Tragedy.

Question 1

What does significance mean in terms of English?

Answer 1

It involves weighing up all the potential contributions to how a text can be analysed. E.g: through the way the text is constructed and written; through text specific contexts which can be relevantly applied; through connecting the texts to other texts; and then finding potential meanings and interpretations.

Question 2

What is genre?

Answer 2

Genre involves grouping texts by type. E.g. Literary genres has its origins in the Ancient World with a specific emphasis on drama.

Question 3

What does aspects mean?

Answer 3

Use of the word ‘aspects’ highlights the fact that it is the actual texts which are the focus of study, seen through the lens of the genre;.

Question 4

What is the structure of tragedy?

Answer 4

Tragedy has been important in Western drama for over 2500 years.
1} The drama is usually focused upon one or more main characters{ the protagonist} who acts in a way which proves disastrous.
2} The scope of the play’s action is limited in terms of plot.
3} There is a calamitous outcome{ the catastrophe} which causes an emotional response in its audience.

Question 5

What are the aspects of tragedy?

Answer 5

At the core of all the set texts is a tragic hero who is flawed in some way, who suffers and causes suffering to others.

Question 6

What are some things that are often in tragedy?

Answer 6

• The type of the tragic text itself.
• The settings for the tragedy, both places and times.
• The journey towards death of the protagonists, their flaws, pride and folly.
• The role of the tragic villain or opponent.
• The presence of fate.
• How the behaviour of the hero affects the world around him.
• The significance of violence and revenge, humour and moments of happiness.
• The structural pattern of a text as it moves through complication to catastrophe, from order to disorder, through climax to resolution, from the prosperity and happiness of the hero to the tragic end.
• The use of plots and sub-plots.

Question 7

What does anagnorisis mean?

Answer 7

Recognition by the protagonist that he/she committed hubris’ the recognition of tragic error of judgement.

Question 8

What is an anti hero?

Answer 8

A protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities; he is flawed.

Question 9

What does Keats do in his narrative poems?

Answer 9

He engages our sympathy for the situation in which the characters find themselves.

Question 10

What are the central characters known as?

Answer 10

The protagonist and the antagonist.

Question 11

What is voice for in Keats’ poems?

Answer 11

To further the plot and to influence our feelings towards the characters.

Question 12

What does tragedy feature?

Answer 12

Tragedy features a central act or scene which is both climax and turning point in the fortunes of the protagonist. The summer section of ‘La Belle Dane’ is an emotional haven.

Question 13

What do the endings of the poems focus on?

Answer 13

They focus on loss and death. ‘La Belle Dame with its ballad form and cyclical structure lacks the chronology of the usual tragic narrative. At the end the knight in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ cannot live in the mundane world after his transcendent experience.

Question 14

What is ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’?

Answer 14

‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is the title of an early fifteenth century French poem.

Question 15

What is the story?

Answer 15

The story is a story of a seductive and treacherois woman who tempts men away from the real world and then leaves them, their dreams unfulfilled and their leaves blighted.

Question 16

What are the alternative interpretations?

Answer 16

It has been alternatively suggested, for example that it is about the wasting power of sexual love and/or the poet’s infatuation with his muse. This particular analysis will examine the ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ as a poem about a femme fatale and offer a feminist interpretation of the ballad.

Question 17

What else is suggested?

Answer 17

That the knight at arms in this poem has been enchanted, enthralled is immediately suggested by his wandering in a desolate wasteland where the plant life has withered and no birds sing. He himself is in a decline.

Question 18

What else does he do?

Answer 18

He is pale and the rose in his cheeks is withering. In trying to explain his state to his questioner, he makes us highly suspicious of the lady whom he encountered.

Question 19

What is created through Keats’s use of the formal features of the traditional ballad?

Answer 19

A haunting ominous effect.

Question 20

What is Romanticism?

Answer 20

The Romantic period was period in English literary history dating from 1789 to about 1830.

Question 21

Who were the first and second generations of Romantic poets?

Answer 21

The first generation of Romantic poets includes Blake,Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The second includes Byron, Shelley and Keats.

Question 22

What were the characteristics of Romanticism?

Answer 22

A number of general characteristics might be seen as loosely characteristic of Romanticism. These include a valuing of feeling and emotion over reason, an interest in the investigation of the self, a new concern with nature, a focus on the imagination and a yearning towards something transcendent.

Question 23

The Age of reason and the hunger after truth.

Answer 23

Keats’s words provide a loose definition of Romanticism. Keats’s complaint about the pursuit of knowledge reflects the early 18th century concerns with science, reason and intellectualism when it was believed that human nature could be subject to scientific analysis. The reaction to this is embodied in Keats’s idea thaat an artist should be less concerned with scientific accuracy and should be open to different sensations.

Question 24

What were compositions expected to be?

Answer 24

Compositions were expected to be balanced, restrained and expressed according to set rules and conventions.

Question 25

What is Lamia about?

Answer 25

In Part 1, the god Hermes, in amorous pursuot of a nymph, encounters Lamia. She has the form of a grotesque serpent, but the mouth and voice of a woman. Lamia promises to restore to him the nymh, whom she has made invisible, if he will in turn restore her to her former human shape. Hermes promises, the nymph appears and Lamia, after violent convulsions, sheds her skin and a beautiful woman is revealed. She goes to Corinth where she meets and seduces Lycius, the young philosopher of whom she had dreamed and whom she had loved. They retire to a fairy palace which is invisible to everyone in the city.

Part 2 opens with a blast of triumpets which pierces their secluded magical retreat, prompting Lycius to think of the world outside. Lamia accuses him of wanting to leave her, but he claims that on the contrary, he simply desires to marry her and make their love known to the world. Lamia, distressed by this idea, pleads with him to change his mind, but eventually submits to his wishes. Lycius arranges a wedding feast to invite all his friends. Lamia invites no-one but begs him not to invite the philosopher Apollonius. Appollonius comes uninvited to the feast. Apollonius sees through Lamia’s disguise. Lamia vanishes and Lycius dies in a frenzy of grief.

Question 26

What is the commentary on this poem?

Answer 26

With the numerous contrats it presents - dream and reality, imagination, poetry and philosophy - Lamia has generated more allegorical readings than any other of Keats’ poems.

• The three main characters, Lamia, Lycius and Apollonius, have been read as poetry, poet and the philosopher.
• For Lycius and Lamia in the mortal world by contrast, love is complex. Although Lamia’s dream comes true.

Question 27

How is Lamia written?

Answer 27

• Lamia is written in heroic couplets, linss of iambic pentameter in pairs.

Question 28

What is the summary of Isabella?

Answer 28

• Isabella’s lover Lorenzo is murdered by her brothers.
• His ghost appears to her and reveals his fate.
• She digs up the body, cuts off the head and puts it in a pot of basil.
• The brothers steal the pot and Isavella dies of a broken heart.