You have time to finish this in class; extended time for those who receive it is as homework. This will be collected at the beginning of class tomorrow.
Coming up: vocabulary quiz for list 1 of Ethan Frome on Tuesday, April 4
Learning Targets:
I can interpret words and phrases as they are used in the text, including technical, connotative and figurative meanings, and analyze how the specific word choices shape the meaning.
I can determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
I can analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
I can determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
Background information on Naturalism
Naturalism
Naturalism (1890 - 1915):
1. The term Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings.
2. Naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings.
3. The Naturalist believed in studying human beings as though they were "products" that are to be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.
4. Naturalistic writers believed that the laws of behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood through the objective study of human beings.
5. Naturalistic writers used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment.
6. Naturalism is considered as a movement to be beyond Realism. Naturalism is based more on scientific studies.
7. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a basis for the Naturalist writer. Natural selection and survival of the fittest help to depict the struggle against nature as a hopeless fight.
5. Naturalistic writers used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment.
6. Naturalism is considered as a movement to be beyond Realism. Naturalism is based more on scientific studies.
7. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a basis for the Naturalist writer. Natural selection and survival of the fittest help to depict the struggle against nature as a hopeless fight.
Characteristics of naturalism
- Objective
- Darwinistic--survival of the fittest
- Detached method of narration
- Language--formal; piling on of images ("wretched excess")
- Human beings unable to stand up against enormous weight of circumstances.
- Deterministic--natural and socioeconomic forces stronger than man.
- Heredity determines character
- Violence--force against force
- man against man
- man against nature
- man against himself
- Taboo topics
- Animal imagery
- Attention to setting to the point of saturation
- Characters--lower socioeconomic class
- Static characters
- Naturalists observe, then write. Often about the black, darker side of life.
- "Pessimistic materialistic determinism" (Pizer)
- Characters conditioned or controlled by environment, heredity, instinct or chance but they have a compensating humanistic value that affirms the significance of the individual (Pizer).
- Characters do not have free will (determinism)
Themes:
"The conflict in naturalistic novels is often 'man against nature' or 'man against himself' as characters struggle to retain a 'veneer of civilization' despite external pressures that threaten to release the 'brute within' " (Campbell).
Nature is indifferent to man
The universe is deterministic
Name_________________________________
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton background information on the literary movement of Naturalism. Column 1 lists qualities associated with Naturalism. Please respond to the query (new word) in column 2 that asks you to extend the idea presented in column 1. Please use complete sentences.
Column 1 Column 2
1. The term Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings.
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What does it mean “to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to human beings?”
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2. Naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings.
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In what ways could human beings be described as “beasts?”
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3. The Naturalist believed in studying human beings as though they were "products" that are to be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.
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a. What does it mean to “moralize” a human being?
b. What advantage might a writer have in removing the idea of moralizing from a narrative?
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4. Naturalistic writers believed that the laws of behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood through the objective study of human beings.
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If moralizing is removed from human nature, what might remain?
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5. Naturalistic writers used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment.
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In Romanticism we looked at how instincts and passions impact a tale. Now heredity and environment are added into the mix. Which set of forces do you think will dominate and why?
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6. Naturalism is considered as a movement to be beyond Realism. Naturalism is based more on scientific studies.
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Realism is writing about what is: warts and all. Social Science connection. What social movement (s) was taking place in the latter half of the 19th century whose reality when exposed would lead to social change?
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7. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a basis for the Naturalist writer. Natural selection and survival of the fittest help to depict the struggle against nature as a hopeless fight.
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Ethan
Frome Vocabulary Words First List…quiz on Tuesday, April 4…power
point review on Monday, April 3
1. sardonic:
adj. Scornfully or cynically mocking; sarcastic.
2. colloquial: adj. 1. Characteristic of or appropriate to
the spoken language or to writing that seeks
the effect of
speech; informal. 2. Relating to conversation;
conversational.
3. innocuous: adj. 1. Having
no adverse effect; harmless. 2. Not
likely to offend or provoke to strong
emotion; insipid.
4. reticent:
adj. 1. Inclined to keep
one's thoughts, feelings, and personal affairs to oneself;
Restrained
or reserved in style. 3. Reluctant;
unwilling.
5.
poignant: adj. Keenly
distressing to the mind or feelings: poignant anxiety; profoundly moving; touching: a poignant memory.
6.
wraith: n. 1. An apparition of a living person that appears as a portent just
before that person's
death. 2. The ghost of a dead person. 3. Something shadowy and insubstantial.
7.
wistful: adj. 1. Full of wishful yearning. 2. Pensively sad; melancholy.
8.
undulation: n. 1. A regular rising and falling or movement to alternating sides;
movement in waves.
9.
tenuous: adj. 1. Long and thin; slender: tenuous strands. 2. Having a thin consistency; dilute;
having
little substance; flimsy: a tenuous argument.
10.
throng: n. 1. A large group of people gathered or crowded closely together; a
multitude.
throngs v.tr. 1. To
crowd into; fill: commuters thronging the subway platform.2. To press in
to gather, press, or move
in a throng.
11.
vex: (verb) 1. To annoy, as with petty importunities; bother. 2. To cause perplexity in; puzzle.
12.
laden: adj. 1. Weighed down with a load; heavy: "the warmish air,
laden with the rains of those
thousands of miles of western sea" Hilaire Belloc.
2. Oppressed; burdened: laden
with grief.
13.
preclude:
1. To make impossible, as
by action taken in advance; prevent. 2.
To exclude or prevent (someone) from a given condition or activity: Modesty
precludes me from accepting the honor.
14.
succumb: (verb) 1. To submit to an overpowering force or yield to an overwhelming
desire; give up or give in. 2. To
die.
15.
foist: (verb) 1.
To pass off as genuine, valuable, or worthy: "I can usually tell
whether a poet . . . is foisting off on us what he'd like to think is pure
invention" J.D. Salinger.
2. To
impose (something or someone unwanted) upon another by coercion or trickery: They
had extra work foisted on them because they couldn't say no to the boss. 3. To insert fraudulently or
deceitfully: foisted unfair provisions into the contract.
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