26/9/06 - English Literature - Larkin and Prynne

Reflect on what literature is, how it should be read, etc. etc.

Reading brings assumptions implicitly.

E.g. Mansfield Park was not at first read in post-colonial context until Said put it into that context.

'Pure' or 'just reading' isn't possible.

Similar backgrounds, Larkin and Prynne: both Oxbridge graduates born in same generation. So should be similar poems?

Prynne: no public profile until recently. First published 1999 by bigger publisher.

Larkin: larger public profile.

High Windows, by Larkin
What do we bring to bear on this poem?

Assumptions about language; coherent, sentences, colloquial style, internal monologue, makes sense, communicates an idea, grammar and syntax, vernacular, literal statement mixed with figurative language, e.g. similes, metaphors ('long slide').

'High windows' symbolise something else. Carries meaning of the poem. Idea of 'thought' surpassing words. More obscure than similies or metaphors.

Therefore, these assumptions influence our reading. If there is communication, someone must be doing the communicating. 'I' represents a speaker, assumption is someone is speaking to the reader. Telling a story of what happens in his consciousness: seeing something which made him think of something. Reflecting on his position in the world.

Ideas about literature. Allusions to past literary figures. Stanzas half- or full-rhymes, e.g. Hardy, Yeats (movement about mundane life, bigger than related moment). Generic indicators - lyric poem. What is a lyric? Spontaneous expression of powerful feelings. Reflecting on such feelings. Resort to feeling, sensation, thoughts. Symbolic illumination at end. Therefore, genre gives us expectations as to how to read something, and we read it accordingly.

Poem requires assumptions also within it. Still difficult to master the poem, wrong assumptions. Assumptions may not add up entirely, or fit together very well.

Last stanza, paradox. Words inferior, can't expolain. But the poet does put it into words. So not true to its premises. Some literal, some figurative language - must correctly read these. Irony; "I know this is paradise," but he may mean "hell". Is it good to "push aside bonds and gestures"? Does the speaker agree? Are we supposed to regard the speaker as an ironic figure rather than honourable? Are we supposed to agree, or are we supposed to be cynical? Where does the irony stop? So irony has complicated our understanding.

Our assumptions may hinder, then, our reading of the poem. It brings our assumptions to the surface only to make us question them.

Of Movement Towards a Natural Place, by Prynne
Language as a communication is gone. The sentences make no sense: "What mean square error." Disjointed syntax, conflicting, juxtaposition of words with syntax that makes no sense. Everything is incongruous: which parts are similes, metaphors? Confusion between literal and figurative. No grasp of either.

Questions about the speaker. No psychological conclusion about speaker: Larkin could be embittered, nostalgic. But Prynne is indiscernable. Is there more than one speaker? No speech marks. Quotations from Dickens, medical language, inverted commas. Disrupting syntax, or putting it in syntactically sound place but still makes no sense.

General agreement of 'uprising' in last stanza but no more. Nothing conclusive as in Larkin.

So is it a poem? Is it a joke?Linguistic key? A code? Neither gobbledegook nor sensical. Fragmented quotes. There is rhythmic regularity. Stanzas. There is no sense of internal or external world being communicated. Subjective to objective. Experimental language of science. Different assumptions to Larkin.

Deploy expectations differently. Different assumptions to account for it. More reading, more assumptions come to bear.