Thursday, May 17 Naturalism and Ethan Frome

Sharing: humanity

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton: 
Literary Naturalism 

Learning Targets: 

I can interpret words and phrases as they are used in the text, including technical, connotative and figurative meanings, and analyze how the specific word choices shape the meaning.
I can determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
I can analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

     Coming up: please have read The Prologue to Ethan Frome by Monday, May 21. These are pages 3-22. Please complete the accompanying questions. (copy below).

         Not that the text is also available on line.

    In class:    Ethan Frome  vocabulary list. Class handout / copy below.

                                       note that there are 15 words. The quiz in on Thursday, May 24. 

               Collecting the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. You will need this in class everyday.

                 What is Naturalism?

Background information on Naturalism

Naturalism

Naturalism (1890 - 1915): 

1. The term Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. 

2.  Naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. 

3. The Naturalist believed in studying human beings as though they were "products" that are to be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.

4. Naturalistic writers believed that the laws of behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood through the objective study of human beings. 

5. Naturalistic writers used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment.

6. Naturalism is considered as a movement to be beyond Realism. Naturalism is based more on scientific studies. 

7. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a basis for the Naturalist writer. Natural selection and survival of the fittest help to depict the struggle against nature as a hopeless fight.
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Name__________________________________ Prologue questions  Due Monday, May 21

1.       What does the name Starkfield suggest about the setting?

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2.       How does Herman Gow corroborate this later? Find his words on page 6.

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3.       Give two words that portray the stereotype of an engineer.

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4.       How is the narrator, whose name we never learn, a typical? (Think about how he views Ethan).

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5.       What could be the significance of the missing “L” structure on the farm?

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6.       What places to Herman Gow and Mrs. Ned Hale Occupy in the story?

a.       Gow:_______________________________________________________________________________________

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b.       Hale:______________________________________________________________________________________

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               Ethan Frome Vocabulary Words    quiz on Thursday, May 24

1.  sardonic: adj. Scornfully or cynically mocking; sarcastic.

2.   colloquial: adj.  1. Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks

                            the effect of speech; informal.  2. Relating to conversation; conversational.

3.    innocuous: adj. 1. Having no adverse effect; harmless. 2. Not likely to offend or provoke to strong

                        emotion; insipid.

4.  reticent: adj. 1. Inclined to keep one's thoughts, feelings, and personal affairs to oneself;

                              Restrained or reserved in style. 3. Reluctant; unwilling.

5. poignant: adj.  Keenly distressing to the mind or feelings: poignant anxiety; profoundly moving;  touching: a poignant memory.

6. wraith:  n. 1. An apparition of a living person that appears as a portent just before that person's

                            death. 2. The ghost of a dead person. 3. Something shadowy and insubstantial.

7. wistful:  adj. 1. Full of wishful yearning. 2. Pensively sad; melancholy.

8. undulation: n. 1. A regular rising and falling or movement to alternating sides; movement in waves.

9. tenuous:  adj. 1. Long and thin; slender: tenuous strands. 2. Having a thin consistency; dilute;   

          having little substance; flimsy: a tenuous argument.

10. throng: n. 1. A large group of people gathered or crowded closely together; a multitude.

                throngs  v.tr.  1. To crowd into; fill: commuters thronging the subway platform.2. To press in  

                    to gather, press, or move in a throng.

11. vex:   (verb) 1. To annoy, as with petty importunities; bother. 2. To cause perplexity in; puzzle.

12. laden:  adj. 1. Weighed down with a load; heavy: "the warmish air, laden with the rains of those

               thousands of miles of western sea" Hilaire Belloc.  2. Oppressed; burdened: laden with grief.

13. preclude:  1. To make impossible, as by action taken in advance; prevent. 2. To exclude or prevent (someone) from a given condition or activity: Modesty precludes me from accepting the honor.

14. succumb: (verb) 1. To submit to an overpowering force or yield to an overwhelming desire; give up or give in. 2. To die.

15. foist:  (verb) 1. To pass off as genuine, valuable, or worthy: "I can usually tell whether a poet . . . is foisting off on us what he'd like to think is pure invention" J.D. Salinger.

    2. To impose (something or someone unwanted) upon another by coercion or trickery:They had extra work foisted on them because they couldn't say no to the boss. 3. To insert fraudulently or deceitfully: foisted unfair provisions into the contract.