Brit Lit Session 3

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• Studiejaar 1

British Literature Session 3

In today's session:

You will:​

learn about poetic devices and their effects​

discuss several poems 

What is a poem?

What did you find out about the role of women during WWI?

Shot at Dawn: Cowards, Traitors or Victims? What did you find out?

Poetic Devices​

Only discuss those devices that add to the main idea of the poem (that contribute to the effectiveness).​

never enough to just name the device, make clear how it functions and contributes to the poem, what the effect is​

​

Discussion = Poetic Device & Effect  

Which 5 aspects would you consider when analyzing a poem?

• Form
• Sound 
• Rhyme 
• Rhythm 
• Language

Form 

• Lines: end stopped vs run-on lines (enjambement) ​
  
• Free verse = irregular lines, without metre or rhyme ​
  
• stanza: couplet, triplet, quatrain 

Sound

alliteration: repetition of same initial consonant ​

“as I pull the parapet’s poppy” (Break of Day in the Trenches) ​

assonance: repetition of same vowel sound ​

“on a proud round cloud in white high night”  E. E. Cummings

Rhyme

end rhyme (e.g. abba, abab etc) ​

internal rhyme (I could spend hours walking amid the flowers.)​

eye rhyme (symbol, not the sound) love & prove

Rhythm 

metre = pattern of stressed and​
unstressed syllables ​

Iambic Pentameter 

Words

image (any way in which the words refer to the senses, multiplicity of meaning) ​

“In that rich earth a richer earth concealed” (The Soldier) ​

“the darkness crumbles away” (Break of Day in the Trenches)​

metaphor + to compare something with something else ​

war = a game (Who’s for the Game?) ​

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” Shakespeare ​

The world is a stage 

simile = metaphor + like “My love is like a rose”​

conceit = farfetched metaphor – describing your love like a pair of compasses ​

allegory = extended metaphor (Animal Farm) ​

oxymoron = incomparable connections (honest thief)

personification = treating an object as a person ​

"Only the monstrous anger of the guns." Owen​

Allusion = the reference to a well-known historical or literary figure or event. ​

symbol= object that stands for something else ​

The Poppy as a symbol of WW1​

Read

Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen​ (pg 35)

;

Discuss the form of the poem and the effect it has

Discuss the effect of the alliteration in line 3

Discuss the effect of the simile soldiers and cattle

Discuss the effect of the oxymoron in shrill choirs

Discuss the effect of personification (guns, bugles, shells)

This is one of the most taught poems of them all. Why would that be? What is its power, its force?

Group work 

Discuss one of the three poems and present your findings.

Group 1: The deserter 
Group 2: Munition Wages
Group 3: The hero

For next week

Session 4: Sebastian Barry. A Long Long Way. (I)​

Brief fact sharing on the Easter Rising and Irish independence.​

Plenary discussion of poem 1916 by WB Yeats ​

Group reading of A Long Long Way ​

Theory 4: Aspects of fiction​

Stocktaking
This session concludes the topic of WWI poetry.
What do you think your efforts have brought you? Any meaningful skills, knowledge, facts, viewpoints or teaching ideas?