-this life is all we have; it's precious. To lose one's life for the sake of everlasting glory is a waste. We cannot be there to partake of the sweetness of that glory once we're dead. It's better to enjoy the simple things in life while we have life; we should not throw our lives away for vainglorious purposes.
Or, I may not choose to engage the readings on that kind of personal level. Maybe I merely create separate mental files to accommodate their differences. Perhaps I mentally file one poem as "pro-war" and the other as "anti-war" poetry. These are categories that may be useful later as I read other poems, or other literature.
EVALUATE
Until you read a LOT of literature, you probably won't have a clear sense about what makes "great" literature and what makes average literature, or worse, poor literature. You may feel that since you find it hard to understand any of it, it's all bad. But that would be a mistake. Like anything, learning to read literature takes time and practice. And developing an appreciation for great literature comes with exposure to the good and the bad. You may be tempted to say that you don't like Shakespeare, for instance, because his language isn't exactly the same as yours and you have to do a bit of work to piece out the meaning…but if you dismiss him, you are dismissing what most literary critics agree is one of the greatest-if not THE GREATEST-writers our language has ever known. To some extent you need to be willing to work as you read, and extend the benefit of the doubt until you are really sure you are evaluating a piece of writing on objective grounds, and not just on the basis of whether you personally struggled to comprehend it. In this course, you're being "introduced" to literature…that means you're being introduced to a new set of critical tools for thinking about literature and becoming a more thoughtful, more effective reader of literature. And hopefully, as you get more practice and become a more sophisticated reader, you'll be able to judge whether a work of literature is first or fifth rate. You'll be able to sense whether it's on the level of Shakespeare-truly original, multidimensional, moving, evocative, thought-provoking-or whether it's on the level of formula fiction: a dimestore novel or a Harlequin romance.
The Elder Edda is not a single continuous narrative, but a collection of poems, most of which are preserved in the Konungsbók, or Codex Regius (King's Book), copied in Iceland about A.D. 1270. The poems are the work of many poets. Their language suggests that they were composed between 800 and 1100 A.D. and first written down between 1150 and 1250 A.D. The poems are a rich source of information for culture and belief among the Vikings. They are not, however, purely Scandinavian. Christian Irish influence is likely, while the Sigurd story draws on actual events among the tribes that invaded the Roman Empire between 350-600 A.D.
The Elder Edda first came to scholarly attention in the seventeenth century as antiquarian interest in the non-classical past was growing in Europe. It was published in its entirety just as intense romantic and nationalistic interest in the perceived tribal ancestors of the European nation states emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century. This interest, combined with the new science of philology, ensured popular and scholarly interest in texts like the Elder Edda. Some of the lays were available in bowdlerized versions even for children by the later nineteenth century. In the hands of Richard Wagner, the Elder Edda became the foundation of one of the century's masterpieces. While northern legends and the scholarship based on it were misused by the Nazis to develop and further their ideas of race, they are seriously misrepresented by such ideas. In the 1960s, the poet W. H. Auden in collaboration with an Old Norse scholar, Paul B. Taylor, produced a translation of sixteen of the poems.
Elder Edda Summary
The Sibyl's Prophecy
At Odin's request, a prophetess predicts the future from creation to fall and renewal. She begins with a time when nothing existed; heavens and earth come into existence, but in chaos. The gods, who create the arts and crafts, social life, and finally, mankind, impose order. She prophesies the war between the Aesir and the Vanir and their conciliation, the death of Balder through Loki's trickery, Loki's punishment, the dwarves's golden home, the realm of the dead, and the punishment of the wicked. She foresees the final battle between gods and giants that will end in their mutual destruction. Sun and stars fail, the earth sinks beneath the sea, but in the final stanzas, she describes a second green earth rising from the waters. Balder and Hod, his blind brother who accidentally killed him, will come again to rule. Then a mighty one, sometimes identified as Christ, will come down to bring the deserving to a hall more beautiful than the sun.
The Sayings of the High One
This is a composite poem in which only stanzas 111-64 are in the voice of Odin the 'High One.' It begins with practical advice on behavior and attitude: "It takes sharp wits to travel in the world / they're not so hard on you at home—Better to be alive than to be lifeless / the living can hope for a cow." Even among such homely advice, however, is fame, so important to the epic attitude: "Cattle die, kinsmen die, / One day you die yourself; but the words of praise will not die." The poem ends with Odin's advice addressed to a young man called Loddfafnir.
The Lay of Vafthrudnir
Odin has a contest with the giant Vafthrudnir to determine who has the greater knowledge of the gods, creation, and the future. Odin wins because he alone knows what he whispered in Balder's ear as he lay on his funeral pyre. The lay serves as a glossary of the metaphors and images used in early Norse poetry.
The Lay of Grimnir
Hunding had two sons: Agnar and Geirrod. They were fishing from a rowboat and were swept out to sea. When they made land, a farmer took them in until spring came. When they arrived back home, Geirrod jumped out of the boat and pushed it and his brother back out to sea. Geirrod became king. Later, Odin and Frigg, his wife, were looking down at earth. Odin teased Frigg that Geirrod, whom he favored, was king while Agnar, whom Frigg favored, lived in the wilds. Frigg answered that Geirrod was stingy. Odin bet her he would find him generous to strangers. Frigg sends a message to Geirrod to beware of a wizard coming to his court, describing Odin in disguise. Odin arrives and when he refuses to give more than an assumed name, Grimnir, he is seated between two fires to make him speak. Geirrod's son Agnar thinks it wrong to mistreat a guest and brings him a drink. For this act, Odin blesses the boy and tells him his real name. When the king hears, he jumps up to take him away from the fires, but stumbles and falls on his own sword.
Skirnir's Journey
This lay tells of the god Frey who saw and loved a giant's beautiful daughter. He sent his servant Skirnir to persuade her to accept him as her lover. Skirnir cajoles and threatens her until she finally accepts Frey.
The Lay of Harbard
The first of the comical lays. Odin disguised himself as a ferryman and engaged Thor in a duel of words. Thor loses badly.
The Lay of Hymir
The gods are feeling like a party and ask the giant Aegir to brew beer for it. Thor unfortunately annoys Aegir. Aegir tells Thor he must borrow the giant Hymir's brewing vat. Thor and Tyr, Hymir's son, set out for Hymir's home where Hymir's young mistress welcomes them. She warns them Hymir does not like guests and makes them hide when he comes. She tells Hymir that his son has come with a friend. Three bulls are cooked for dinner. Thor eats two of them. Hymir tells his guests that they will go out hunting for supper. Thor suggests that he will take a boa
ANALYZE
LITERAL MEANING: This brief excerpt tells us that only cowards would think to save their own skins rather than fight the battle to the end. Even if he survives, the coward will not have piece of mind; he'll be tormented right into old age. It's better to die, since every man is mortal anyhow. The great deed is immortal. It's better to die in battle, and possibly achieve great deeds, than to save your skin. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
INTERPRET
SYMBOLIC MEANING: The battle may be symbolic of life itself. Sometimes just living your life is a battle. It's a battle to get up, go to work, get fired (laid off), fall in love, get burned…but, this poet tells us, only cowards choose to turn their back on the battle. If we let up now, if we let life pass us by, if we refuse to seize the moment (carpe diem!) then we'll reach old age with nothing but a pile of regrets. Better to risk it, take chances, LIVE life to its hilt, gather the "great deeds" while we can. Not only will we reach old age in peace, but we'll glory in our accomplishments, and others will too. We can be an inspiration.
QUESTION
The writer mentions "great deeds." So I assume we're not talking about just any old ordinary deed. If I wake up tomorrow morning and manage to brush my teeth, wash my face, eat breakfast, and make it out of the house in time to get to class, I may be performing responsible deeds, but not GREAT deeds. Several questions occur to me. Assuming this writer has a point-our great deeds are immortal-then my first question is, what ranks as a "great deed"? Would the writer define a great deed the same way I would? How would I define a great deed? What's an example of a great deed in my own mind? (I'm reflecting on my own lifetime and whatever I can conjure up from my knowledge of history, at this point.) Then I might turn philosopher and ask: how do we define the GREAT DEED for our times, in our cultur