Interpretation

Symphony In Yellow

by Oscar Wilde

A. Pre-Reading

Reflect on your personality. What are the features that make it up? Have you developed your own style? Draw your own profile in the 3^rd person singular considering the items of the diagram that follows (up to 100 – 150 words):

- the manner of speaking (pause fillers / favoured vocabulary / intonation)

- behaviour patterns

- clothing

- tastes that you have cultivated in yourself

- your “do”s and “don’t”s

Study the literary terms:

idiostyle = a peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax.

paradox = [Latin paradoxum < Greek paradoxon < neuter sing. of paradoxos, conflicting with expectation: para-, beyond + doxa, opinion (from dokein, to think)] 1) a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true; 2) one exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects; 3) an assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises; 4) a statement contrary to received opinion. Paradoxical adj; paradoxically adv; paradoxicalness n.

aesthetic detail = a small poetic image that reinforces the concept of beauty.

zoom-in technique = (from cinematography) a literary technique due to which the image (a person or an object) is picked out and isolated.

zoom-out technique = unlike zoom-in, a zoom-out technique places an image in a wider context.

Literary context: The Aesthetic Movement

Oscar Wilde was the best representative of the aesthetic movement in Britain. The artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement tended to hold that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. As a consequence, they did not accept art as something moral or useful. Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor in art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic effects – that is, correspondence between words, colours and music. It was the music that set the mood.

FOCUS

As you read the poem “Symphony in Yellow” by Oscar Wilde, identify the stylistic phenomena that make the author’s style recognizable.

B. Reading and Text Analysis

Phonetics

Consult a dictionary and practice the pronunciation of the words below. In polysyllabic words, comment on the primary and secondary stresses.

Symphony, omnibus, midge, barge, quay, jade, butterfly, wharf, Thames, restless, fog, rod, elm.

Interpretation

1. Define the features that mark Oscar Wilde’s idiostyle in the poem under analysis. Pay special attention to

- geographical allusions

- cultural allusions

- aesthetic details

- paradoxical images

2. Find out the correlation between the music term “symphony” used in the title of the verse and the system of images that bear a yellow colouring.

3. Delineate the temporal setting of the verse. Decide whether the lyrical hero describes

- the morning

- the midday

- the afternoon

Prove your point of view referring to the text.

4. Choose the most suitable word combination to describe the hints of yellow implied in the piece of poetry:

- a pale yellow

- a bright yellow

- a radiant yellow

- a saturated yellow

5. State which colour image(s) will replace the bright autumnal tints according to the poem.

6. The narrative character of the poem is stirred by a couple of unexpected and thus paradoxical images that add magic traits to the presentation of the surroundings. Identify them. State which stylistic means mark them.

7. Identify the network of paradoxical images created with the help of the zoom-in and zoom-out techniques.

8. Formulate the message of the poem.

9. Write one sentence summary of the verse.

C. Over to you

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