MEDIEVAL LITERATURE.
this literature was, obviously, written during the medieval ages. (500-1500 AD)
a lot of this literature had to do with issues concerning the church vs. the state.
allegories were used quite prevalently ::
these are a type of extended metaphor in which objects, characters, places, et cetera, directly respond to larger ideas and meanings outside the text.
(ook i know we don't have to do links anymore, but this is just too much of a gem not to share with the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiB4dMwDFtg JEKYLL JEKYLL HYDE JEKYLL HYDE HYDE JEKYLL, JEKYLL JEKYLL HYDE JEKYLL HYDEEeelkefjhkdsjg)
anyway, medieval allegories tended to concern themselves with the meanings of life, and death, salvation and damnation, the usual.
DANTE-
and epic poem written by dante alighieri between 1308 & 1321.
it was an allegory reflecting the view of the christian afterlife, i.e. the layers of hell, purgatory, heaven. dante's an everyman- a character made to represent all of mankind. here's a lil preview of the poem-
-- three divisions of hell, to represent the gravity of sin
-- seven terraces in purgatory to symbolize the seven deadly sins
-- nine spheres of heaven to provide for paradise
yeahhhhh.
the circle thing
so the circle dealy we did illustrates a facet of archetypal and mythological criticism, specifically that there is one main story that is essentially just repeated over & over & over.
ROMANCES are at the top, a hero starts out strong, experiences a low point, but rises up in the end. a hero is the embodiment of society's most well-regarded values.
TRADGEDIES start at the top as well, but they usually experience a fall from grace and don't quite make it back up there again. BELLY OF THE WHALE.
IRONIES are at the bottom and trick you a little. life will get better for me? NO jk lol.
COMEDIES start out at the bottom, a down-on-his-luck friend then works his way up to the top and gets to end up enjoying the niceties of sex and money.
HEART OF....darkness
this is a novella. that basically means that it's written in prose, not as long as a novel, but it's not a poem or anything either. (i think we all effectively experienced this length when we figured that heart of darkness was short enough to annotate in one night, but long enough to keep you up until 3am doing so)
but yeah. basically it's a frame story, a guy talking about random stuff he did. personally i thought it was kind of boring and zoned out a great deal while reading; i'm definitely going to need the discussion in class to gain a better understanding/any understanding. but from what little i gathered, there's a lot of symbolism concerning the duality of human nature (light vs. dark, black vs. white, sunrise vs. sunset) and there seemed to be elements of naturalism and post-colonialism at work? i actually don't really know. i should probably end these notes here before i start to sound completely clueless.
uhhhh....
PASS. You know what would make these notes way better? A bigger font. But aaaanyways. Good notes on Dante and "the circle thing," but I remember we learned about syntactical techniques and the novel this week- you should include those in your notes.
ReplyDeletePass.
ReplyDeleteGood job, it's cool that you wrote your notes in paragraph form as opposed to bullets. It makes it a little harder for other people to follow or look back at to study. Other then that good, detailed notes!
Pass. I can't see how you can write like this and not cringe at when you read it over because of the lack of capitals, but it seems to work for you. Nice job.
ReplyDelete