week 16

What is a Closet Drama?

No, a "closet drama" is not a play that you perform in your closet. (Although that would be awesome.) Instead, a "closet drama" is a dialogue-based form of literature that reads like a play, but is not intended to be performed.

Why would someone write a play that was never meant to be performed? For some writers, the dialectic quality of a play is the best way to deliver information. 

Plato's Socratic dialogues read very much like theater (albeit without much plot or conflict), and Goethe's is drenched with philosophy.

In both cases, the ideas ae conveyed through conversation.

Many poets, especially during the Romantic Age and the Victorian Era used closet dramas as a form for their poetic epics. Percy Shelley's lyrical drama would not only take over five hours to perform properly, it would be incredibly difficult to bring to life on stage with all of its Olympian gods, Titans and mythic creatures. (Although I am convinced that sock-puppets could solve the problem.)

One of the most ambitious closet dramas is Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. Although an brave theater company produced this play in the early 1900s, The Dynasts is clearly meant to be performed in the reader's mind. It is a sweeping epic about the Napoleonic Wars, narrated by celestial entities who observe humans as if we were ants. And it make it even more of a challenge, The Dynasts consists of not four or five acts, but 19 acts. Does that peak your interest?

Opera

a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes. In some operas the music is continuous throughout an act; in others it is broken up into discrete pieces, or “numbers,” separated either by recitative (a dramatic type of singing that approaches speech) or by spoken dialogue. 

This article focuses on opera in the Western tradition. For an overview of opera and operalike traditions in Asia (particularly in China), see the appropriate sections of Chinese music, Japanese music, South Asian arts, and Southeast Asian arts; see also short entries on specific forms of Chinese opera, such as chuanqi, jingxi, kunqu, and nanxi.

week 15

1.Emily Dickinison

mily Dickinson is one of America’s greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet’s work. 

Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. 

Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person.

 The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, like those in Brontë’s and Browning’s works, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes.

 To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. 

Like the Concord Transcendentalists whose works she knew well, she saw poetry as a double-edged sword. While it liberated the individual, it as readily left him ungrounded. The literary marketplace, however, offered new ground for her work in the last decade of the 19th century. When the first volume of her poetry was published in 1890, four years after her death, it met with stunning success. Going through eleven editions in less than two years, the poems eventually extended far beyond their first household audiences.

Emily Dickinson Museum 

pring hours

The Museum has returned to our spring schedule. We will be open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm. Tours will remain limited to the Homestead due to construction work at The Evergreens until further notice. We thank you for your patience as we complete this essential infrastructure work. 

Emily Dickinson Museum 

Poem of the Week

Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush
I hear the level Bee -
A Jar across the Flowers goes
Their Velvet Masonry

Withstands until the sweet Assault
Their Chivalry consumes -
While He, victorious tilts away
To vanquish other Blooms.

J. 1224 Reprinted by permission.

 Marta McDowell

Following the relationship between the pen and the trowel led Marta to Emily Dickinson for Emily Dickinson's Gardens and children's author/illustrator Beatrix Potter for Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life. In 2017, All the Presidents' Gardens, a book that relates the history of American gardening as seen through the White House grounds, made The New York Times bestseller list and won an American Horticultural Society book award. Marta's latest, 

The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, tells the tale of the plants and places of the beloved author of the Little House series. Marta also scripted the Emily Dickinson Museum's landscape audio tour, and was an advisor for the New York Botanical Garden's 2010 show, "Emily Dickinson's Gardens: The Poetry of Flowers."

 The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder,:A must-read companion to the Little House books

2017 is the 150th anniversary of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday. Her beloved Little House series tells a classic coming-of-age story based on Wilder’s own family life and is a reflection of the pioneer spirit of the time. They are also deeply rooted in the natural world. The plants, animals, and landscapes are so integral to the stories, they are practically their own characters.

The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by New York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell, explores Wilder’s deep relationship to the landscape. Follow the wagon trail of the series, starting in the Wisconsin setting of Little House in the Big Woods to the Dakotas and finally to Missouri. Throughout, you’ll learn details about Wilder’s life and inspirations, discover how to visit the real places today, and even learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the stories.

The artful package includes original illustrations by Helen Sewell and Garth Williams, along with historical and contemporary photographs. The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a must-have treasure for the millions of readers enchanted by Laura’s wild and beautiful life.

 

week 14

Brothers Grimm

 5 Facts About The Brothers GrimmWith the new movie version of "Into the Woods" and TV shows like "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm," it's as clear as Cinderella's glass slipper that fairy tales are hot thanks, in part, to the German brothers who made them so popular.
The Brothers Grimm didn’t write the fairy tales.

If you’re gazing into a crystal ball to find out the opening day of Into the Woods (spoiler alert: It’s December 25) planning a road trip to Storybrooke, Maine, setting of TV’s Once Upon a Time, or waiting to get your next fix of detective work from NBC’s Grimm, you’ll know one thing for sure: fairy tales are hot. Is it because we’re all yearning for a little fantasy escapism these days? Or is it the wonderful eye-candy made possible by modern special effects? Maybe it’s finally seeing strong female characters after sitting through so many estrogen-deficient superhero movies. Whatever the reason, it's as clear as Cinderella's glass slipper that our entertainment owes a lot to the Brothers Grimm. 

lthough the duo is famous for sharing the classic tales bearing their name, here are five facts that you might not have known about them:Despite the fact that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are often associated with Snow White and Rapunzel, the brothers didn’t actually write any of those stories. In fact, the stories existed long before the two men were born in Germany in the mid 1780s. The fairy tales, in fact, were part of a rich oral tradition − passed down from generation to generation, often by women seeking to pass the time during household chores.

 But as industrialization took root, local traditions changed and scholars, like Jacob and Wilhelm, began a quest to save the stories from extinction. They interviewed relatives and friends, collecting whatever tales they could, sometimes embellishing them (although they insisted they did not). In 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm published the stories as part of a collection titled Nursery and Household Tales, or what is now referred to as Grimm’s Fairy Tale

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus. According to Plato, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys.In Greek mythology, Cronus, or Kronos, was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the  pe, scythe or a sickle, which was the instrument he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Attic .

A festival called Kronia was held in honour of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as a patron of harvest. Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity 

A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. 

Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the available scientific theories

. Even though the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are often used synonymously, a scientific hypothesis is not the same as a scientific theory. A working hypothesis is a provisionally accepted hypothesis proposed for further research.

Carpe diem 'Carpe' translates literally as 'pluck', with particular reference to the picking of fruit, so a more accurate rendition is 'enjoy the day, pluck the day when it is ripe'. 

The extended version of the phrase 'carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero' translates as 'pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the future'.

 

week 13

1.Book of Revelation

 Much time has been devoted to the gathering of the enclosed information. I am but a simple lay person with a deep desire to educate those who are honestly seeking the truth. I do this to be faithful to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ as He told us in Matthew 28 verse 19 to go out and teach all nations (In case you don't already know, the nations mean the people - everyone). He is telling us that we are to proclaim His gospel to not only our friends and neighbors, but also to those throughout the entire world. What greater a place to do that than on the world wide web that can be seen and read by people virtually everywhere. 

Those seeking the truth will find God's written Word, the Bible, to be the final authority, in all that they seek. As for Salvation issues, there should be no conflicting views contained here. There will be differences of opinion about exactly what and the timing of events that take place in the Book of Revelation. 

Those events are subject to interpretation but they are not a salvation issue. Some will interpret the how, what, and even the timing in the book of Revelation differently depending on their method of interpretation. Christians should be able to discuss those differences without fighting over their meanings. But when it comes to salvation issues, there should be NOdifferences of  opinion. 

Scriptures are shown to give support for many explanations you'll read. Individual subjects become easier to understand and believe as you research supporting scriptures

Please pass this web site address to a friend, relative, or acquaintance to whom you think may be interested. In the event you find spelling errors, please send an email message to the webmaster indicating where you found the error and what that error is.

I will do my best to answer any questions as time permits. Thank you for your interest and may God Bless you as you read the Bible and learn His written Word.

 

2.Ode on a Grecian Urn 

Keats has created a Greek urn in his mind and has decorated it with three scenes. The first is full of frenzied action and the actors are men, or gods, and maidens. Other figures, or possibly the male figures, are playing musical instruments. The maidens are probably the nymphs of classical mythology.

The men or gods are smitten with love and are pursuing them. Keats, who loved classical mythology, had probably read stories of such love games. In Book II of his Endymion, he recounts Alpheus' pursuit of Arethusa, and in Book III he tells of Glaucus' pursuit of Scylla.

The second scene is developed in stanzas II and III. Under the trees a lover is serenading his beloved. In stanza I, Keats confined himself to suggesting a scene by questions. The second scene is not presented by means of questions but by means of description. We see a youth in a grove playing a musical instrument and hoping, it seems, for a kiss from his beloved. The scene elicits some thoughts on the function of art from Keats. Art gives a kind of permanence to reality. The youth, the maiden, and the musical instrument are, as it were, caught and held permanently by being pictured on the urn. And so Keats can take pleasure in the thought that the music will play on forever, and although the lover can never receive the desired kiss, the maiden can never grow older nor lose any of her beauty. The love that they enjoy is superior to human love which leaves behind "a heart highsorrowful and cloy'd, / A burning forehead, and a parching tongue." The aftermath of human love is satiety and dissatisfaction. In these two stanzas Keats imagines a state of perfect existence which is represented by the lovers pictured on the urn. Art arrests desirable experience at a point before it can become undesirable. This, Keats seems to be telling us, is one of the pleasurable contributions of art to man.

The third scene on Keats' urn is a group of people on their way to perform a sacrifice to some god. The sacrificial victim, a lowing heifer, is held by a priest. Instead of limiting himself to the sacrificial procession as another scene on his urn, Keats goes on to mention the town emptied of its inhabitants by the procession. The town is desolate and will forever be silent.

The final stanza contains the beauty-truth equation, the most controversial line in all the criticism of Keats' poetry. No critic's interpretation of the line satisfies any other critic, however, and no doubt they will continue to wrestle with the equation as long as the poem is read. In the stanza, Keats also makes two main comments on his urn. The urn teases him out of thought, as does eternity; that is, the problem of the effect of a work of art on time and life, or simply of what art does, is a perplexing one, as is the effort to grapple with the concept of eternity. Art's (imagined) arrest of time is a form of eternity and, probably, is what brought the word eternity into the poem.

The second thought is the truth-beauty equation. Through the poet's imagination, the urn has been able to preserve a temporary and happy condition in permanence, but it cannot do the same for Keats or his generation; old age will waste them and bring them woe. Yet the pictured urn can do something for them and for succeeding generations as long as it will last. It will bring them through its pictured beauty a vision of happiness (truth) of a kind available in eternity, in the hereafter, just as it has brought Keats a vision of happiness by means of sharing its existence empathically and bringing its scenes to emotional life through his imagination. All you know on earth and all you need to know in regard to beautiful works of art, whether urns or poems about urns, is that they give an inkling of the unchanging happiness to be realized in the hereafter. When Keats says "that is all ye know on earth," he is postulating an existence beyond earth.

Although Keats was not a particularly religious man, his meditation on the problem of happiness and its brief duration in the course of writing "Ode on a Grecian Urn" brought him a glimpse of heaven, a state of existence which his letters show he did think about. In his letter of November 22, 1817, to Benjamin Bailey, he mentioned "another favorite Speculation of mine, that we shall enjoy ourselves here after by having what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated."

 

week 12

1.Ode to the West Wind BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: 
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! 
 
Some have interpreted the poem as the speaker lamenting his inability to directly help those in England owing to his being in Italy. At the same time, the poem expresses the hope that its words will inspire and influence those who read or hear it
Perhaps more than anything else, Shelley wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure. Some also believe that the poem was written in response to the loss of his son, William (born to Mary Shelley) in 1819. The ensuing pain influenced Shelley. 
The poem allegorises the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution. At the time of composing this poem, Shelley without doubt had the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 in mind. His other poems written at the same time—The Masque of Anarchy, Prometheus Unbound, and "England in 1819"— 

 
2William Blake

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". 

His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham),he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".

Although Blake was considered mad by contemoraries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-RomanticReverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion),

 Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, h   

John Donne
 John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England.
. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons.

 His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.

 His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

 

week 11

blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse".


couplet
Two consecutive lines of verse linked by rhyme and meter; the meter of a heroic couplet is iambic pentameter.

figurative language
language that uses figures of speech.


figure of speech
Any word or phrase that creates a "figure" in the mind of the reader by effecting an obvious change in the usual meaning or order of words, by comparing or identifying one thing with another; also called a trope. Metaphor, simile, metonymy, overstatement, oxymoron, and understatement are common figures of speech.

metaphor
It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas. Antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile are all types of metaphor.One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature is the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It:

simile
 similes explicitly use connecting words (such as like, as, so, than, or various verbs such as resemble), though these specific words are not always necessary. While similes are mainly used in forms of poetry that compare the inanimate and the living, there are also terms in which similes and personifications are used for humorous purposes and comparison.


meter
the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. This is determined by the kind of foot (iambie or dactylic, for example) and by the number of feet per line.


octa-:eight
octave
 in poetry is a line of eight metrical feet. It is not very common in English verse.


ode
An ode is a type of lyrical stanza 
he strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist.
 It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.


overstatement
exaggerated language; also called hyperbole.


poetry
compression and compactness and allowance for ambiguity; a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, especially visual and aural, qualities and effects of words and word order; especially vivid, often figurative language.

rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (or the same sound) in two or more words, most often in the final syllables of lines in poems and songs. The word rhyme is also a pars pro toto ("a part (taken) for the whole") that means a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.

rhyme scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.



understatement
 The rhetorical form of understatement is litotes in which understatement is used for emphasis and irony. This is not to be confused with euphemism, where a polite phrase is used in place of a harsher or more offensive expression.
 

week 10

1.Fiction

Fiction is a literary magazine founded in 1972 by Mark Jay Mirsky, Donald Barthelme, Jane Delynn, and Max Frisch. 

In its early years, Fiction was published in tabloid format and featured experimental work by such writers as John Barth, Jerome Charyn, Italo Calvino, Ronald Sukenick, Steve Katz, Russell Banks, Samuel Beckett, and J.G. Ballard. It later took the form of a more traditional paperback literary magazine, publishing short works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Reinaldo Arenas, Isaac Babel, Donald Barthelme, Mei Chin, Julio Cortazar, Marguerite Duras, Natalia Ginzburg, Clarice Ginzburg, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Robie Macaulay, Robert Musil, Joyce Carol Oates, Manuel Puig, John Yau, and others.

As you might imagine Fiction is comprised of a small staff of dedicated readers and we therefore operate on a rolling submission basis. If you have not heard from us, rest assured that your submission is still under consideration. Thank you for your patience.

Since its inception, Fiction has aimed to bring the experimental to a broader audience, and to bring new voices to the forefront, publishing emerging authors alongside well known and established writers. Find out more about getting published in Fiction at our Submissions page.

2.Genre

1770, as a French word in English (nativized from c.1840), from French genre "kind, sort, style" (see gender ). Used especially in French for "independent style." Of painting, "depicting scenes of ordinary life" (as compared to "landscape," "historical," etc.) from 1849.

Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story 

 In later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings.

Genre suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes.

  genre in Culture

The kind or type of a work of art, from the French, meaning “kind” or“ genus.” Literary genres include the novel and the sonnet. Musical genresinclude the concerto and the symphony. Film genres include Westerns andhorror movies.

3.literary

 A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even (as in the case of fiction) length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young adult, or children's. They also must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups.

The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic, tragedy,^[1] comedy, novel, and short story. They can all be in the genres prose or poetry, which shows best how loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such as satire might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. In popular fiction, which is especially divided by genres, genre fiction is the more usual term.

In literature, genre has been known as an intangible taxonomy. This taxonomy implies a concept of containment or that an idea will be stable forever.The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist and author of The Architext, describes Plato as creating three Imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative, and epic (a mixture of dialogue and narrative). Lyric poetry, the fourth and final type of Greek literature, was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle later revised Plato's system by eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode and distinguishing by two additional criteria: the object to be imitated, as objects could be either superior or inferior, and the medium of presentation such as words, gestures or verse

 4.Narrative

A narrative is a story that you write or tell to someone, usually in great detail.A narrative can be a work of poetry or prose, or even song, theater, or dance.

Often a narrative is meant to include the "whole story." A summary will give a few key details and then the narrative will delve into the details. "I hate to interrupt your narrative," is a polite way of stopping someone in the middle of a story. The origin of this noun is the Latin adjective narrativus, from narrare "to tell," from gnarus "knowing." It is related to our English verb know.