Robert Beardwood with Sandra Duncanson Kate Macdonell Heather Maunder Margaret Saltau Sue Sherman Helen Yvonne Smith

Transcription

1 Robert Beardwood with Sandra Duncanson Kate Macdonell Heather Maunder Margaret Saltau Sue Sherman Helen Yvonne Smith

2 Copyright Insight Publications 2015 First published 2006, reprinted 2007, 2008, 2009 Second edition published in 2010, 2012 Third edition published 2013, reprinted 2014 This fourth edition published 2015 by Insight Publications Pty Ltd ABN /350 Charman Road Cheltenham Victoria 3192 Australia Tel: Fax: books@insightpublications.com.au Copying for educational purposes The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be copied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency under the Act. For details of the Copyright Agency licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency Limited Level 15, 223 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000 Tel: Fax: info@copyright.com.au Copying for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act (for example, any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review) no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above. National library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Creator: Beardwood, Robert, 1966 author. Title: Literature for senior students / Robert Beardwood, Sandra Duncanson, Kate Macdonell, Katy Marriner, Heather Maunder, Margaret Saltau, Sue Sherman, Helen Yvonne Smith. Edition: 4th edition. ISBN: (paperback) Notes: Includes index. Target Audience: For secondary school age. Subjects: Literature History and criticism Textbooks. Books and reading Textbooks. Victorian Certificate of Education examination Study guides. Other Creators/Contributors: Duncanson, Sandra, author. Macdonell, Kate, 1969 author. Marriner, Katy, author. Maunder, Heather, author. Saltau, Margaret, author. Sherman, Sue, 1946 author. Smith, Helen Yvonne, author. Dewey Number: Other ISBNs: (digital) (bundle: print + digital) Cover design by Gisela Beer based on The puppet theater illustration by Eugene Ivanov Internal design & DTP by Bec Red Chilli Design and Gisela Beer Printed by Opus Group

3 Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Section A: The Literature Handbook 1 Overview of Western literature 2 Historical timeline 4 Classifying literature: forms and genres 9 Novels and short stories 16 Drama 30 Poetry 44 Film 61 Settings and contexts 67 Interpretation and analysis 79 Section B: Studying Literature 85 Chapter 1: Reading: the big picture 84 Three steps for reading 84 How to write up and use summary sheets 86 Examples of worked summary sheet sections 91 Chapter 2: Close analysis 96 Strategies for doing close analysis 96 Essential elements of close analysis 98 How to read a passage closely 103 Sample close analysis: a three-step process 105 Chapter 3: Views, values and contexts 111 Strategies for studying views, values and contexts 111 Essential terms for views, values and contexts 112 Features of the text that convey views and values 119 How to write about views, values and contexts 128 Chapter 4: Connections between texts 131 Strategies for comparing texts 132 Essential terms for comparing texts 133 Forms of intertextuality 136 Identifying connections 138 Creating meaning from connections 140 Sample response 144 Chapter 5: Adaptations and transformations 147 Strategies for studying adaptations and transformation 147 Essential terms for adaptations and transformations 148 Film adaptation of a novel 150 Film adaptation of a play 155 Performance of a play 158 Sample response 160 Chapter 6: Creative responses to texts 162 Strategies for responding creatively 162 Essential terms for creative responses 164 Preparing to write 166 Sample creative response and commentary 168 Chapter 7: Literary perspectives 177 Strategies for studying literary perspectives 177 Essential terms for considering literary perspectives 179 Theoretical perspectives 181 How to analyse a piece of literary criticism 190 How to write about two contrasting literary perspectives 192 Sample assessment task and response 194 Chapter 8: Passage analysis in the VCE exam 202 Preparing for passage analysis in the exam 204 How to write on passages 206 Sample passage analyses 211 Glossary 227 Index 230 iv v

4 AcknowledgEments Insight Publications thanks the following writers for their contributions to this book. Sandra Duncanson AE, BA (Hons), BTeach (Hons), MEd, DipPWE taught IB Literature and VCE English at Wesley College and Carey Baptist Grammar School. She is currently a senior editor with Insight Publications and is the co-author of English Year 10. Kate Macdonell PhD (Melbourne) BA (Hons) Dip. Ed. teaches VCE Literature and English at Toorak College. She has been a member of the examination setting panel and an assessor for VCE Literature. She taught in the Department of English at the University of Melbourne from 1994 to Katy Marriner BA Dip. Ed. teaches at St Columba s College. She has taught VCE Literature and English and has presented revision lectures for VCE Literature students as well as workshops for Literature teachers. Heather Maunder BA Dip. Ed. Grad. Dip. Ed. (Children s Lit.) teaches VCE Literature and English at Swinburne Senior Secondary College. She has taught Literature since 1970, been an assessor since 1996 and was Coursework Audit Reviewer She has been a State Reviewer and a member of the text selection panel for VCE Literature. Margaret Saltau BA Dip. Ed. B. Ed. is a Melbourne-based English and Literature teacher, consultant and writer. She has taught VCE Literature since its inception, has been Assistant State Reviewer and the Independent Reviewer for the 2000 Study Design, and has been a Literature examination assessor since Sue Sherman BA Dip. Ed. Post-Grad. Dip. (Eng.) taught VCE English, Literature and IB Language A1 at MLC in Melbourne. She has served on the examination setting panel, the text selection panel and the recent Review panel for VCE Literature. Sue has also been an external assessor for VCE English and Literature. Helen Yvonne Smith BA (Urb. Stud.) Dip. Ed. M. Ed. Lead. currently teaches at Mater Christi College, Belgrave. She has taught VCE Literature for over ten years. We also wish to thank Rebecca Yule and Gisela Beer for their work on the design and layout. Permissions Insight Publications thanks the following for their kind permission to reproduce copyright material: Geoff Page and David McCooey for their reviews of Rosemary Dobson s Collected and the University of Queensland Press for the poem The Almond Tree in the King James Version as well as the cover of Collected. Penguin Books for the extract from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sue Sherman, Jenny McMillan, Catriona Mills and Anica Boulanger-Mashberg for sample responses and text examples, and Emma Wiggins from Toorak College for her Adaptations and Transformations response on My Brilliant Career. Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to trace the original source and copyright owner of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to hear from any unacknowledged copyright owner to rectify errors or omissions. iv insight LITERATURE FOR SENIOR STUDENTS

5 INTRODUCTION Literature for Senior Students focuses on building the skills and knowledge essential to literary analysis. It is in two main parts: Section A: The Literature Handbook provides a detailed overview of literature and literary techniques. The timeline serves as a starting point for grasping the historical breadth of the subject, from ancient Greece and Rome up to the present day. The following sections cover the main literary forms and genres, explaining the key features and conventions and showing how to analyse their use in a wide range of texts. Section B: Studying Literature provides explanations, examples and activities to develop the skills of literary analysis. The most common ways of responding to texts are covered: a close reading of one or more passages; a comparison of two related texts; a comparison of a print text with its performance or adaptation in another medium; a creative response to a text; and an interpretation that responds to one or more pieces of literary criticism on a text. This 4th edition of Literature for Senior Students is based on the new VCE Literature Study Design The main changes to the Year 12 course are: There is no Views and values assessment task. The creative response is brought forward into Unit 3. The Alternative viewpoints task is expanded, renamed as Literary perspectives and given a greater focus on literary criticism, and moved into Unit 4. Another significant change affects Year 11 students. The Comparing texts Area of Study in Unit 2 has been renamed Exploring connections between texts, and now has an explicit emphasis on the dialogic nature of texts. As a result of these changes, the chapters in Section B have been rearranged and a new chapter added: The chapter on views, values and contexts now follows Close analysis, and forms part of essential background knowledge and skills for literary studies as a whole. A new chapter Connections between texts contains guidelines and examples showing how to compare texts that are connected in various ways. Chapter 7: Literary perspectives incorporates material from the chapter previously titled Alternative viewpoints, and includes additional notes on literary theory as well as a sample analysis of a text informed by two pieces of literary criticism. Texts used for sample responses in Chapters 5 8 are drawn from List B of the 2016 Literature Text List published by the VCAA. In Section A the texts used for examples include List B texts as well as a range of classic literature, including Austen, Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov. At the time of writing, the exam specifications for the 2017 VCE Literature exam were still being decided. As a passage analysis task may remain a significant part of the exam, we have retained the guidelines and sample responses in the final chapter, Passage analysis in the VCE exam. For exact details on the 2017 VCE Literature exam, refer to VCAA s exam specifications for the revised Study Design. These specifications are due for publication in late 2016 or early insight LITERATURE FOR SENIOR STUDENTS v

6 List of texts used List B texts used for examples and sample responses Novels Plays Poetry Heart of Darkness Section A examples; sample passage analysis My Brilliant Career Section A examples; timeline for plot; sample adaptations response Persuasion Section A examples; sample creative response The Cat s Table Section A examples The Leopard Section A examples The Man Who Loved Children Section A examples A Doll s House Section A examples; character summaries, character map and graph of narrative structure Agamemnon Section A examples Coriolanus Section A examples; sample passage analysis Pygmalion Section A examples Rhinoceros Section A examples Browning Section A examples Dobson Section A examples; sample literary perspectives response Heaney Section A examples; sample passage analysis Short stories Other texts Close Range sample passage analysis Text pairs used for examples in Chapter 4: Connections between texts (Year 11) Little Women and March Great Expectations and Mr Pip Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea Mrs Dalloway and The Hours Robinson Crusoe and Foe Text used for sample close analysis in Chapter 2 The Great Gatsby vi insight LITERATURE FOR SENIOR STUDENTS

7 SECTION A This comprehensive reference section gives you all the essential tools for understanding and writing about literature. It contains: i an overview and timeline of the Western literary tradition i the main forms and genres of literary texts i definitions of features and conventions such as structure, narrative point of view, characterisation, tone, style, setting, stage directions, imagery, rhythm and rhyme i discussion of how settings and contexts inform meaning i explanations of what it means to analyse and interpret a literary text i numerous examples drawn from a wide range of texts. the literature handbook

8 Section A: The literature handbook overview of western LITERATURE Literature has been part of human culture for a very long time: people have always told stories and passed them on from generation to generation as a way of making sense of life and of enhancing its beauty and significance. At first these stories were oral, remembered and recited by particular individuals the epic narrative poems usually attributed to Homer, the Odyssey and the Iliad, from around the 8th century BC, were initially in this form, before they were written down for preservation. Later epics from ancient Rome of which Virgil s Aeneid (c BC) is the most celebrated were written down in the act of composition, and this became the main way in which literary texts were created from around the 13th century. Many works from the late medieval and Renaissance periods such as Dante s Divine Comedy (c ) and Chaucer s Canterbury Tales (late 1300s) remain central texts in the literary canon, and the close relations between literature and technologies of writing and replicating the printed text remain crucial to the literary tradition. The analysis, discussion and criticism of literature are as old as literary texts themselves. The literary culture of ancient Greece gave rise not only to the great tragic dramas of Sophocles and Euripides (such as King Oedipus and Medea), but also to the earliest works of literary criticism. Of these, Aristotle s Poetics, written in the 4th century BC, has had a profound and lasting influence. In this work, Aristotle defines the main forms of writing of his time and also indicates the criteria for distinguishing good writing from bad, ranging widely over Greek poetry and drama to illustrate his points. These features of literary criticism of classifying, evaluating and interpreting literary texts are still central to its methodology today. Greek inscription Roman amphitheatre Canterbury Cathedral Dante 2 insight LITERATURE FOR SENIOR STUDENTS