Approach to Literature week 10

Ø   Henrik Johan Ibsen

A major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic early play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements. Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare ".

Ø  A doll’s house (玩偶之家)

A Doll's a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen.

The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity.”

Ø  Flip-flop ( it’s summer in Washington… …)

Ø  Skintern

In American workplaces, a skintern is an informal term for a summer intern, usually female, who dresses in clothing more revealing than that which is common for the field in question.

The phenomenon is sometimes a deliberate sartorial strategy, but more often is believed to result from ignorance of accepted professional dress standards. Older women in the offices where those interns work have often responded by advising them on how to dress more appropriately. Some feminists, however, have seen the term as yet another symptom of inherent sexism in the workplace, since it is so widely applied.

Ø  Herman Melville (an humanity)

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period best known for Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to Scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts.

Ø  Description

Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, argumentation, and narration. Each of the rhetorical modes is present in a variety of forms and each has its own purpose and conventions. The act of description may be related to that of definition. Description is also the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story.

Definition: The pattern of development that presents a word picture of a thing, a person, a situation, or a series of events.

Ø  Prescription

Something that is suggested as a way to do something or to make something happen

Ø  I wandered lonely as a cloud (use personification a lot)

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Ø  Vocabulary

l   Solitude (單一): The state of being completely alone, especially when this is pleasant or relaxing

Ø   dic = to say, to tell, words

l   Diction: the way that you pronounce words, especially whether or not you speak or sing clearly

l   Sarcasm: the activity of saying or writing the opposite of what you mean, or of speaking in a way intended to make someone else feel stupid or show them that you are angry

l   Fragile: easy to break or damage