Study Guide for CAS 280W Midterm

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