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Je de l’écrivain
et jeu de l’écriture
Pistes [B.O.]
&Autobiographie, mémoires, journal intime
&L’écrivain dans sa langue, l’écriture comme jouissance esthétique,
l’expression des sentiments, la mise en abyme
Starting blocks
Literature is about plots and characters and it is also about who is speaking to whom. The
reader has to question the narration: who is the narrator? Whom is he or she addressing? About
what? Should the words be taken at face-value or is there more than meets the eye?
Writers also enjoy the very act of writing. They play with words and their own language to
express the protagonist’s or character’s ideas and feelings, the narrator’s and sometimes even
their own. Indeed, the author, the narrator and the protagonist are very often not so clearly
differentiated and it requires a reader to pull the thread and unravel the story and make up
his or her mind about Who’s Who, so to speak.
However, none of this is possible without a preliminary agreement between the writer and
the reader. Whatever the genre chosen by writers, they need readers to cooperate, to apply
the willing suspension of disbelief* as defined by the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1817) to go with the flow of the plot.
This collaboration is best exemplified by Samuel Johnson’s quotation:
“A Writer only begins a book
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A reader finishes it”
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To sum up, first-person narrative*, stream of consciousness*, omniscient* narrator, mise
en abyme* and the like are the tools used by writers to unsettle the reader and raise deeper
issues. In other words, twists and turns help build up stories within stories, and it’s up to the
reader to read between the lines and decipher the encoded message.
List of texts under study
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789 & 1793) by William Blake
“(The) Daffodils” (1804) by William Wordsworth
Text 3 “The Oval Portrait” (1842) by Allan Edgar Poe
Text 4 “The Canary” in The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories (1923) by Katherine Mansfield
Text 5 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou
Text 6 “An Unauthorized Autobiography of Me” (2000) by Sherman Alexie
Text 7 Any Human Heart (2002) by William Boyd
Text 1
Text 2
TEXT
1
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1793)
by William Blake
PRE-READING ACTIVITIES
Identify the following elements. Try and connect them in various artistic fields such as painting,
sculpture or poetry.
To understand this extract, you need to take into account the Industrial Revolution
that transformed the landscape of European cities as in London. It was also a period of
political and social revolutionary ideas which were implemented in the new-born United
States of America (1776) as well as in France during the French Revolution (1789).
Background
The Enlightenment (the 18th century) was
also called the Age of Reason because
intellectuals from all over Europe meant
to denounce superstitions and abuses in
societies dominated by the Church and the
government. They intended to spread the
lights of knowledge, to promote sciences, to
exchange ideas on philosophy and how to
reform societies. Many famous intellectuals—
including the Dutch philosopher Spinoza
(1632-1677), the English philosopher and
physician John Locke (1632-1704), the physicist
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) or the philosopher
Voltaire (1694-1778)—took part in this cultural
movement, which roughly dates back to the
middle of the 17th century. The Age of Reason
was epitomized by the edition of the great
Encyclopédie (1751). The collective work of
major intellectuals was one of the triggers of
the American Revolution and eventually of the
French Revolution. Romanticism* emerged and
stressed the superiority of emotion opposing
the ideals of reason and reform.
In the wake of the Enlightenment,
Neoclassicism* paid tribute to the cultures
of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The
ideas of grandeur and reasonable organisation
were a response to the philosophical ideals
of the age.
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William BLAKE (1757-1827) was an English poet but also a remarkable painter
and printmaker, he illustrated his own poems with engravings. His prophetic
style went unnoticed during his lifetime, caught between eighteenth-century
Neoclassicism* and the Romantic* Age. He is now acknowledged as a major
Romantic artist before his time both in poetry and visual arts. He used philosophy
and mysticism but his work is mainly based on the Bible. This atypical poet was a
believer but totally rejected the Church of England among many institutions, including
traditional marriage and the rationalism encouraged by the Enlightenment.
NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT
“Introduction” Songs of Innocence (1789)
and “Introduction” Songs of Experience (1793)
by William Blake
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Text 1
Songs of Innocence was the first collection of poems printed. Five years later, a volume
enriched with a set of new poems was printed under the title Songs of Innocence and of
Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
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10
15
20
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Songs of Innocence (1789)
“Introduction”
Songs of Experience (1793)
“Introduction”
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
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Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees,
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Calling the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!
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“O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
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“Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The wat’ry shore,
Is giv’n thee till the break of day.”
“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”
So I piped with a merry chear.
“Piper, pipe that song again;”
So I piped: he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear:”
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
“Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.”
So he vanish’d from my sight,
And I pluck’d a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.
VOCABULARY
pipe: jouer (du pipeau)
glee: allégresse, joie
chear=cheer: bonne humeur,
gaieté
wept: pret. de
dew: la rosée
weep (wept, wept): pleurer
pluck: cueillir
starry: étoilé
reed: un roseau (bot.), anche
slumberous: somnolent,
(mus.)
endormi
lapsed: qui n’est plus pratiquant
FOCUS ON
1. Focus on the title of the book. What content might you
expect in each poem? Are your answers in keeping with
what you have read?
2. Read the Introduction to Songs of Innocence aloud.
What does it sound like?
3. What are the lexical fields observed in “Introduction”
to Songs of Innocence? And in “Introduction” to Songs of
Experience? Are the themes you have found in keeping
with the Romantic Age?
4. Which one is easier to understand? Why?
5. Identify the “I” in Songs of Innocence. What differences can
you observe with the narrator of Songs of Experience?
6. Could you draw a parallel between the contrasting
ideas of innocence/experience and the Bible?
BRANCHING OUT
Literature owes a lot to the Bible. Consciously
or not, many English-speaking writers have
been influenced by the texts of the Bible, its
imagery, its characters, its themes or even
its very words (See the influence of gospels
in this very chapter, TEXT 5). Most of these
writers grew up in a Protestant milieu, which
encourages a personal approach to the Bible and
can account for this major influence. The Bible
must not just be considered as a religious text.
Indeed, the Biblical genre enables readers to
classify the parts of the book according to their
literary genre—thus Genesis is considered as an
historical narrative or epic. For readers, the Bible
is a key that can cast a new light on the arts. To
a certain extent it can help you understand a
text more fully. Today, these literary and more
generally artistic works refer to the Authorized
Version, also known as the King James Version
of the Bible, printed in 1611.
1. Find some titles and complete works that
were suggested by the Bible.You will come
across visual works such as paintings or
sketches, writings, movies, music pieces
or songs. Be ready to explain what part
of it was inspired by the Bible.
2. Compare the various works that you
have found: do they belong to the same
form of art or do they have in common
a character or a famous quote?
To become aware of the use of the Bible
in English language literature, see TEXT 19
in chapter 3, The Scarlet Letter (1850) by
Nathaniel Hawthorne and in chapter 6, TEXT
35 Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley and
TEXT 36, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker.
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TASK
! POETRY
Learn a verse or the full poem and choose the best way to tell it. It can be played, chanted
or sung. Music in any form is welcome.
! ARTS
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Further information to supplement your personal exam file
If you feel like…
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Text 1
William Blake himself engraved and coloured the illustrations for both collections of
poems (See the example above). You are going to imitate Blake’s engravings. Create a
picture or a collage for a poem you like. Like Blake, you will include words from the poem
into your work.
Watching
http://www.biblicalarts.org Museum of Biblical Arts in Dallas, Texas (USA)
http://www.biblical-art.com
Listening
Poems from both books have been set to music by a wide range of composers,
such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Frandsen, Per Drud Nielsen, Sven-David
Sandström and Benjamin Britten… to name but a few.
More recently in 2002 Victoria Poleva composed a chamber cycle on the
verses by W. Blake for soprano, clarinet and accordion.
“(The) Daffodils” (1804)
TEXT
2
by William Wordsworth
PRE-READING ACTIVITIES
Make a list of a minimum of five Romantic* elements according to you. They can be seen,
felt, etc.
What is common to the elements you have chosen?
To understand this extract, you need to take into account the influence of William
Wordsworth on the Romantic* movement in England.
William WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was born in the Lake District (Northern
England). In 1785, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets
quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced
Lyrical Ballads (1798), which was to launch the English Romantic* movement. One of
Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “Tintern Abbey”, was published in the work, along
with Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Within the third edition, the Preface to
Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. Indeed, Wordsworth
unveils the elements of a new type of poetry based on the “real language of men” and which
avoids the poetic diction of 18th-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous definition
of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions”.
NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT
“Daffodils” (1804)
by William Wordsworth
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I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
VOCABULARY
wander: errer
host: ici, foule
daffodils: jonquilles
beneath: sous
flutter: frémir
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Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
10 Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
VOCABULARY
twinkle: scintiller
margin: bord
glance: un coup d’oeil
toss: agiter
sprightly: alerte
outdo: surpasser
sparkling: étincelant
glee: allégresse
jocund: jovial, enjoué
gaze: contempler
oft: often
inward: intérieur
bliss: béatitude
fill: (se) remplir
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
15 A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
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Text 2
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For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
FOCUS ON
Stanzas 1-2-3
1. Draw a simple sketch of the scene keeping
in mind all the elements surrounding the
flowers. What sort of scene is it?
2. Description of the flowers:
a. List the elements associated with the
daffodils (colour, movement, number,
emotion, other natural elements).
b. Describe how the poet links them
(simile, metaphor). What effect does
it create?
3. Compare the description of the daffodils
with the description of the “I” (verses 1-2).
Are they similar?
4. List all the words belonging to the lexical
field of vision. Why is it important?
5. Verses 15-16: describe the impact of the
scene on the poet and explain why he
feels this way.
Stanza 4
6. Find echoes of stanza 1-2 (words, images,
emotions…).
7. In your opinion, what does the “inward
eye” stand for?
Conclude
8. Keeping in mind what you know
about Romanticism*, prove that this
poem is representative of this literary
movement.