Lecture #1 Novels & Monkey

“Reading the Novel”

Setting 

Time  

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Place 

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Buildings, vehicles, clothing

Environment 

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Location like woods or at sea as well as city, country

Objects 

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Chronological time [the time from beginning to the end of a story] Novel time [the timeline in which events are presented – may include flash backs or flash forwards]

Weather, lighting, temperature

Ambience 

How do we feel about the setting?

Who is the narrator?  

First person: Narrator as I Third Person: He/She 

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Stream of consciousness 

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Narrator may be Omniscient [knows everything about everyone inner thoughts as well as exterior actions], limited omniscient [knows everything about some characters], intrusive [talks directly to the reader and breaks flow of text], objective – recorder [acts like a video camera so only records what is external]) Like a narrators thoughts flowing across a page

Questions to ask yourself:   

Who is telling the story? Is this person in the story or outside of the story? Does the author ever intrude?

Reliable or unreliable narrators 

Should we believe what the narrator tells us? 

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Sometimes a narrator is a character in the story and may have an agenda or a reason to tell the story in a certain way – for example, to make himself look innocent.

What makes a narrator unreliable? 

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As readers, we have to decide why the author has a character telling us a story, and we should pay attention to this. Often is the narrator is outside of the story, the narrator may be more reliable, but that is not always the case.

Plot [order of events] Exposition (who, what, where, when)  Conflict (problem – there may be more than one)  Climax (pivotal point in action)  Resolution ( How it ends up) 

Climax Conflict Resolution Expo

Characters in novels have more depth 

How do we learn about them?      

Dialogue Physical actions Thoughts or mental actions Judgment by others Narrator judgment Author’s judgment

Theme versus Overall Message 

Theme: main topics of the book 

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Ex: Marriage

Overall Message: what we should think about the topic? 

Ex: Marriage sometimes makes people unhappy

Symbolism + Irony 

Symbolism 

Cultural symbols – commonly recognizable symbols 

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Personal symbols – must be figured out by reading the text 

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Irony 

Swan = death if in the text when someone dies a character sees or hears a swan

Dramatic Irony – when someone in the text or the audience knows something another character does not. 

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Red rose = love or gold ring = marriage

For example, in one chapter the murder is illustrated so the reader knows who did it but the other characters in the text don’t.

Circumstantial Irony – when situations occur that cause surprise and chagrin. 

For example, you have just bought a bus ticket and someone offers you a free ride.

Narrative Precursors to the Novel These stories led to the eventual creation of what we call the modern novel. Essentially, smaller stories eventually got linked into a longer whole.  Heroic Epics : Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Mahabharata, Valmiki’s Ramayana, Virgil’s Aeneid, Beowulf, The Song of Roland  Ancient Greek and Roman Romances and Novels: Ovid’s metamorphosis  Oriental Frame Tales : Ramayana, A Thousand and One Nights  Medieval European Romances : Arthurian tales culminating in Malory’s Morte Darthur  Novelle: Boccaccio’s Decameron, Margurerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

The First Novels        

The Tale of Genji ( Japan, 11th c. )by Lady Murasaki Shikibu Monkey, Water Margin, and Romance of Three Kingdoms (China, 16th c.) Don Quixote ( Spain, 1605-15) by Miguel de Cervantes The Princess of Cleves (France, 1678) by Madame de Lafayette Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister (England, 1683) and Oroonoko (1688)by Aphra Behn Robinson Crusoe (England, 1719) , Moll Flanders (1722) and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel DeFoe Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (England, 1740-1742) by Samuel Richardson Joseph Andrews (England, 1742) and Tom Jones (1746)by Henry Fielding

Journey to the West or Monkey [one of the earliest novels] 

Brief Description   

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supernatural novel with gods and demons began with a series of oral and written versions attained its most definitive version written by Wu Ch'eng-en (1500?-1582)

Journey to the West is divided into three parts:  

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(1) an early history of the Monkey spirit; (2) pseudo-historical account of Tripitaka's family and life before his trip to fetch the sutras [scriptures] in the Western Heaven; (3)the main story, consisting of 81 dangers and calamities encountered by Tripitaka and his three animal spirit disciples - Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy.