Between the Lines

Key Terms: Alliteration  - Repeated sound of the first consonant in a series of multiple words. Apostrophe  - Directly addressing something, someone or an abstract concept not present in the poem. Volta -  The turn of thought or argument in a sonnet. Iambic Pentameter -  Line of five feet of unstressed followed by stressed syllables.   Personification -  Human qualities given to animals, objects or ideas. Speaker  - The voice narrating the poem. Not necessarily the poet.  It has been a long time since I have done a close reading, and with all my blogs on theory and criticism, I think its important not to lose sight of our appreciation for the art. So in today's blog we will go back to the basics of appreciating and admiring poetry for what it is. I have chosen to look at this sonnet by John Keats -  Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art. BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—   Not in...

In structuralism , we discovered the theory of a linguistic structure which binds all of our cultural production, but this notion came under continued scrutiny for some of its flawed principles. These critiques of structuralism began to form new ways of looking at and thinking about the textual. One such theory is post-structuralism also known as deconstruction. Jacques Derrida Just as structuralism is not purely a literary theory, neither is deconstruction. The textual is not solely the writing we are looking at, but also the entire way we experience the world. Post-structuralism  is rather difficult to pin down and is arguably not even theory at all. For the most part, we can consider both post-structuralism and deconstruction as the same theory, and the existence of both terms emerged out of critics arguing over which was more accurate. Jacques Derrida was not happy with the term "post-structuralism" as he believed, whilst his theory concerned structures, it was ...