Paper 1 Definition of Terms

well I don't actually have the definition of terms but I do have this fun game I found testing your knowledge:

GAME!

Click on it people, that's how links work...

Characteristics of the Sub Genre: Prose

Okay I'm pretty lazy right now and don't really wanna type so I'm doing this in point form. Structure and narration are huge things in prose so CAPE likes to ask a lot of questions on it. Even if they don't outwardly ask you to talk about it, you mention it as a technique the writer uses or something, so it ends up coming up anyway...so KNOW it.

Wuthering Heights:
Gothic

• Supernatural Elements (Cathy's ghost, superstition)
• Gloomy Setting (the moors were described as a "misanthropist's heaven" how much more depression do you want? architecture falls under this too)
• Strong, emotional (sometimes even a tad bit melodramatic) characters like Catherine and Heathcliff, i believe the word they like to use is passionate?
• Anti Heroes (and heroines!) this is a protagonist that doesn't exactly have any virtuous qualities about them like what typical heros have (Catherine was a selfish little brat and Heathcliff was a vengeful ass) 

Brown Girl, Brownstones:
Bildungsroman

• a bildungsroman is a coming of age novel (follows the protagonist from a child to an adult)
• revolves around the conflict the protagonist goes through when trying to find their identity.
• conflict can be family related or response to the wider society
• novel ends with the protagonist's assessment of themselves and their place in society

Introductions of Essays

A lot goes into the introduction of any essay; it is the entire basis and foundation of your essay so you have a lot riding on it. So make sure it's good. There are two main things you need to do when writing the introduction of any lit essay, you need to:

1. Provide the relevant context
   here you need to give a little background into the books you're doing. You need to state the name of the book and who wrote it. You may wanna talk about the setting and maybe the literary period the book was written in. Whatever you do here don't go too in depth, just give enough context for your essay to make sense. For example if you have to do a drama essay about women in society then you may just wanna mention how society treated women then. Was it a patriarchal society? Was feminism a thing? Don't go in depth here, that's what the body of the essay is for just mention enough to justify your answer or thesis.
2. Answer the question/state your thesis.
   well obviously this would be the other part. I like to put it at the end of the intro so it'll be justified. Here you answer the question they're asking you or give your opinion if it's an argumentative essay (try to always make it an arguementative essay - you get points for analysis). It's basically your essay in one sentence - the topic sentence.

  

Here's how my intros typically look; the green part is context and the yellow part is my thesis.                                                                  

              _____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

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Remember we NEVER use examples  and start discussion in the intro. If you wanna be fancy you can use a relevant quote from some third party or maybe even the person themselves relating the question. Just don't start discussing here, you'll have plently of time for that in the body. 

Poems I Like for Les Murray

If I seriously find one other person who's not from my school (or who I've peer pressured) that's doing Murray I'll be so happy. Murray is a very cool chap but you never get any info on him because let's face it; he's not Hardy. Here are some Les poems that I think are especially worth studying.

• An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
• The Quality of Sprawl
• The Mowed Hollow
• Inside Ayers Rock
• The Tin Wash Dish
• On Home Beaches
• Late Summer Fires

And hey, if you can figure out what the hell Bat's Ultrasound is about and you feel comfortable enough talking about it then go right ahead and do it because it's a great poem to talk about sound and his technique.  Yeah I know I just gave you a list and that's shitty but I like making lists and maybe later I'll talk more about the poems.

Btw, one of my favs by him is The Meaning of Existence but there's not as much to talk about when compared to the others, but feel free to use whatever poems you want, these are just the ones I feel comfortable enough talking about in terms of amount on content and actually understanding the content. 

Love and Desire in Twelfth Night

The theme of love is introduced in the first line of the play “If music be the food of love, play on” this establishes it as a central theme. All major characters in the play experience some kind of love or desire for someone, whether it’s true love or not is something to be debated but still... There are many kinds of love in Illyria; we have romantic love, unrequited love, master/servant love and sibling love.

Love’s a funny thing here though; it’s always changing and doesn't seem to be very stable... In the beginning Orsino claims to love Olivia but as we see he doesn't really know her that doesn't stop him from showering her in bad poetry though, as soon as Viola reveals she’s a woman though he forgets all about Olivia and jumps ship and marries her.

 His melodrama is only matched by Olivia’s mourning. She claims to be so frickin sad and vows to wear a veil for 7 years but the first sexy guy to come round (Cesario/Viola) she starts throwing herself on. This seems a bit extreme doesn't it? Shakespeare seems to be making fun of the upper class here; who are more into the idea of something (like love) that they actually love someone....I mean Orsino had his little page boys go and court Olivia instead of going although he was so in love with her while Feste is the sane one who's in the background making fun of both of them.  And I mean we all know someone like that (hell we may even be someone like that ourselves) who sees a nice girl in a Mario’s line somewhere and starts writing bad poems about how her hair smells so good and he’s so in love without even knowing her name. We can't exactly call that undying love now can we?

Now let’s talk about Sebastian and Antonio; it’s pretty debated but I think it’s safe to assume that Antonio had a thing for him. And I mean it makes sense right? He saved him and took care of him and was willing to following him although he’s a wanted man in Illyria. I think there’s more of a chance of that being true love than Malvolio who just wanted Olivia’s status or Orsino who just thought they'd look super cute together. But what happened to Antonio in the end? Did he end up with Sebastian? Of course not, this was The Elizabethan era and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness up to the 90s. The 1990s. So when everyone one else was getting married to people they basically met two hours ago poor Antonio was in jail. 

Viola and Orsino's relationship summed up 

By the end of the play people just seem t be pairing up at random with whoever; the first time Sebastian met Olivia he married her, and I mean sure she thought he was his sister but I mean still... he went along with it. "Hey this sexy rich lady wants to marry me, why not?" When Olivia found this out she didn't even have a problem, hey they must be the same person anyway...
On the other side of the spectrum we have the lower class people like Maria and Sir Toby who instead of flowery poetry have double entendres all about sexy sex stuff. Hey, at least they liked each other.
Shakes further satirizes romantic love by showing us how sibling love (Viola and Sebastian) and master/servant love (Maria and Olivia) is more constant than anything else. 

It's safe to say that there was a little exploration of homosexuality as we saw obviously with Sebastian and Antonio but also with Orsino and Viola (hey, he thought she was a guy and there were hints) and with Olivia and Viola (she was turned on by "Cesario's" feminine-ness) more about that later though.
Anyway feel free to tell me what you think about this theme and why you disagree or agree or add in something you think is important :) 

Looking for CAPE notes? Well Do I Have News for You...

I know I haven't updated in awhile...well because exams finished >.> but I can't just leave you all here so I come bearing the gift of knowledge!

Okay it's just a link to a website...a freaking awesome website! With dinosaurs n stuff! (no - I swear). They have notes for CAPE subjects (including lit ofc) so go check it out.

oh yeah...here's the link!

notezilla (<---click here people)

Happy studying everyone and good luck in exams! (I'm always here if you need help or anything - I have no life)
And yes...I did just copy this post from my comm blog (I'm lazy, okay >.>)

Behold! Twelfth Night Quotes That You Really Should Know

I'm just giving you the quotations because I assume you can figure out what they mean. They're not in any particular order.

"If music be the food of love, play on" (Orsino to his court)

"Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die." (Orsino to his court)

"I will believe thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character." (Viola to Captain)

"Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent." (Viola to Captain)

"Diana's lip
Is not more smooth and rubious: thy small pipe
Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound,
And all is semblative a woman's part." (Orsino to Cesario)

"I have unclasp'd
To thee the book even of my secret soul.
Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her," (Orsino to Cesario)

"for I myself am best
When least in company" (Orsino to Viola)

"Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife" (Viola in an Aside)

BOOM! Random penguin..shit gets
 boring...I know. I had to type it up 

"Better a witty fool than a foolish wit." (Feste to Olivia)

"I wear not motley in my brain." (Feste to Olivia)

"the hood does not make the monk" (Feste to Olivia)

"Methinks I feel this youth's perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be." (Olivia in soliloquy)

"Poor lady, she were better love a dream.

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness" ( Viola in soliloquy)

"Journeys end in lovers meeting" (Feste's song)

"I was once adored too" (Sir Andrew to Sir Toby)

"She never told her love...
...She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?" (Cesario to Orsino)

"I am all the daughters of my father's house
And all the brothers too." (Cesario to Orsino)

take cuteness pon your ass! 

"This fellow's wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit." (Viola in soliloquy)

"I am not what I am" (Cesario to Feste)

"If this were played upon a stage now, I could
condemn it as an improbable fiction." (Fabian to Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria)

"A little thing would make me tell them
how much I lack of a man" (Viola in an Aside)

"Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trucks, o'er flourish'd by the devil" (Antonio to Cesario)

"Nothing that is so, is so." (Feste to Sebastian)

"There is something in't
That is deceivable" (Sebastian in a Soliloquy)

"I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!" (Malvolio to well...everyone on stage for Act 5)


If you were paying attention you may have realized I used Viola and Cesario in different places, I used Viola when she's not in disguise (this includes soliloquies and asides) and Cesario when she played that part.

These are definitely not the only quotes that are important, you can look through and see what else you can fish out but learn these and use them properly and you'll do well. Try to get in at least three quotes in your essays, but please don't just throw them in, explain and relate them and all that good stuff.

What Goes Into A Poetry Essay?

Okay, as we know, poems are used as a medium to transmit messages on deeper issues. Lurking behind that confusing jumble of words is pure emotion. Our job as Literature students is to try to figure out what the poet is trying to say and how he attempts to get that message across.

I know it's easy to get carried away discussing the poet's concerns in your essay, but really that's only half (or less than) of what you really need to discuss. What they're actually looking for is technique. Okay, let me expand a little.

When writing an essay ALWAYS discuss:

1. Content/Levels of Meaning:

Yes you need to talk about content. In your essay you'll want to talk about the various levels of meaning in the poem. For CAPE I'm pretty sure that's only literal (what the poet is saying directly in the poem) and metaphorical (the subliminal messages they're sending across). But it can also include abstract and metaphysical and all that other deep weirdness. 

So remember! What is the poet literally saying? vs. What are they saying beneath the metaphor? 

like this...teacher = metaphorical meaning, author = literal 

2. Versification and Form:

You wanna speak about structure of your poem too. Here are some things to look for:

• Structure of Poem  (that is the physical structure of the poem..stanzas ans stuff)
• Metrical pattern used (iambic pentameter and such)
• Syntax (that is how the words are arranged)
• Form (Is it a ballad/sonnet/free verse etc?)

Remember that a poet doesn't just randomly choose to a particular form, what do you think is the reason the poet choose to write a sonnet or in free verse? How does that contribute to the meaning of the poem?

3. Poetic Technique and Style:

You guys should know all about these things by now, but here's a quick recap of the main techniques you wanna look at when analysing:

•  Diction (that is choice of words. A poet carefully selects each word he/she uses in their poem, nothing is done randomly. So why exactly did the poet use THAT word? What does it contribute to the meaning or effect?)
• Literary Devices (oh come on you all know these things):
• Metaphor
• Simile
• Assonance
• Alliteration
• Hyperbole
• Litote etc.
• Use of Imagery: (Imagery doesn't refer to what you see alone. It involves all senses...examples?)
• Visual
• Aural
• Olfactory
• Tactile 
• Tone (this is the quality of the poet's voice, how they say something):
• Ironic/Sarcastic/Sardonic
• Conversational
• Nostalgic
• Critical
• Meditative
• Musical Quality of the poem (alot of times they ask you to discuss the musical quality of the poem. This allows for listener enjoyment and such as rhymes and shit are fun:
• Rhymes (and shit)
• Rhythm
• Alliteration
• Assonance
• basically whatever contributes to making it sound good 

Okay you stir these three together and you get an essay. Seriously...just know this shit and you've got a one. 

Some Helpful Hints for Poetry

For me poetry is the hardest module. I get confused and overwhelmed by the amount of crap required of me. My brain shuts down and I write like a mentally deranged squirrel. Not my best module at all. Here are some tips to prevent you from losing it while analysing poetry or writing poetry essays.


   1. Know your poet!
 Poets tend to have recurring themes in their poetry. Once you do a few poems by ANY poet you'll realize that they're obsessed with death/nature/relationships/society. Make a list of some recurring themes in your poetry because most likely you'll be encountering them all the time.
 For example Les Murray is completely obsessed with:

• The Human Condition
• Urbanization
• Consumerism
• God-conciousness
• Loss of Humanity
• Displacement of Aboriginal People

   2. Study Smart!

In your exam they always ask you to refer to at least THREE poems by your poet. I'm not telling you to learn only three, but if you have two days to study for the exam it really doesn't make sense trying to learn all by heart. Learn the main ones, the ones you believe portray the themes the best and have the most to write on. 

  3. Don't narrate!

I bet you've heard this enough already for prose and poetry. Don't retell the story! The examiners have read the novel, they know what happened. The same goes for poetry. Retelling each line of the poem isn't going to get you a one. Stick to the question they ask and use your information wisely. They look for analysis more than knowledge. SO FUCKING ANALYSE THAT SHIT! 

4. Prepare

I don't care if you have three days left and you haven't picked up a book. Prepare and organize your notes wisely. Go through each poem and comment on the techniques and devices used (more about that in a next post). And write it down!! I'm telling you won't remember it....Do this for at least five poems. on your 'study sheets' (yes that's what I'm calling them). It will be helpful to compare some poems here before hand so that it will just be a matter of recalling in the exam. 

5. Plan

I want essay plans! Both in and out of the exam. When doing past papers, plan before you write. It provides some framework for you to work with so that your essays will actually have structure and not be all over the place. You don't even need to actually write the past paper essays, just plan them out. 

 

Intro into Drama and Some Elements of Drama

Drama comes from the Latin word 'dran' which means 'to do'. This should give you a hint as to what to expect from the genre.
 Drama transposes action onto a stage, it's unique in that sense. It's not like prose where you read it off a page and imagine or poetry where you listen to recitals. Drama involves literal visual appeal. You can (or are supposed to) SEE what's happening. So whenever you're writing, remember in drama an audience  enjoys a play, not a reader and not a listener.
Because of the live action expect to see and speak about some unique things in your essays. Dramatic significance and stage conventions are very two important elements of drama you need to discuss in your essays. What are they you ask? Well...

• Dramatic Significance: Conflict contributes to dramatic significance. It's the tension in the play. It refers to the element of surprise, the timing of characters, how conflict is introduced, developed, acknowledged and finally resolved. It's what makes you enjoy the play. You want a definition? Fiiine.... Dramatic Significance  refers to the function and importance of a scene, character, incident and speech (dialogue, incident, soliloquy, aside etc)
• Stage Conventions: refers to stage lighting, costuming, use of props, movements, positioning on stage, music. How light and imagery are symbolic to the characters, costumes describe characters and time period, what is the impact of the music on the atmosphere and mood. Pay close attention the stage directions when you are reading as they help you visualize what's happening on stage. (Stage directions are instructions given by the playwright - eg. tone of voice, movement of character, body language).