Class Notes

1. What is literature?

    Literature is imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value.

2. The Poems Used to Illustrate What Literature Is

(1). "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"

(2). "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

    Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

    And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

    Round many western islands have I been

    Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

    Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

    That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

    Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

    Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

    Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

    When a new planet swims into his ken;

    Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

    He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

    Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

    Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

(3). A Midsummer Night's Dream ACT V 

    More strange than true. I never may believe

    These antique fables nor these fairy toys.

    Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

    Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

    More than cool reason ever comprehends.

    The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

    Are of imagination all compact.

    One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—

    That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

    Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

    The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

    Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.

    And as imagination bodies forth

    The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

    Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

    A local habitation and a name.

    Such tricks hath strong imagination,

    That if it would but apprehend some joy,

    It comprehends some bringer of that joy.

    Or in the night, imagining some fear,

    How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

3. Term Explanation

  (1).  narration: Narration is the act of telling a story, usually in some kind of chronological order. There are three kinds of narration－third person narration, first person narration and second person narration.

(2). point of view: The perspectiv from which people, events, and other details in a work of fiction are viewed.

 (3). character: An imaginary personage who acts, appears, or is referred to in a literary work. Character can be divided into round character and flat character, dynamic character and static character, and main character and minor character.

4. Movie and Song

(1). La La Land: YouTube

    At the beginning of the movie, Shakespeare in Love is cited , so classics would be cited repeatedly.

(2). If–Bread: Youtube

    If a picture paints a thousand words,

    Then why can't I paint you?

    The words will never show the you I've come to know.

    If a face could launch a thousand ships,

    Then where am I to go?

    There's no one home but you,

    You're all that's left me to.

    And when my love for life is running dry,

    You come and pour yourself on me.

    If a man could be two places at one time,

    I'd be with you.

    Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

    If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,

    I'd spend the end with you.

    And when the world was through,

   Then one by one the stars would all go out,

   Then you and I would simply fly away.