Texts and Human Experiences
Rubric Notes: Essential to remember paradoxes, anomalies and inconsistencies
- Touted - Diluted: made weaker in force
- Incisively: analytical, clear-thinking - Cannon
- Pertinent: relevant to situation - Quintessential: typical/perfect example
- Contemporaneous: occurring at the same time - Introspection
- Expound: explain theory in detail - Modernity: modern way of thinking
- Ambivalent: contradictory ideas - Disillusionment: a feeling of disappointment resulting
- Consonance: agreement/compatibility from the discovery that something is not as good as
- Magus: e.g. Prospero one believed it to be.
- Dynamism: quality of vigorous progress - Bohemian (not live to societal standards)
- Despot: ruler express cruel power - Transience: last for short time
- Pre-eminence: superiority - Human condition
- Conjecture: opinion based on incomplete info - Voracious: great eagerness/enthusiasm
- Delineates: describe precisely - Psyche
- Render: provide or give - Minutiae
- Juncture: point in time or place where things - Evocative
join - Revelatory
- Demarcated: separate or set limits - Exuberance
- Superimposition: one thing over another, but - Antiquity: quality of being ancient
both still evident - Chaotically fragmented
- Exoticisation: representation of something - Inherent: characteristic attribute
ordinary as exotic - Coupling/interplay
- Pastiche: work that imitates another work - Paradigms
- Edifice: complex system of beliefs - Anthropomorphised
- Dyad: two elements or parts - Inflection
- Inanities: nonsensical remark - Milieu: social environment
- Incommensurable: no common standard or - Insidious
measurement - Hysteria
- Idolatrous: extreme adoration - Achronological
- Intractable: hard to deal with - Stichomythia
- Hermeneutic: interpretation (particularly Bible) - Culpable
- Dictum: pronouncement from authoritative - Fanaticism: act of being fanatical
source - Dissent
- Hagiography: idealised biography - Binaries
- Antithetical: mutually incompatible - Adversarial
- Enigmatic: difficult to interpret - Didactic: intended to teach
- Tandem: one following the other - Illuminate
- Hegemony: leadership or dominance - Diegesis
- Dichotomous - Vivacious, e.g. Miranda
- Fallibility: tendency to make mistakes - Epoch: time begins new period
- Vice: undesirable character trait - Avowal: a statement of what you believe or intend to
- Luminaries: people that inspire others do
- Eschews: abstains from - Transitory: passing
- Doctrine - Repudiation: disagreement
- Eulogize: praise highly in writing - Misanthrope: someone who dislikes humanity
- Dialectical: logical discussion - Tirade: long angry speech
- Dogmatism: the tendency to lay down - Fatalistic
principles as undeniably true, without - Diametrically opposed
consideration of evidence or the opinions of - Culmination
others. - Sage: high knowledge/wisdom
, - Extorts - Credo: statement of beliefs guiding actions
- Verbatim: recalled in exact same way - Subjugation: bring something under control
- Approximating - Epithet: an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or
- Construed: interpret in a particular way attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or
- Interpolates: insert (something of a different thing mentioned.
nature) into something else. - Saudade
Key Words:
Communal: How we are conditioned to see a particular perspective
Individual: Striving towards perfectionism in regards to public image, due to communal influences
Qualities: patterns of behaviours, thoughts and emotions that characterise an individual
Values: customised ideals or standards we choose to live by
Language: is not just the written word, but extends to the spoken word, visual and digital language
Representation: involves exploring ‘what?’ and ‘how?’. Language can represent a group of people, reflective of
attitudes and values
Anomaly: something that stands out (anomalous)
Inconsistency: something conflicting something else, deviates from normal. Not compatible or in keeping with
Paradoxes: two contradictory things that don’t make sense but work anyways. A seemingly absurd or contradictory
statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded for true.
Random notes:
Examples of human experiences:
- Love and relationships
- Death and grief
- Family and culture
- Conflict
- Search for identity
- Religion and spirituality
- Relationships with the world
- Ageing
★ Some paradoxes rely on context for representation
★ Context reflects individual and communal human experiences
Effect of literature on the individual
Through poetry, Slessor conveys ideas about memory, time and loss as experiences and interconnections with place
to represent his identity. These aspects of culture as he saw them when he was writing. Therefore, although culture
shapes who we are, we speak back to culture through texts. When looking at either of the selected poems by Slessor
or related texts, consider this notion. Think about how the representation of identity and culture through human
experience positions you to
1. See the world differently
2. Challenge your assumptions about the world
3. Think about new ideas about the world we live in
Romanticism: Used in a few ways
1. The world is reflected by enlightenment and romanticism. This is what you would refer to as the basic
assumptions of Western Culture (secular, democracy, civil liberties and equality). A belief that nature is
, beautiful etc.
2. As a artistic or literary movement, or emphasis on modern realism, the individual, and inner life of the psyche
or mind
3. A “condition” rather than intellectual movement
Modernism
This is modern thought, character or practice. This movement is about humanity’s place in the world post religion. The
modernistic movement is a set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements that arose from the
cataclysmic upheaval of the early 20th century (eventually embraced)
- Traditional morals, ideas and social norms felt illegitimate
- Concern was accelerating pace of society towards destruction and meaningless
- To inspire a new society
- Revolted against romanticism
- To find out what was preventing progress
- “Revolutionary overthrowing than enlightening”
Dramatic monologue: Look at folder, sheet describing specifically dramatic monologues and their key features
Kenneth Slessor
Poetic style and theme
- Deals with the universality of human existence, inescapable dichotomy of light and dark, youthfulness and age
and life and death
- His early poems celebrated individualism and zest for life, while later poems exhibited an almost nihilistic level
of melancholy, despair and disillusionment
- Presents a reflective portrait of Australia
- Poems central theme is time and the effect of this passing on human beings and the environment
- Encourages readers to introspection, especially mysteries of human condition and paradoxes of life and death
Key Ideas:
- Time and death both serve as collective human experiences, however, time differs in its subjectivity to the
individual
- The realisation of mortality and time, as well as the persistent struggle with the trivialities of life, are inextricably
linked in both communal and individual experiences.
- Time is a dichotomous entity, both good and bad
- Time and death as a communal, inevitable fate
Key Phrases:
- Inevitability of time/death
- Transience of life
- Human experience
- Paradoxes, anomalies and inconsistencies
Basic Thesis Statement:
, The confronting realities of time and human mortality uncover the plight of human existence, exposing the degrading
toll of the minutiae of life on the individual.
Or
An individual's optimistic nature is often altered to that of a more nihilistically-guided approach, degraded by the plight
of human existence and its trivialities
Or
The confronting realities of time and human mortality have a degrading toll on the individual through uncovering the
plight of human existence.
Slessor Context Notes Slessor Key Phrases
- Poet and journalist - Australian modernist poet
- Born in 1901 - “ Slessor acknowledges and expresses his innate
- Father encouraged him with european turmoil regarding human existence and its difficulties,
sophistication providing a distinctive nihilistic outlook on life reliant
- First poem published when he was 16 on the communal human experience of death”
- Was appointed war correspondent of Australia (Gulliver)
in 1940 - Pictorial poet
- Resigned after there was an attempt to - “Nihilistic level of melancholy”
discredit him - Petulant perspective
- Became an editor for a newspaper
- He loved Sydney, especially the harbour
- Regularly visited King’s Cross
- “Voracious reader”
- Poetic imagery is central to his work
William Street
Year: 1939 Form/Structure: Iambic pentameter, ABAC rhyming scheme. Four
Stanzas (each consisting of four lines)
Themes/ human experiences:
- Urban, modern Australia
- Low socio-economic areas
- Poverty
- Embracing the ugly
Techniques used throughout:
- Synaesthesia
- Evocative, concrete language
- Morbid imagery
*Does this invite the reader to
● see the world differently
Rubric Notes: Essential to remember paradoxes, anomalies and inconsistencies
- Touted - Diluted: made weaker in force
- Incisively: analytical, clear-thinking - Cannon
- Pertinent: relevant to situation - Quintessential: typical/perfect example
- Contemporaneous: occurring at the same time - Introspection
- Expound: explain theory in detail - Modernity: modern way of thinking
- Ambivalent: contradictory ideas - Disillusionment: a feeling of disappointment resulting
- Consonance: agreement/compatibility from the discovery that something is not as good as
- Magus: e.g. Prospero one believed it to be.
- Dynamism: quality of vigorous progress - Bohemian (not live to societal standards)
- Despot: ruler express cruel power - Transience: last for short time
- Pre-eminence: superiority - Human condition
- Conjecture: opinion based on incomplete info - Voracious: great eagerness/enthusiasm
- Delineates: describe precisely - Psyche
- Render: provide or give - Minutiae
- Juncture: point in time or place where things - Evocative
join - Revelatory
- Demarcated: separate or set limits - Exuberance
- Superimposition: one thing over another, but - Antiquity: quality of being ancient
both still evident - Chaotically fragmented
- Exoticisation: representation of something - Inherent: characteristic attribute
ordinary as exotic - Coupling/interplay
- Pastiche: work that imitates another work - Paradigms
- Edifice: complex system of beliefs - Anthropomorphised
- Dyad: two elements or parts - Inflection
- Inanities: nonsensical remark - Milieu: social environment
- Incommensurable: no common standard or - Insidious
measurement - Hysteria
- Idolatrous: extreme adoration - Achronological
- Intractable: hard to deal with - Stichomythia
- Hermeneutic: interpretation (particularly Bible) - Culpable
- Dictum: pronouncement from authoritative - Fanaticism: act of being fanatical
source - Dissent
- Hagiography: idealised biography - Binaries
- Antithetical: mutually incompatible - Adversarial
- Enigmatic: difficult to interpret - Didactic: intended to teach
- Tandem: one following the other - Illuminate
- Hegemony: leadership or dominance - Diegesis
- Dichotomous - Vivacious, e.g. Miranda
- Fallibility: tendency to make mistakes - Epoch: time begins new period
- Vice: undesirable character trait - Avowal: a statement of what you believe or intend to
- Luminaries: people that inspire others do
- Eschews: abstains from - Transitory: passing
- Doctrine - Repudiation: disagreement
- Eulogize: praise highly in writing - Misanthrope: someone who dislikes humanity
- Dialectical: logical discussion - Tirade: long angry speech
- Dogmatism: the tendency to lay down - Fatalistic
principles as undeniably true, without - Diametrically opposed
consideration of evidence or the opinions of - Culmination
others. - Sage: high knowledge/wisdom
, - Extorts - Credo: statement of beliefs guiding actions
- Verbatim: recalled in exact same way - Subjugation: bring something under control
- Approximating - Epithet: an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or
- Construed: interpret in a particular way attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or
- Interpolates: insert (something of a different thing mentioned.
nature) into something else. - Saudade
Key Words:
Communal: How we are conditioned to see a particular perspective
Individual: Striving towards perfectionism in regards to public image, due to communal influences
Qualities: patterns of behaviours, thoughts and emotions that characterise an individual
Values: customised ideals or standards we choose to live by
Language: is not just the written word, but extends to the spoken word, visual and digital language
Representation: involves exploring ‘what?’ and ‘how?’. Language can represent a group of people, reflective of
attitudes and values
Anomaly: something that stands out (anomalous)
Inconsistency: something conflicting something else, deviates from normal. Not compatible or in keeping with
Paradoxes: two contradictory things that don’t make sense but work anyways. A seemingly absurd or contradictory
statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded for true.
Random notes:
Examples of human experiences:
- Love and relationships
- Death and grief
- Family and culture
- Conflict
- Search for identity
- Religion and spirituality
- Relationships with the world
- Ageing
★ Some paradoxes rely on context for representation
★ Context reflects individual and communal human experiences
Effect of literature on the individual
Through poetry, Slessor conveys ideas about memory, time and loss as experiences and interconnections with place
to represent his identity. These aspects of culture as he saw them when he was writing. Therefore, although culture
shapes who we are, we speak back to culture through texts. When looking at either of the selected poems by Slessor
or related texts, consider this notion. Think about how the representation of identity and culture through human
experience positions you to
1. See the world differently
2. Challenge your assumptions about the world
3. Think about new ideas about the world we live in
Romanticism: Used in a few ways
1. The world is reflected by enlightenment and romanticism. This is what you would refer to as the basic
assumptions of Western Culture (secular, democracy, civil liberties and equality). A belief that nature is
, beautiful etc.
2. As a artistic or literary movement, or emphasis on modern realism, the individual, and inner life of the psyche
or mind
3. A “condition” rather than intellectual movement
Modernism
This is modern thought, character or practice. This movement is about humanity’s place in the world post religion. The
modernistic movement is a set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements that arose from the
cataclysmic upheaval of the early 20th century (eventually embraced)
- Traditional morals, ideas and social norms felt illegitimate
- Concern was accelerating pace of society towards destruction and meaningless
- To inspire a new society
- Revolted against romanticism
- To find out what was preventing progress
- “Revolutionary overthrowing than enlightening”
Dramatic monologue: Look at folder, sheet describing specifically dramatic monologues and their key features
Kenneth Slessor
Poetic style and theme
- Deals with the universality of human existence, inescapable dichotomy of light and dark, youthfulness and age
and life and death
- His early poems celebrated individualism and zest for life, while later poems exhibited an almost nihilistic level
of melancholy, despair and disillusionment
- Presents a reflective portrait of Australia
- Poems central theme is time and the effect of this passing on human beings and the environment
- Encourages readers to introspection, especially mysteries of human condition and paradoxes of life and death
Key Ideas:
- Time and death both serve as collective human experiences, however, time differs in its subjectivity to the
individual
- The realisation of mortality and time, as well as the persistent struggle with the trivialities of life, are inextricably
linked in both communal and individual experiences.
- Time is a dichotomous entity, both good and bad
- Time and death as a communal, inevitable fate
Key Phrases:
- Inevitability of time/death
- Transience of life
- Human experience
- Paradoxes, anomalies and inconsistencies
Basic Thesis Statement:
, The confronting realities of time and human mortality uncover the plight of human existence, exposing the degrading
toll of the minutiae of life on the individual.
Or
An individual's optimistic nature is often altered to that of a more nihilistically-guided approach, degraded by the plight
of human existence and its trivialities
Or
The confronting realities of time and human mortality have a degrading toll on the individual through uncovering the
plight of human existence.
Slessor Context Notes Slessor Key Phrases
- Poet and journalist - Australian modernist poet
- Born in 1901 - “ Slessor acknowledges and expresses his innate
- Father encouraged him with european turmoil regarding human existence and its difficulties,
sophistication providing a distinctive nihilistic outlook on life reliant
- First poem published when he was 16 on the communal human experience of death”
- Was appointed war correspondent of Australia (Gulliver)
in 1940 - Pictorial poet
- Resigned after there was an attempt to - “Nihilistic level of melancholy”
discredit him - Petulant perspective
- Became an editor for a newspaper
- He loved Sydney, especially the harbour
- Regularly visited King’s Cross
- “Voracious reader”
- Poetic imagery is central to his work
William Street
Year: 1939 Form/Structure: Iambic pentameter, ABAC rhyming scheme. Four
Stanzas (each consisting of four lines)
Themes/ human experiences:
- Urban, modern Australia
- Low socio-economic areas
- Poverty
- Embracing the ugly
Techniques used throughout:
- Synaesthesia
- Evocative, concrete language
- Morbid imagery
*Does this invite the reader to
● see the world differently
