Approach to Literature week11

Ø  玩偶之家：劇的白話文運動

Ø  A doll’s house

A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.

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  End rhyme – It comes at the end of the two successive lines.

If you have ever sung a song or read a poem aloud, you must have encountered end rhymes, because these are common type of rhyming patterns used in a poetic structure.

End rhyme occurs when last syllables or words in two or more lines rhyme with each other.

It is also known as tail rhyme that occurs at the end of the lines.

The lines ending in similar sounds are pleasant to hear and give musical effect to the poem or song.

l   Example: “A Word is Dead” by Emily Dickinson

“A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.”

Ø  Rhyme scheme

Rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme that comes at the end of each verse or line in poetry. In other words, it is the structure the end words of a verse or line that a poet needs to create when writing a poem.

Japanese genre of Haiku is a case in point. Thus, it shows that the poets write poems in a specific type of rhyme scheme or rhyming pattern. There are several types of rhyme schemes as given below.

l   Example: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” by Jane Taylor

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, (A)

How I wonder what you are. (A)

Up above the world so high, (B)

Like a diamond in the sky. (B)

Ø   Henrik Johan Ibsen  (白話文運動之父)  

Ø  Try to bring word to drama

( / ˈ ɪ b s ən / ; [1] Norwegian: [ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈɪpsən] ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was 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. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare , A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century.

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 ". He is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw , Oscar Wilde , Arthur Miller , James Joyce , Eugene O'Neill and Miroslav Krleža .

Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903 and 1904. 

Ø  La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

BY JOHN KEATS

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

       Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

       And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

       So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

       And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

       With anguish moist and fever-dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

       Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

       Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

       And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

       And made sweet moan

I set her on my pacing steed,

       And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

       A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

       And honey wild, and manna-dew,

And sure in language strange she said—

       ‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her Elfin grot,

       And there she wept and sighed full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

       With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

       And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—

The latest dream I ever dreamt

       On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

       Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci

       Thee hath in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

       With horrid warning gapèd wide,

And I awoke and found me here,

       On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

       Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake,

       And no birds sing.

Ø  somewhere i have never travelled,gladly (特地小寫)

E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Ø  E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings is known for his radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax; he abandoned traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression.

Ø  Vocabulary

l   Con- with; together

Connect: to join two things together