Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English

- Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English
- Előszó
- Contents
- Part 1 What is English Studies?
  - 1. What is a university? A proseminary
  - 2. Paradigms and paradigm shifts
  - 3. What is English Studies? English as a university subject
  - 4. Ideology, criticism, history
  - 5. Registers of Culture
  - 6. Canon formation and alternative reading practices
- Part 2 Fields of English Studies. Language, Literature, Culture, and Critical Approaches
  - 1. Preliminary problems: definitions, scientific expectations
  - 2. Ontological problems: the way literature exists
    - Semiotics
    - Literary communication
    - Language and Critical Thinking
    - The Language of the Sciences and the Language of Literature
  - 3. Methodological problems: the way we understand texts
    - Meaning and context
    - The Process of Interpretation
  - 4. The Theory of Genres
    - Genres and Their Historical Changes
    - Genre-generating Factors and Historical Changes
  - 5. Poetry and Figurative Language
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 1
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
      - IV Fourth level of meaning
  - 6. Narrative Fiction
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 2
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
  - 7. Drama
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 3
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
  - Self test I
  - 8. Literature, Culture, and the Reading Subject: An Overview of Major Trends in Literary and Cultural Theory
    - I Preliminaries
    - II Formal critical trends: from the authorial intention to the close reading of the text (1st shift)
    - III Contextual aproaches: from text to context
    - The critique of structuralism
  - Self test II
  - 9. Critical Literature Consulted and Recommended
  - 10. Appendix

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# III Third level of meaning

The lily is a traditional symbol of purity, innocence, virginity. It is a customary and almost mandatory attribute of the Virgin Mary in medieval and renaissance paintings of the Annunciation. As an attribute it expresses that the Knight, the Poet had been innocent, a “virgin” poet before the encounter with the Lady-Muse, so the poem is about the birth of the first poem by the romantic poet. The rose, a traditional symbol of love on his face is fading now, so the love-encounter is over, the Muse has been lost, but it is the fate of the romantic poet to have a never-ending desire to escape from the actual reality and go back to the world of imaginative creation, the world of the Muse. Thus, at this level of meaning, we can interpret the text as a poetic account of the first artistic production of the poet, as well as a poetic representation of the typically romantic understanding of the fate, the destiny of the artist. In romantic poetry the artist is often represented as a social outcast who is not understood by the environment, and commutes incessantly between the world of reality and the world of artistic imagination. The French title alludes to a traditional image of the “femme fatal” type of Muse, the fatal attraction of the world of creation, which is internationally present in world literature.

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