Vocabulary

Word Choice and Connotation.

Word choice is a writer’s particular selection of language in any work.

Often referred to as diction word choice strongly influences the tone of a poem and our impression of its speaker.

An important factor in word choice is connotation. Several words may have the same general denotation, or literal meaning. However, their connotations – the associations we have for these words – may differ a great deal. For example, flood and torrent have the same basic literal meaning, but torrent sounds more formal, and it also creates a more violent picture than flood. Pope chose torrent in “Sound and Sense” in order to create a particular impression that flood would not create.

Imagery. In literature an image is a picture or sensation that is created with words.

Although the word image most often suggests a visual picture, it can also refer to other sensory experiences such as sound, touch, taste, smell, and movement. For example, in describing a campfire, you might talk about not only its bright darting flames but also its snapping sound, glowing warmth, and pungent smell, as well as the smoky taste it gives your food.

A poem's imagery is its collection of such images. A poem may be dominated by one central image or may consist of a series of different images. As we read a poem, its images remind us of our own sensory experiences and draw us into the poet's words. Imagery also engages our emotions. As pictures, sounds, and other sensory experiences erupt in our minds, the emotions we associate with these experiences erupt as well.

Семинар 3-5

(Short) story interpreting / analysis

THE SHORT STORY

The story must spring from an impression or perception, pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

- Elizabeth Bowen

We read stories for a number of reasons. We read stories for the pleasure of recognizing familiar experiences and feelings; we read stories to escape into unfamiliar places and times. Most of all, we read stories because they stimulate our imaginations. By increasing our capacity to imagine, they make our lives larger.

All these reasons come into play as we read fiction because stories themselves are so very different. Some are full of action and adven­ture. Others, more subdued, look closely at the small moments that illuminate ordinary lives. Some stories reassure us with familiar truths; others startle us with new ideas. However, every good story is made up of the same basic elements - events, persons, places, images, and ideas. Every author combines these raw materials for a particular purpose: to communicate his or her "pressing" perception of the world, to show us something we have never seen in quite the same way before.

NONFICTION

… facts must be manipulated; some must be brightened; others shaded; yet, in the process, they must never lose their integrity.

- Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction is factual prose writing that includes biography, auto­biography, and essays. Unlike fiction, nonfiction is rooted in fact; it observes and comments on people who actually lived and events that really happened.

A work of nonfiction, however, does more than relate facts. Through the particular choice of facts, their arrangement, and inter­pretation, and through the skillful use of language, authors of non-fiction communicate their own opinions and reveal their own personalities.

An author of a work of nonfiction usually writes for a very definite purpose and audience. The author wants to communicate a particular opinion or thought; that is his or her purpose. The opinion or thought may be packaged so that it informs readers, entertains them, or moves them to some action. The author may be writing for an audience of experts or of casual readers. The author's tone, or attitude toward the subject, usually indicates the purpose and audience he or she had in mind in writing the work. In addition, the work's title and overall style - the author's choice and arrangement of words - may reveal the author's purpose in a piece of nonfiction.

Literary Focus

The Total Effect

Most people recognize that writing a story is a creative act. Just as important, reading a story demands creative, active thinking. As we read any story, we think about what is happening, why it happens, and what it means. We notice and interpret clues about the plot, characters, setting, point of view, tone, and theme of the story, along with its possible uses of irony and symbol. When we have finished, we find that we have put these clues together into an interpretation of the story. In a sense, we have taken the author's words and recreated the story that he or she originally imagined.

Because reading a story is an imaginative act, different people will make somewhat different observations as they read. However, an ac­tive reader will keep in mind the following basic points.