Literary Texts Year2-2 Flashcards
(12 cards)
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Modernist novel, Psychological fiction, Literary fiction, Published in 1927 Interwar period, Stream of consciousness narrative, Nonlinear structure, Focus on interior thoughts over external action, Shifting perspectives (multiple points of view), Lyrical, poetic prose
Fluid, introspective
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
“A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London”, Dylan Thomas
Modernist poetry
Elegy (anti-elegy)
War poem
Written during WWII
Published in 1945
Lyrical, symbolic, and densely metaphorical
Rejects conventional mourning
Spiritual rather than religious tone
Emphasis on natural cycles and rebirth
Ambiguous syntax and rich imagery
Use of paradox
Biblical and mythic language
Alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme
Dense, musical, incantatory style
Highly figurative, abstract
Mourning through celebration of continuity, not grief
Death as part of natural and eternal cycle
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden,
Satirical poem
Political poetry
Modernist / early 20th-century commentary
Written in 1939
Pre-WWII, rise of bureaucracy and fascism
Satire of government and institutional control
Irony and dark humor
Impersonal tone, modeled after a government report
Simple, bureaucratic diction
Irony embedded in official-sounding language
Use of understatement to expose deep issues
Detached, cold tone
Structured like a formal report or eulogy
Criticism of state’s dehumanizing systems
Citizen defined by statistics, not personal qualities
Questions true meaning of freedom and happiness
rhymed couplets, regular meter,
1984
George Orwell,
Dystopian fiction
Political novel
Published in 1949
Post-WWII, Cold War era context
Totalitarian regime (Party/Big Brother)
Surveillance and control (Telescreens, Thought Police)
Newspeak (language manipulation to limit thought)
Doublethink (holding contradictory beliefs)
Psychological manipulation
Clear, direct, journalistic prose
Use of invented terms
Warning against totalitarianism and loss of individual freedom
Power of language in shaping reality
Erasure of truth and objective history
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Allegorical novel
Dystopian fiction
Adventure / survival fiction
Published in 1954
Post-WWII context
Descriptive, symbolic prose
Shifts from calm to chaotic tone as story progresses
Vivid imagery of nature and violence
Use of biblical and mythic references
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Absurdist drama
Tragicomedy
Existential theatre
Written in French in 1948–49
First performed in 1953 (Paris)
English version in 1955 (London)
Embodiment of the Theatre of the Absurd
Exploration of existentialism (search for meaning in a meaningless world)
Godot as ambiguous figure (possibly God, hope, salvation, etc.)
Time as uncertain, repetitive, non-linear
Human condition portrayed as static, helpless, absurd
Simple, repetitive, fragmented dialogue
Wordplay, puns, non-sequiturs
Shifts between comedy and despair
The Birthday Party
Harold Pinter
Kitchen Sink Realism
Comedy of menace
Absurdist drama
Psychological thriller
First performed in 1958 (London)
Written in 1957
Everyday, realistic speech patterns
Pauses, silences, repetition (“Pinteresque” style)
Understatement and indirect threat
comedy and horror
Breakdown of meaning and communication
Uncertainty and fear beneath the surface of the mundane
Stanley as a symbol of individual under threat
Goldberg and McCann as mysterious agents of repression or societal forces
Critique of authoritarianism, conformity, and loss of personal identity
Enduring Love
Ian McEwan,
Psychological thriller
Contemporary literary fiction
Romantic tragedy / philosophical novel
Published in 1997
Late 20th-century context
Unreliable narrator (Joe Rose)
Precise, clinical, rational tone (especially Joe’s narration)
Shifts between emotional and intellectual registers
First-person narrative mixed with third-person elements (appendix, other POVs)
Use of scientific and philosophical references
Exploration of obsessive love (Jed’s de Clérambault syndrome)
Questioning the limits of reason and science in explaining human behavior
Impact of trauma on relationships and perception
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don’t end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Toads, Phillip Larkin
Modern/post-war poetry
Satirical and reflective poem
Social commentary
Published in 1954
Metaphor of the “toad” for work/labour
Contrast between desire for freedom and societal expectations
Speaker feels trapped by both external pressures and internal fears
Irony and self-awareness
Mix of humor and bitterness
Conversational, colloquial tone
Regular rhyme and rhythm (iambic tetrameter)
Metaphorical (toad = dull, crushing work)
Direct, plain language with subtle complexity
Use of enjambment and rhetorical questioning
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.
I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.
I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.
I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
for signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.
‘Education for Leisure’ by Carol Ann Duffy
Dramatic monologue
Contemporary poetry
Psychological / social realism
Written in the 1980s
Controversially removed from UK GCSE curriculum in 2008
Conversational, first-person voice
Simple, unsettlingly calm tone
Use of understatement and irony
Repetition and sentence fragments
Juxtaposition of the mundane and the violent
Commentary on youth alienation, unemployment, societal failure
Violence as an expression of a need to be seen, to matter
Final line (“I touch your arm.”) is ambiguous and chilling
Reflects dangers of overlooked individuals in society
One off the Short List
Doris Lessing,
Short story
Feminist literature
Psychological realism
Social critique
Clear, controlled, ironic prose
Shifts in tone from confidence to discomfort
Third-person limited narration (focus on Graham’s thoughts)
Deconstruction of male ego and sexual assumptions
Power imbalance between generations and genders
Exposure of self-deception, loneliness, and delusion
Title irony: woman is not a “prize” or object
The Company of Wolves
Angela Carter
Gothic fiction
Feminist fairy tale
Magical realism
Published in 1979
Late 20th-century feminist revisionism
Subversive retelling of Little Red Riding Hood
Blends fairy tale with horror and sexuality
Reclaims female agency and desire
Mix of folklore, sensuality, and violence
Lyrical, rich, and metaphorical prose
Sensual and symbolic imagery
Gothic tone with vivid descriptions
Juxtaposition of innocence and eroticism
