2. Aims
• Understand aspects of the A2 course
• Analyse a poem
• Consider critical interpretations of a
poem
3. Further and Independent Reading
You must study a range of texts, one of the these will
be in the anthology of critical writing applied to a
piece of literature. The pack of critical material is
designed for specific use with coursework Unit 4,
but will have wider application across the whole of
A2 study of English Literature.
It will therefore contribute significantly to your to
progression from AS. It is designed to help you to
make connections across texts, and to see that the
study of Literature is underpinned by certain
methods and ideas.
The purpose of the critical material is to introduce you
to some different ways in which the study of
Literature can be approached.
5. National Trust
You have the security in Images of beautiful
„trust‟. Also the trust that natural landscape. It is a
what is significant to the middle-class institution.
nation will be preserved.
6.
7. Annotate the poem
Consider the tone of the poem, the devices
Harrison uses to create this tone.
What‟s the meaning of the poem do you think?
8. Bottomless pits. There's one in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.
Not even a good flogging made him holler!
O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar,
say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,
now National Trust, a place where they got tin,
those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath
and killed the language that they swore it in.
The dumb go down in history and disappear
and not one gentleman's been brough to book:
Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr
(Cornish-)
'the tongueless man gets his land took.'
9. Marxism: a theory in which class struggle is a
central element in the analysis of social change
in Western societies.”
Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism, which
is defined by Encarta as “an economic system
based on the private ownership of the means of
production and distribution of goods,
characterized by a free competitive market and
motivation by profit.”
10. Marxist Literary Theory
• Focuses on the representation of class
distinctions and class conflict in
literature
• Focuses more on social and political
elements than artistic and visual
(aesthetic) elements of a text
11. Marxist Criticism
• The author‟s social class
• Its effects upon the author‟s society
• Examining the history and the culture of the
times as reflected in the text
• Investigate how the author either correctly or
incorrectly pictures this historical period
12. Questions
Is there an objection to socialism or capitalism?
Does the text raise criticism about the emptiness
of life in bourgeois society?
What does the author portray about society?
What is emphasized, what is ignored?
Are characters from all social levels equally
sketched?
Are the main problems individual or collective?
14. Questions Raised By the Marxist Literary Lens
• How does the author’s social and economic class show through the work?
• Does the work support the economic and social status quo, or does it
advocate change?
• What role does the class system play in the work?
• What role does class play in the work?
• What is the author’s analysis of class relations?
• Do characters overcome oppression? What’s the impact of this?
• What does the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or
blamed elsewhere?
• Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the
problems encountered in the work?
• In what ways does the work serve as propaganda?
• Does the literature reflect the author’s own class or analysis of class
relations?
15. One thing that has a profound affect on our language is education. It
floods the idiolect with new words but also new attitudes towards
language. It often challenges the linguistic forms into which we have
been socialised at home, particularly if those forms are regional,
even if they are not fully fledged dialect forms. We learn for example
that being educated conventionally implies certain kinds of
language and language use and that bad language will only lead to
badness of other kinds. The further we go on in education the more
likely it is that these pressures to recognise the value of a Standard
English will be felt. This is a major part of the argument that
suggests that middle-class children do better than others in
education. They do so because the language of education is their
language. Children who bring regional dialects to the classroom
have a lot more to learn before they can effectively begin to learn.
Source: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415455121/downloads/sample.pdf
16. Research the context that this was
written in
Context
Create a timeline of events that happened just
before this was written.
What was Britain like in the 1970s?
17. You can create links between NT and
Them and Uz
Note the use voice and language for empowerment
and subjugation.
Harrison‟s anthology is called The School Of
Eloquence.
What does this suggest about both language and
education
Remember Basil Bernstein‟s research we
discussed?
18. Basil Bernstein - Class, Codes and Control
(1971)
Forms of spoken language in the process of their
learning initiate, generalize and reinforce special
types of relationship with the environment and thus
create for the individual particular forms of
significance” That is to say that the way language is
used within a particular societal class affects the way
people assign significance and meaning to the things
about which they are speaking. Littlejohn (2002)
agrees and states, “people learn their place in the
world by virtue of the language codes they employ”
The code that a person uses indeed symbolizes their
social identity (Bernstein, 1971).
19. αίαι, ay, ay! … stutterer Demosthenes
gob full of pebbles outshouting seas –
4 words only of mi „art aches and … „Mine‟s broken,
you barbarian, T.W.!‟ He was nicely spoken.
„Can‟t have our glorious heritage done to death!‟
I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth.
„Poetry‟s the speech of kings. You‟re one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
„s been dubbed [Λs] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [Λs]
Your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.‟
„We say [Λs] not [uz], T.W.!‟ That shut my trap.
I doffed my flat a‟s (as in „flat cap‟)
my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great
lumps to hawk up and spit out… E-nun-ci-ate!
20. So right, ye buggers, then! We‟ll occupy
your lousy leasehold Poetry.
I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones
into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones,
dropped the initials I‟d been harried as
and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz],
ended sentences with by, with, from,
and spoke the language that I spoke at home.
RIP, RP, RIP T.W.
I‟m Tony Harrison no longer you!
You can tell the Receivers where to go
(and not aspirate it) once you know
Wordsworth‟s matter/water are full rhyme,
[uz] can be loving as well as funny.
My first mention in the Times
automatically made Tony Anthony!
