Lecture Notes--Unit Five


This Is Just to Say 

I have eaten 
the plums
that were in
the icebox 

and which
you were probably
saving 
for breakfast 

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold 

William Carlos Williams


Narrative has been a means of structuring texts for centuries. Ever since Aristotle, we have learnt that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end - in other words, a linear construction. But narrative doesn't only apply to fiction: the television news is presented as stories, documentary programmes frequently use narrative as a framing device, and we recount our daily life to others in story form.
MENO --(Multimedia, Education 
and Narrative Organisation Website)

We are the story-telling animal. We love to tell stories and we do it very well. In fact, many psychologists and anthropologists believe that telling stories is how we create ourselves and the world around us.

Stop and think about how you do something as simple as carry on a conversation. Our conversing is full of "He said," "She said," and "Then I said to her....."  In relating something that has happened to us we construct a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. We describe  "characters" and we add detail to make the story either more entertaining or more convincing. Everyone of us is a storyteller. Here are just a few of the many sites on the Internet which discuss either what it means that we are the storytelling animal or give examples of how we make sense out of and give meaning to our lives by telling stories.

Narrative Psychology: An Internet Guide (pt. 1)

WPA Life Histories--Home Page

Narrative as Method

Responses to the Holocaust
         
If this is true, and I believe it is, then those things we call literature could be thought of as outgrowths of this normal tendency. Short stories, novels, plays, scripts for movies and TV shows, are all sparked by our natural love for telling and listening to narratives. 

But where does literature take place? In language, of course, both oral and written. Just as the visual arts take place in some sort of media such as paint and canvas or stone and plastic, and just as music takes place in sound, literature has its own medium--words. Therefore, it makes sense to take a look at that form of literature which is considered to be the most reliant on words and that is poetry. (Your reading for this chapter also talks about poetry and its metaphoric content, so be sure and keep both the Lecture Notes and the Reading in mind as you do your writing assignment.) 
 
 

Poetry

Many art works, of all media, were created as responses to other art works. Music written about literary works, literary works written about paintings, paintings about ballet, ballets about... well, you get the point. Here are four examples of poetry written in response to viewing a sculpture, a Classical Greek vase, and two paintings. Notice how all four, besides describing the work that inspired them, also comment, in some way, on the act of creation itself.

After having looked at the artwork that inspired them and then reading the poems, think about how the poem did or did not connect with the original work. Then go to the links below for other examples of poems commenting on art works. (The first one has a nice discussion on Rilke's "Archaic Torso" and Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn.")

Museum Pieces: Poems About Art

 Found Music by Jeffery Triggs 

 Poems about Art 


Also, go to one or two of the sites below and find a poem you like. By copying and pasting, put it in an Agora posting and then explain to the class what you thought of the poem. 

         


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