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[book pages flipping].
Welcome back students, I'm Christopher Hanlon, professor of
English at Eastern Illinois University and we're here with
The Close Reading Cooperative, the podcast in literary analysis
for English majors and this...
...is C.C. Wharram, who is here to tell
you a little bit about a couple of
literary devices that you've heard about in the last few
weeks, but I'd like to discuss them with regard to
a poem by Christina Rossetti.
(Dr. Hanlon). Ah, Christina Rossetti.
(Dr. Wharram). One of your favorites.
(Dr. Hanlon). One of my favorites.
(Dr. Wharram). A Victorian poet
who wrote in 1862--I believe it was-- "Goblin Market",
a long poem which was generally intended to be read to
children and since it is so rich in rhythm, meter, and other
poetic sounds and devices, I thought maybe we could take a
look at a couple lines of that and we what we could make.
The poem--just to contextualize the section that we're going to
look at--is really about a group of goblins who are interested in
selling their fruity wares to a couple of--fruits that is--to a
couple of young women and the seductive techniques
that they use in order to try to get them to buy
these evil globes of fruit.
(Dr. Hanlon). I hate goblins.
They're always doing that.
(Dr. Wharram). Yeah, goblins are.
I wanted to read you a couple of lines and when I'm reading this
I'd like you to sort of take note of any sort of changes in
sound or rhythm or sort of thing that
you'd think is interesting to know.
(Dr. Hanlon). Okay so if I hear
a sound I should, I'll let you know.
(Dr. Wharram). Touch your ear like this.
(Dr. Hanlon). Okay I'll pull my ear.
(Dr. Wharram). Yeah because that's
what it is, a [unclear dialogue] sound.
[reads poem].
(Dr. Hanlon). I heard two changes in sound.
(Dr. Wharram). You did.
I think, yeah, they're quite striking aren't they?
What sections did you hear?
(Dr. Hanlon). Well, just because,
the first lines that you have here--"backwards up
the mossy glen"--that's a trochaic pattern.
I know from the study that we've been doing on iambs and trochees
that those are trochees, and I think it's trochaic
quadrameter--I think you had eight syllables.
(Dr. Wharram). Yeah, four beats
in each line, yeah.
(Dr. Hanlon). Yeah so you kind
of get into this rhythm and then all of a sudden,
"come buy, come buy", that's different.
(Dr. Wharram). Yeah there's a striking
sort of pattern there that's sort of been changed by
virtue of the fact that you have "come buy, come buy".
What would you call that meter for that line?
I mean it's actually not that simple,
even though you hear the effect.
The fact that you can hear the effect is important and the fact
that you can recognize that those words "come buy, come buy"
sort of attain a certain significance by virtue of the
fact that they're really stressed in that way.
(Dr. Hanlon). Yeah, I think if we
scanned it, we'd see that we have every
syllable stressed.
That's what it sounds to my ear anyway.
(Dr. Wharram). That's true and, in fact,
this is called a "headless iamb."
(Dr. Hanlon). A headless iamb.
(Dr. Wharram). Which is kind of ironic
because we have goblins speaking in
headless iambs.
I mean it's very Halloween, it's' timely
for this particular podcast.
(Dr. Hanlon). Headless iamb in
that the first part--the first beat of the
iamb--is always unstressed and it's the second beat that's
stressed, so we've kind of like cut off the head, we just left
if with the stressed tail and so we have four feet here, just
without the stressed first half.
(Dr. Wharram). A very decapitated line,
as they say.
(Dr. Hanlon). Okay, okay.
(Dr. Wharram). Indeed, so that's
important to notice, first of all.
And the effect of that is, you know, bringing to the fore, this
particular slogan that these goblin are trying to present,
the words "come" doubled and "buy" doubled attain a higher
significance by virtue of the fact that one is forced to slow
down and stress them in the same way that any good advertiser
will bring you to those particular words they want you
to sort of hear after the...
(Dr. Hanlon). As they sell their wares.
(Dr. Wharram). As they sell their wares.
So you mentioned, Chris, that there was a
second insight that you had.
What was that?
(Dr. Hanlon). Well, there was a second
moment where I was really pulling on that ear to let
you know that I heard a sound change and that's
at that line where we get "stood stock still".
(Dr. Wharram). "They stood stock
still upon the moss", yes.
Now what's striking about that?
(Dr. Hanlon). Well, I, to my ear, I hear
two things going on with the sound.
I hear, again, we've had trochees and now
"they stood stock still".
We get all these emphasized syllables,
there's spondees in there I think.
There's a lot of, you know, feet where both syllables are
emphasized and there's you know, "stood stock still".
That's, what do you call it, alliteration.
(Dr. Wharram). Alliteration, right.
One of the easiest sorts of literary devices.
(Dr. Hanlon). Not that easy,
you know, I heard it.
(Dr. Wharram). Okay, you did a great job
of pointing out that there is a "stood stock
still" alliteration.
You'll notice that I almost tripped up when I was saying
that, not because I'm unprofessional, but because it's
difficult to say "stood stock still" three times fast.
All those st-st-st's slow down.
The natural sort of function of trying to say those words is
that you would slow down and why is that significant here?
What does that do to enhance the poetry?
(Dr. Hanlon). This is a classic
instance of form imitating content,
right, or form presenting content.
"Stood stock still" makes my tongue and teeth
and lips stand still, like stop.
(Dr. Wharram). Exactly.
The difficulty of getting through those words actually
presents a metaphor for what the goblin men are doing.
They see this potential prey that they're going to like sort
of start to advertise their fruits towards and...
(Dr. Hanlon). Their filthy wares.
(Dr. Wharram). Their filthy wares.
And they immediately cease moving, so the language itself
becomes, the rhythm of the language becomes a
metaphor for what's being presented.
Isn't that remarkable?
(Dr. Hanlon). She's good.
(Dr. Wharram). She's really good.
(Dr. Hanlon). Unbelievable talent.
(Dr. Wharram). So we've moved a few
weeks ago to dead shopping malls to
goblins selling fruit.
We're sort of concentrating on the way that language
can be used in salesmanship and stuff like that.
Sorry to use that word salesmanship,
it's a terrible word.
In any case, that's enough for today I believe.
(Dr. Hanlon). Okay, so we'll see you
next time on The Close Reading Cooperative.
[no dialogue].