Blogger 14, Joshua John, Period 1, 11/23/20, Day A
Freshman 2021
Monday, November 23rd, 2020
Aim: How does Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Bells” convey and reinforce the meaning of the life cycle through his choice of poetic sound devices?
Do Now: (Team Activity)(TIMED activity)
We started the discussion with the Do Now. The Do Now was a team activity where each team listed different types of bells and the team with most kinds of bells won. Our team came up with 10 different types of bells: doorbell, Liberty Bell, bicycle bell, church bell, alarm clock, dinner bell, jingle bell, cow bell, traditional Chinese bell, and a wind chime.
Oh Woe is Poe! PDF
After the Do Now, we read the story, “Oh Woe is Poe” by using Spirit Reading. We read about Edgar Allen Poe’s life and how he used poetry to express his feelings. Furthermore, he had lost close people and family members to tuberculosis. However, Edgar Allen Poe was crazy and people assumed he had rabies. We discussed how the images on slide 2 correlated to parts of Edgar Allen Poe life and how some of these assumptions weren’t correct at the time.
Poetic Sound Devices:
Musical or sound devices: convey and reinforce meaning (or experience) through the use of sound
Cacophony: comes from the Greek word meaning, “bad sound.” Or Involving or producing a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds. In other words, consider the noises you may hear on a crowded city street: cars honking, people yelling, dogs barking etc...
Explosive Consonants: (k, t, g, d, p, b, q, c, x, ch-, sh- etc...)
Hissing Sounds: (ch-, sh, and s)
Example: He is a rotten, dirty, terrible, trudging, stupid dude!
Cacophony can be used to convey dark feelings/thoughts, harsh or loud noises, chaos, violence or fear.
Think/Pair/Share: Highlight or underline words that are cacophonous, in the following examples:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” (“The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll
“I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments…”
(Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
In this activity, we had to underline the cacophonous words in the example. All the cacophonous words are highlighted.
Euphonious: involving sounds that are soothing or pleasant to the ear. It is the opposite of cacophony.
It includes all the vowels
It has harmonious consonants, such as: (l, m, n, r and softer f and v, sounds).
Additionally, it uses soft consonants or semi-vowels such as: (w, s, y and th or wh) extensively to create more pleasant sounds.
Example: “While the stars that oversprinkle all the heavens seem to twinkle” -Edgar Allen Poe
Euphony is used to make language sound beautiful and melodic. If a writer is describing something they want to make seem attractive, pleasant, or beautiful, one of the best ways of achieving this is to make the language itself sound harmonious.
Think/Pair/Share: Highlight or underline words that are euphonious, in the following examples.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (“Ode to Autumn” by John Keats)
“While the stars that oversprinkle/All the heavens seem to twinkle” (“The Bells” by Edgar Allen Poe)
In this activity, we had to underline the euphonious words in the example. All the euphonious words are highlighted.
More Poetic Sound Devices
Alliteration: A stylistic device in which consecutive words or words that occur close together in a series all begin with the same first consonant letter or sound
Example: Jackrabbits jump and jiggle jauntily.
We used this video to better our understanding and use of alliteration as a poetic device in poetry: Red Room Poetry Object Poetic Device #1: Alliteration [2:00]
This video talks about how alliteration is used in poems about many different topics. The video talks about how alliteration is used to create and support the mood of a story by using sounds.
Onomatopoeia: A word which imitates the natural sound of a thing.
Example: The buzzing bee flew by
Example: The rustling leaves kept me awake.
This video helped explain the use of onomatopoeia as a poetic device in poems.
Red Room Poetry Object Poetic Device #4: Onomatopoeia [2:36]
This video talks about how onomatopoeia uses words to imitate different sounds. It adds an atmosphere and environment to a poem. It can also be used to add to rhythm in a poem. It helps connect the reader to the poem and vividly visualize the poem.
Repetition: Repeating words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. Repetition is used to emphasize a feeling or idea, create rhythm, and/or develop a sense of urgency
Example: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Rhyme: a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words (especially common at the ends of words). Rhyme is pleasing the ear and also lends a sense of rhythm and order to the language.
Perfect rhyme occurs when stressed syllables of the words, along with all subsequent syllables, share identical sounds (ex: pencil" and "stencil”)
Imperfect rhyme or “slant rhyme” involves the repetition of similar sounds that are not quite as precise as perfect rhyme (ex: “uptown” and “frown”)
The pleasure of poetic pattern - David Silverstein [4:46
In this video, we explore the poetic pattern of rhythm and repetition. The rhythm can diversify ideas in a poem and make it easier to imagine. However it can have its downsides too if a poem is too repetitive. This video sums up most of the concepts our class talked about in the previous lessons.
Note: Spirit Reading is the process in which students freely read any portion of text they want to and ending whenever they want. Students in the classroom are expected to continue the text or read the remainder of a text after the previous reader finished.)
“The Bells” By Edgar Allan Poe (YouTube)
We listened to this video while reading the poem. We also were required to annotate the poem and identify literary devices in the poem.
I.
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II.
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III.
Hear the loud alarum bells—
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now- now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
III.--Cont’d
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
Of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
IV.
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
IV.--Cont’d
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells—
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
TEAM GROUP WORK:
After reading the poem, we were sent into breakrooms where we were supposed to complete the table and questions pertaining to the poem, “The Bells.”
ANALYSIS OF POETRY
1.
2. Analyze the first two stanzas. How do they compare, in terms of similarity?
The first two stanzas they compare, in terms of similarity, because they both share a harmonious connotation but also both use euphonious words to express different meanings. Some words such as crystalline and “merriment” in “Silver Bells'', as well as “mellow” and “molten-golden” depict the euphonious wordplay in the stanzas.
3. Now, compare the bells in stanzas 1 and 2 with the bells in stanzas 3 and 4. How does Poe's mood shift in his poem?
The bells in stanzas 1 and 2 express a euphonious meaning while the bells in stanzas 3 and 4 display a cacophonous meaning. Poe’s mood shifts throughout the progression of the poem since he talked about the feelings merriment and silverbells gave him in the first two stanzas compared to when he talked where his feelings were brazen and aggressive in the last two stanzas.
4. How does Poe use sound devices to imitate the sound of bells?
Compile a list of the devices you believe he used.
Poe uses sound devices to imitate the sound of bells by describing some of the emotions he got from the experience and by using onomatopoeia to create these sounds. Some examples of this is, “twinkling, jingling, harmony, chiming, moaning and groaning.” These words were some of the sounds devices Poe used to describe the sound of bells.
5. This poem is as much about sound as it is about meaning.
Why do you think Poe places a heavy emphasis on sound in this poem?
What message does it help to express?
How is this poem symbolically a metaphor for life?
Poe places a heavy emphasis on sound in this poem because sounds help direct the story and let readers visualize the story while they understand the author’s feelings. The message it helps to express is that the author feels different emotions while addressing the sounds of the bells. For example he addresses the bells with a positive connotation such as “twinkling” but addresses the bells with a negative connotation with words like “moaning.” This poem symbolically is a metaphor for life because it expresses the stages of life. It expresses your childhood as the silver bells, golden bells as youth, the brazen bells as adulthood, and iron bells as death. Furthermore, it also addresses the obstacles and challenges that you face along your life.
Reflection:
In this lesson, I learned about Edgar Allen Poe’s life and his style of writing. I also learned about the variety of literary devices that are used in poetry to make the writing more vivid and interesting for the reader. Furthermore, I learned about how Edgar Allen Poe’s life influenced his writing style and also how literary devices can affect how a poem is emphasized to the reader. For example, onomatopoeia makes a poem feel more realistic by adding words that convey sounds. I learned this because it is an essential part of understanding poetry and these literary devices can help convey more feelings and create a more in-depth understanding for the reader. In addition, using literary devices is key to making your poem more intricate and more relatable to the reader and his/her environment. I will use what I learned by incorporating these literary devices into the poems I write in later years of my high school career and even college. This lesson taught me information that I will use to further enhance my poetry skills as wells as my overall understanding of poetry.
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