Study Guide for CAS 280W Midterm
Revised January 21, 2003


Ch. 1
- The three concepts that are part of Bowen's finition of interpretation
- Don Geiger's definition of interpretation
- Bacon & Breen's idea of embodying experience in literature
Ch. 2
- The one abiding law of interpretation
- The nature of setting in interpretation
- The use of the reading stand
- Whether a manuscript should be used
- Whether script should be memorized
- Placement
- Locus
- Focus
- What Bowen suggests to the "familiarizer"
- How you should begin & end a performance
- Functions of the introduction (see your syllabus)
- How to hold audience attention--variety
- Audience contact
- What restraint means
- Spontaneity's function
- The responsibilities of an audience
Ch. 3
- The requirements of literary quality:
- Universality
- Originality
- Significance
- Accuracy and honesty
- Sufficient reason for emotional reactions
- Form appropriate to message
- Powers of suggestion
Ch. 4
- Samuel Silas Curry "Impression must precede and determine all expression"
- Meaning is response
- "Absolute" meaning
- meaning & experience---"egocentric" understanding
- the "one great key" to understanding and appreciation of literature
- the way a reader discerns "relative degrees of accuracy, precision, consistency and fullness" in analyzing literature
Ch. 5
- Steps to Developing your response:
- complete read-through
- checking meaning of words-denotative & connotative
- word groups, thought units, phrases
- emphasis & subordination
- organization of ideas & events
- paraphrasing
- emotional responses to moods
- careful examination of symbolism
- experiencing images
- information about the author
- the persona or speaker
- consideration of all these elements
Ch. 6
- Paralanguage:
- Time, Loudness, Pitch, Quality
- Wordless vocal activity--laughing, crying, etc.
- Prelinguistic considerations---sex, age, health, build of speaker
Ch. 7
- Primacy of visible speech
- Kinesics
- Empathy & its four functions:
- 1) reader responds to literature
- 2) audience responds to reader
- 3) reader responds to audience
- 4) audience responds to literature
- Natural & Technical modes of finding movements
- Personal appearance
- Posture
- Movement vs. gesture
- Guiding principle of facial expression
- The eight responses to stage fright
Lectures:
Nature of Meaning
- where meaning is located
- the meaning of something - Postman & Weingartner
- thought-reference-referent - Ogden & Richards
- ladder of abstraction - S. I. Hayakawa
Performing for an Audience
- adapting to performance space
- "bracketing"
- performance/reality boundary
- audience as "mirror"
- leadership role of performer
- minimal level of exaggeration
- "comic" level of exaggeration
- exaggeration
- timing
Preparing to Perform
- importance of the stare in human interaction
- fear & flight response
- physical relaxation
- mental concentration
Kinesics in Performance
- behavioral synecdoche
- isolate gestures in sequence
- movement
- gesture
Voice in Performance
- Kenneth Pike - no. of levels of relative pitch
- tentative pause
- final pause
Written Analysis Handout
- thesis
- partition/preview
- key to understanding the written analysis assignment

