Summary Michael Rosen's How texts are put together

 

I have summarized Rosen’s discussion of How texts are put together (Blog. 16:58)

Is the text told or narrated; is there a clear narrator or a third person narration. The narrator may 'see' everything going on; focussing on inanimate objects or settings. For example, the main character is seen through the eyes of the landscape rather than vice versa.

Time. Stories can be 'now', can loop back in time, loop forwards, talk about things habitually in a certain way (i.e. continuous time). Adjectives about a character - a 'morose' person is continuous time, she reacted angrily is present time. Stories and poems are made 'deeper' by creating different time-frames.

How thought is depicted varies enormously: she thought, she said to herself, or dispense with these tags altogether and just go from dialogue into a narration, what s/he will do next?

How texts sound - sentences, paragraphs, chapters and whole books set up rhythms, repetitions, patterns.

How texts 'evoke' senses of narrators, characters or even objects (A1).

Intertextuality - allusions to other texts. All texts use previously used words, phrases, scenes, 'motifs', archetypes, plot lines, rhetorical forms - e.g. using common figures of speech, hyperbole, simile, metaphor.

The method of 'reveal-conceal'. A text appears to be 'telling' but as it does so, it invokes the possibility that not all has been told, there is more to come, what's coming might be mysterious, dangerous, funny, etc. The first pages of stories, plays, the first lines of poems are very interesting for this. See also the last lines of chapters. Writers [and illustrators] are constantly filling texts up with 'hooks' that invite us to speculate what's going on, what's going to happen next, what this really means etc.

Some texts draw attention to themselves. Rosen uses the term ‘Writerliness’ of which Rosen states clarity, open to changes, as two (A2).

Dialogue. These are stylised forms of conversation (A3).

Create 'lexical fields', similar words or phrases with similar meanings. What is the focus? 'Key words', important 'signifiers' in a text. How the lexical field is created, for example are the words returned to again and again?

Cohesion one word, one phrase, one sentence, one paragraph links to another. E.g. through repetition of sounds, images, feelings, the contrast of images and feelings, through the juxtaposition of images, through the repeated but changed use of motifs, symbols, descriptions. Text has been patterned in order to pass on meaning.

Language for example, referring, describing, intervening and so on. Narration can refer specifically, plainly, metaphorically, vaguely and so on. Consider the continuum of being specific...through to vague.

Example from Michael Rosen: picture book 'Where the Wild Things' [author Maurice Sendak]

Go through the book, noting down ' specific' (S) words or phrases, and ' vague' (V). Beginning, 'The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of...' is V, then we read 'of one kind and another' which is V. 'Wild' is S but 'thing' is V so is 'anything'. 'That very night' is S and so is the next passage. Then we get to some strange disjuncts with time and space: 'sailed through night and day and in and out of weeks' (how do you sail 'out of a week?!) and then 'to where the wild things are' (where is that? V) . Then we come to the repeat of the word 'terrible' which at first is S but somehow the more it is repeated the less specific it becomes!

Following this we have quite a lot S writing about taming the wild things and Max being made king and then we come to one of the most curious passages of all: 'And Max the king of all wild things [we know that by now] Max was lonely (S for a story that's like fairy story) 'and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.'

Wonder or interpret where this might be V. We have two resources to help - One is the story so far. The other is ourselves. We can ask, where would I go to find someone who loved me best of all?' And we can ask, do I know of any other stories, songs, poems, films TV programmes ('texts') where people who were lonely went to find someone who loved them (also great example of reveal-conceal).

Does he really think his mother does love him best of all? The vagueness of the text gives us room to wonder about this. This brings to the fore issues for people of any age about 'detachment-attachment’ in how we bring up (or when children are perceived to be 'naughty' V)

Story goes into reverse mode, heads back home, repeating the patterns of language, till Max gets home 'where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot'. He is forgiven, happily ever after.

But really?

'Supper' is V - wonder about who brought it, why it's still hot and, why this person isn't there. Is this more 'detachment'? Is this at the heart of what this book is about?

One reading 'shows' that 'time-out' and 'detachment' works in bringing a child to his senses (?), but another says that actually nothing has been really solved by this, because the underlying situation still prevails.

Posted by MichaelRosen at 16:58

ADENDUM

(Liz Simon)

1. 'Evoke' senses, example of this in the story ‘Jumanji’ by Chris Van Allsburg... Jungle creatures overtake a home. 

‘writerly’ typical of a writer (dictionary). This may be Rosen referring to a writer’s characteristics. His examples are, 'I am telling you this...’ (clarity?). 'Later he would come to regret...' (open to changes).

‘Seedfolks’, author Paul Fleischman, states his ‘writerliness‘ – as having multiple points of view. They make for variety and predictability – two crucial ingredients in good books. It’s also dramatic to have more than one storyline running at a time and to show the same event from different perspectives.

‘Seedfolks’ - immigrants speaking of their different experiences. One speaking in one situation and another person in another situation, different perspectives.

3. Dialogue, stylised forms of conversation which, for example, extends, shorten explanations, revels character traits.