Psychological Criticism

ON HIS BLINDNESS  (SONNET)

BY: John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

ANALYSIS

The sonnet of Milton can be analyzed through the use of Psychological Criticism because it reflects life and is a realistic representation of Milton’s life especially in his blindness. The main themes of this poem are Milton’s exploration of his feeling, fears and doubts regarding his failed sight, his rationalization of this fear by seeking solutions in his faith.

 The tone of the poem is one of contrasting darkness and light, “my light is spent” and spending half of his life “in this dark world and wide”, using alliteration and contrast to give understanding to his affliction, but Milton is also indicating a biblical reference to the `Talent’; a unit of currency in those times, and used several by Jesus as a symbolic level of the meaning of forgiveness. The ending part of this line `which is death to hide’, Milton is referring to the Resurrection and that if one hides one’s Talent or the gift of the forgiveness and / or compassion, and not extend it to others, will this will this be extended to you at the End of Days?

Thus, the sonnet shows how the author reflects on his life and tells how he is motivated to write this sonnet even in the absence of his sight

Feminism

"THE SECRET LANGUAGE"

BY :Maria Luisa B. Aguilar-Carino

I have learned your speech,

Fair stranger; for you

I have oiled my hair

And coiled it tight

Into a braid as thick

And beautiful as the serpent

In your story of Eden.

For you, I have covered

My breasts and hidden,

Among the folds of my surrendered

Inheritance, the beads

I have worn since girlhood.



It is fifty years now

Since the day my father

Took me to the school in Bua,

A headman's terrified

Peace-gift.  In the doorway,

The teacher stood, her hair

The bleached color of corn,

Watching with bird-eyes.



Now, I am Christina.

I am told I can make lace

Fine enough to lay upon the altar

Of a cathedral in Europe.

But this is a place

That I will never see.



I cook for tourists at an inn;

They praise my lemon pie

And my English, which they say

Is faultless.  I smile

And look past the window,

Imagining father's and grandfather's cattle

Grazing by the smoke trees.

But it is evening, and these

Are ghosts.

In the night,

When I am alone at last,

I lie uncorseted

Upon the iron bed,

Composing my lost beads

Over my chest, dreaming back

Each flecked and opalescent

Color, crooning the names,

Along with mine:

Binaay, Binaay.

ANALYSIS

At the outset, it needs to be said that courses in creative writing and in literature are not exactly dissimilar things: both locate the literary text—poetic, fictional, dramatic—at the center of their attentions, even as the privileged perspectives between them are admittedly different.

A creative writing class, simply because it intends to make writers out of its students, looks at texts from the vantage-point of their production. In other words, as a discipline creative writing, by its very nature, aims at an awareness of litera­ture as a species of artistry, an imaginative process whose workings can to a large extent be identified and discussed, duplicated.

On the other hand, a literature class can and does, depending on the persuasion of the teacher or perhaps even the student herself, choose to look at a literary text's meaningfulness in light of any number of concerns: its formal attributes, its writer's life and times, the reading practices of its intended and/or apparent audience, its artfulness, its thematic affiliations, the students' impressions or subjective "feelings" about it, etc.

Here we can see, upon closer scrutiny, a basic and even antago­nistic divergence of interests presenting itself: while a creative writing class encourages students to revise the literary texts they themselves create, a literature class invariably treats the text as a kind of "self-contained" object of study, one which doesn't need to be "improved," since the assumption behind its being read and discussed at all is that precisely it is already "good" anyway, or at least it already finds itself falling within the teacher's own idea of a "canon."

I do not, however, wish my lecture to get embroiled in what is always a torturous and finally futile subject—namely, the question of the "Canon." What I wish to propose is this: the teaching of literature can be greatly enhanced by employing certain creative writing techniques and strategies. In particular, I am interested in advancing the old argument that creation is the highest form of appreciation.

Schools of Criticism

NEW CRITICISM

ANNABEL LEE  (NARRATIVE POETRY)

BY: Edgar Allan Poe 

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of ANNABEL LEE;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me-

Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,

In the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 ANALYSIS 

    The poem “Annabel Lee” of Mr.  Poe falls under New Criticism because it focuses more on the structure of the poem. As we can see, the author doesn’t focus on what is the message he is depicting but rather he wants the readers to focus their attention in what kind of style and theme he used in composing the poem.  

      Readers are urged by the tone and setting of this poem to question how well the speaker actually remembers his relationship with his dead lover. From the very first line, the speaker admits that he is talking about things that happened “many and many years ago.” Repeating the word “many” emphasizes the amount of time that has passed since Annabel Lee’s death. 

        “Annabel Lee” consists of six stanzas that range from six to eight lines each. The poem uses repetition and rhyme to create the qualities of unity and euphony, or a pleasing musicality. The repeated use of the end rhymes “sea,” “Lee,” “we,” and “me” offer a link from stanza to stanza throughout the poem. The name “Annabel Lee” appears at least once in every stanza and the phrase “kingdom by the sea” also appears frequently, adding to the unified structure. Repetition of key words within lines gives the poem its pleasing sound while at the same time emphasizing main ideas.

    “Annabel Lee” was the last poem that Poe composed, and was first published in November, 1849, in The Southern Literary Messenger, a month or so after his death. It is comprised of six stanzas, three of which have six lines and three of which have eight lines, with the rhyme pattern differing slightly in each one.

Marxist Criticism

ULYSSES  (IDYLL POETRY)

 BY Alfred Tennyson 

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 ANALYSIS 

 The idyll falls under the Marxist Criticism because the content and theme of it is emphasized rather than the form. In the very first line Ulysses is introduced as a king. The beginning of the poem gives an instant impression of the stature and individuality of the hero. He doesn’t reside on the position of king for long, instead sweeping straight on to the next line, almost as if it is meaningless in the scheme of his life.

When Ulysses is talking in the poem, he is already an old man. Since youth he has gone on missions of extraordinary bravery, for years at a time. All he has known and all he wants to know are travel and discovery. As Ulysses tells in the poem, he has learned and suffered greatly, both with others and alone.

Thus, the life of Ulysses implies a great content and theme where that he despises the values associated with unity, order, and harmony, with love, family, and nation. “Little profits” catches exactly the sneer of aristocratic irony that is so pacifying and so insusceptible of argument or reproof. All these conventional values are swept aside by the rush of the demands of the primitive ego.

The poem also complies with its function that the literary output is to either criticize or support the political and economic structures in place. In the idyll, Ulysses supports it.

Critique of the Poem.. "My Grandmother's Sweater"

As we can observe, the poem is free from any form of rhyme and meter like Ode and Sonnet have. Thus, the way the author writes the poem uses the free-verse style

            The point of view used by the author is the first person point of view. It is also a descriptive type of poetry because it simply tells what the author feels. Specifically, this kind of poem falls under lyric poetry under descriptive type of poetry. It is for the reason that lyric poetry is considered to be author’s confession because it merely tells what the author feels through expressing it in the poem and unlike narrative poetry, it doesn’t tall a story.

            Upon reading the poem, we can feel the melancholic mood of the poem because the author’s line is full of bitterness and pain. The one who is speaking wants to convey to the reader how deep of depression and sadness she felt when her grandmother died and it only the sweater of her grandmother that can comfort her from loneliness.

            Also, the meaning of the poem is implied because the readers cant easily get what is the poem all about unless he reads it three to four times. The only clue that made me realized that her grandmother is already died is on the line stating “as they lay her into the ground”.

            It is very observable that the author doesn’t use any symbolism. The author just merely explains the thought trough using simple words. The only thing that make it hard to understand is it id full of outpouring of emotions.

            Lastly, each stanza is consistent with each other throughout the poem. Although it is not narrative, the author was able to convey the message in progressive form.

Critique of the short story... "Desire"

As we can notice, the short story is simply a literary telling a story of a girl who is longing for the love of someone that will love her for what she is and not because she has a gorgeous body.

            I can say that the author’s intention in writing the short story is to give us the lesson that sometimes, beautiful things bring us problem. Though beautiful things came to our life, we still consider these perfections as problem because it blocks our happiness. We should have the idea that we should not look on physical attributes for it is only the outer. But rather, we must look what are inside because these are the one that remain.

            As I read the story, I felt pity on the protagonist because unlike the common story, she hates the thing that makes her desirable. The real scenario is we long for gorgeous body because we thought it will give us happiness and perfection. But based on the story, it enlightened me that too much perfection will give us worry. Because people tend to accept us not because of we are but rather because of what we have. Thus, lesson learned, be happy on what you have though it is ugly because God has purpose on giving you that attributes and He gave it for your own sake.

            Actually, there is no literary technique that is used by the author. She doesn’t use any figures of speech just to color her story. But what makes it very catching is the content itself. The author was able to show to reader that there are always deviations in life. Not all beautiful would bring happiness and not all ugly would bring sadness.

            The way the author ends the story is some kind an incomplete. Because it has a hanging ending for the story doesn’t tells or portrays if the protagonist find the man she is longing for. Nevertheless, it gives excitement to the readers because they were given the chance to end the story in their own perception.

“She wanted love, was starved for it. But she did not want the love that her body inspired in men. She wanted something purer… cleaner.

- Desire, Paz Latorena 1928

            It is very noticeable that the short story falls under feminist criticism not only because the protagonist is the woman, but also because the role of the woman in the story is being emphasized.

            The title “Desire” could be in two interpretations: the desire of men for her body and the desire of the woman for a purer and cleaner love. This proves how man and woman differ in their perspective.

            The short story started with a detailed description of a woman (who is categorized now as a shrimp or hipon in gay language). A homely woman as referred by the writer Paz Latorena even with the use of the word homely makes me thinks that the writer somehow implicitly hid the negative connotation of having a homely face. She could just straightly say ugly but she rather not. I think for the purpose of not being too harsh on women as to women should not be judged hastily. A language of a woman like Paz Latorena has the power to make the negative seem to be not that negative. The longing for love like all human being do is present in the story the difference is that the woman is homely yet she has a gorgeous body not only that she diverts her frustrations and hurt into worthwhile things like writing. I think what the writer wants to say is that women are not just mere figures or warm bodies in bed but also human not devoid of feelings. Racial discrimination is somehow present in the story too with the White man at first being judgmental of the Filipino race. Upon recognizing that the unnamed woman’s ideas are the same as his race, he took interest in meeting the lady. At first the white man took interest of getting to know the woman but in the end upon discovering that she has the right curves in her body(only hidden by the clothing she choose to wear), he said he loves the girl but not the total being of her but only her body.

            Also, we could look in an aspect that upon their meeting of the men, she came alone and stated that she could afford to break conventions. I assume that the woman in the story is intellectual and educated woman. The stereotype of a weak woman is not showed by her. The language of Latorena does not have any mark of derogatory language or language that would make the readers feel pity on the character but the language used is very descriptive and forms mental images and we could not find words that would make the woman be in a stage of drama or self pity.

            I am wondering if the short story is autobiographical. Upon checking the internet for her picture, my suspicions became stronger, that it was herself being described in the text.

Critique of the Novel.. "Children of the Resolution"

Children of the Resolution (Critique Novel)
by: Gary William Murning 

Children of the Resolution is a story of a child poised between two worlds. Thrown into the revolutionary world of integrated education in 1970s England, the physically disabled Carl finds himself torn between what he expects of himself and what his changing environment will allow. At heart, a coming-of-age story – Children of the Resolution explores the intricacies of friendship and loss, the subtle fears of childhood and the far less subtle fears of adulthoods possibly never realised. “Children of the Resolution is more than a novel, it is a commentary on the work of educationalists, practitioners and politicians who see education through their own eyes and experiences and not those of the real participants, our young people.” Lord Willis of Knaresborough.

The twist, however is this: after the class have finished writing their secrets down, you ask them to fold the pieces of paper once or twice and to put them  inside a box or a hat (I bring my baseball cap to class just for this purpose). Everyone then gets to pick out a secret from this common repository—the moment a student happens to pick out her own secret, she is asked to refold it and put it back in, and to pick out another one. In the end, everyone should have someone else's secret in her possession.

The final instruction is a simple one, although it never fails to elicit a collective moan of despair from the class: they are now to write, in a page or two, the story behind and around that secret—a story that should be told in the first person, by the person (more accurately, persona) whose secret it supposedly is. The story doesn't have to be complete. It can end in the present or in the past. The important thing is that the secret gets to be revealed—and revealed in a well-described and interesting way.

I usually turn this exercise into an assignment, although once or twice in the past I made my students do it in the classroom—or at least, they wrote their first draft of it in my presence. Whichever it is, the following meeting, I ask someone to begin the session by reading her work out loud in class, and after this, I ask the student who believes it is her secret that has just been told to come up front and tell us her own version of it. Very rarely does it happen that the original owner of the secret is completely in agreement with the way her classmate has narrated it, and it even happens that two or more students believe it is their secret they thought they heard being read. (In any case, this first reactor starts the ball rolling, for now it is her turn to recite her story of the secret she picked out last meeting, and so on...)

The message is brought home: when we write about our own lives, our memories may be very clear and unmistakable inside our minds, but we fail to appreciate the fact that these memories need to be re-imag­ined—"re-imaged"—as it were, so that others may see them, feel them, hear them, taste and smell them, touch them; so that they will become real. A student, remembering what she did last summer, would typically write in an informal composition: "Last summer I stayed with mylola in her big old house in the province." For such a  student, just this sentence is enough to evoke the cherished house inside her mind, probably in all the fond textures of its specificity. But what about us? Is this house real to us? How can  it be if it's not yet been imagined for us¾if it has yet to be written?

The need to communicate is a need that writing, when it is any good, amply fulfills. Ultimately, this activity benefits every student in a quiet and personal way, for the way her secret has been "told" automatically alienates her memory of it from someone's else's imagination of it—and thus makes it clear to her that she needs to do a similar creative "invention," even or especially where her own memories are concerned, which to her may be plain and needing very little elaboration, but which cannot be communicated to her readers except in and as form—except in and as "art."

What I also like about this exercise is that, already, the idea that writing must have a point is made clear by it from the very beginning: a secret is just as good a reason to write as any I can think, and in fact, we might argue that the sudden appearance of insight, the unexpected proffering of an offhand piece of knowledge, the "rare and random descent" of revelation, is invariably the purpose of all literature, whether poetry or prose. It's almost like everything in this world can be seen to harbor in itself a secret—which is another way of saying that metaphors lurk in the shadows of the visible universe, and all we need to do is to look for them.

Czeslaw Milosz, in his beautiful anthology, A Book of Luminous Things, groups some poems under the heading "The Secret of a Thing." In his introduction, he writes that "poetry has always described things surrounding us... but the contemplation of a thing—a reverent and pious approach toward it—is a prerequisite of true art." This activity, I find, is useful in letting students think of writing just in these very same terms: writing as uncanny epiphany, as a respectful attentiveness toward life, as a generous unbosoming of a secret.

A reminder: this, once again, is not a strictly poetic activity, and, indeed, the output one expects of one's students with this exercise is not going to resemble—not even remotely—a poem. But I find it's a very effective means of introducing to my class the idea of poetry or literature as being first and foremost an act of the imagination—an act that is necessarily grounded in experience even as it surpasses it, simply by ordering it and making it more meaningful, more sensorily satisfying than it may have actually been. The poem can come later: in the first place, I prefer to look at this exercise as a "pre-poem"—one out of many I will be making them write.

The question comes wriggling—I can almost feel it—in most of your minds: Just where does an activity such as this fit in one's syllabus for a class on literary types and forms, or in Humanities I (which in the UP comes under the politically correct official description, "Literature, Society and the Individual")? I leave it up to the teacher, in the end. However, in my case, I can think of holding this exercise during a session immediately following a discussion of some contemporary poems¾poems that shouldn't sound too difficult or man­nered in expression, I believe, and, if possible, poems by Filipino writers that talk about secrets. (If I have to be ministerial  about anything in this lecture, it is in regard to this: a good reading list—a good textbook—is nearly half the battle. Since we can only write poems in the way that the poems we have read and liked were written, I will insist that my students read poems that I am convinced they can or should emulate.