1. Note-taking is encouraged for the following presenation
Day /18/2015
Note-taking is encouraged for the following presenation
Welcome to class!

2. Voice and Language
Please take notes!

3. Language is meaning!
You can’t separate HOW something is being said from WHAT is being said in literature.
A writer’s structure, style, word choice and details are the beating heart of the story (and you can’t live without a heart).

4. Literary Devices/Figurative Language
It is great that we have names for the different tricks-with-words that writers use because it makes them easier to talk about, but ultimately who cares that someone uses personification unless you also talk about WHY and HOW it contributes to the meaning of the text?
But anyway, here are a few to know..

5. Imagery
Language that evokes sense-impressions. In other words, the images it uses. Not necessary always “pictures” but also sounds, smells, tastes and feelings created through words.
“Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life...I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with that burning we had yet to make it ours, how could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us.”

6. Metaphor
One thing, idea or action is referred to another in order to draw a comparison between the two. This is often used to make an unknown thing able to be understood because it is likened to something familiar.
“The road was a ribbon of moonlight.”

7. Personification
a figure of speech in which animals, abstract ideas or are referred to as if they were human.
“Her feelings delighted in hiding the remote control from her.”
“How cold the steel is, and keen with hunger of blood.”

8. allusion
an indirect reference to some event, person, place or artistic work that the reader is expected to know outside of that particular work of literature.
“You would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

9. Remember!
Just being able to spot a literary device is pointless if you stop there. You must think about WHY the writer need that particular language in conveying his or her ideas.

10. Answer the following questions from the Stephen King article:
According to Stephen King, what should a first line do and why is this important?
King says that intriguing context and style are important in a book, but according to him, what do readers really want to enjoy in a piece of writing?
King talks about a writer’s voice as “an invitation” and “a promise.” What does he mean by this?

11. Call me Ishmael.
This is one of the most famous 1st lines in literature. Let’s analyze what we know about the voice of this story.
-What can we say about the speaker?
-How would you describe the style of language?
-What is the tone?
-What can you predict about the story?

12. So, here’s how a clever student of English might write about it.
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the narrator of the story opens with a simple imperative statement: “Call me Ishmael.” While he may appear to have named himself, he does not actually say his given name, only what he is choosing to be called for the purpose of narrating this story. Already this speaker is veiling himself in mystery. He either wishes to wipe out his past or to conceal his true identity from the reader, suggesting that his past haunts him. The name he chooses also resonates with significance. He does not choose a common run-of the-mill name like Joe or John; he wishes to be called Ishmael, an allusion to the biblical son of Abraham who was banished and cast out into the wilderness. This narrator sets up a world in which names have power and things are not always as they seem. In using this particular name, our narrator indicates that he feels like an outcast or other, not a chosen son but one who is rejected, deserted or lost, ideas which will likely echo throughout the rest of the story he is about to tell us.

13. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen—Pride and Prejudice
What can we say about the speaker?
-How would you describe the style of language?
-What is the tone?
-What can you predict about the story?

14. Now you practice analyzing.