Improve close reading skills
Grapple with tough, universal messages
Evaluate scholarly criticism of literature
Tuesday 3/22
Finish class read around of Chinua Achebel's Heart of Darkness analysis: "An Image of Africa"
Practice close reading using DIDLS on recent passage of HoD pp116-117
DIDLS: The Key to TONE
DICTION:
- Laugh: guffaw, chuckle, titter, giggle, cackle, snicker, roar, chortle, guffaw, yuk
- Self-confident: proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck-up, haughty, smug, condescending
- House: home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, home, residence, dwelling, crib, domicile
- Old: mature, experienced, antique, relic, senior, ancient, elderly, senescent, venerable
- Fat: obese, plump, corpulent, portly, porky, burly, husky, full-figured, chubby, zaftig
IMAGES:
The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that
appeal to sensory experiences helps to create the author’s tone.
- My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained)
- An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king. (somber, candid)
- He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)
- Love sets you going like a fat gold watch. (fanciful)
- Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking)
DETAILS: Details are most
commonly the facts given by the
author or speaker as support for the attitude or tone.
The speaker’s perspective shapes what details are given
and which are not.
LANGUAGE: Like word
choice, the language of a passage has control over tone.
Consider language to be the entire body of words used in
a text, not simply isolated bits of diction. For
example, an invitation to a wedding might use formal language, while a biology
text would use scientific and clinical language.
- When I told Dad that I had goofed the exam, he blew his top. (slang)
- I had him on the ropes in the fourth and if one of my short rights had connected, he’d have gone down for the count. (jargon)
- A close examination and correlation of the most reliable current economic indexes justifies the conclusion that the next year will witness a continuation of the present, upward market trend. (turgid, pedantic)
SENTENCE
STRUCTURE: How a sentence is
constructed affects what the audience understands. Sentence structure affects tone.
- Parallel syntax (similarly styled phrases and sentences) creates interconnected emotions, feelings and ideas.
- Short sentences are punchy and intense. Long sentences are distancing, reflective and more abstract.
- Loose sentences point at the end. Periodic sentences point at the beginning, followed by modifiers and phrases.
- The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader to a question and creates tension between speaker and listener.
- Short sentences are often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest greater thought.
SHIFT IN
TONE: Good authors are
rarely monotone. A speaker’s attitude can shift on a topic, or an author might
have one attitude toward the audience and another toward the subject. The
following are some clues to watch for shifts in tone:
- key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although)
- punctuation (dashes, periods, colons)
- paragraph divisions
- changes in sentence length
- sharp contrasts in diction
- SOURCE mseffie.com
Thursday, March 24
share DIDLS of Heart of Darkness
reader theater
clips from arrive at Kurtz's camp of "Apocalypse Now"
HW) read 141-end, write a one page DIDLS
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