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Language and Literature
24 minutes
Color
Recommended audience age range 18-adult
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Availability:
This title is no longer available from the Roland Collection
Additional information
Order number: 1004
With the help of Professor Umberto Eco, best-selling author, we investigate the difference between everyday language and the language of literature. Does everyday language tend to do our thinking for us, because we use linguistic stereotypes and fail to notice the inherited historical meanings of words? And is that the difference between it and literary language, which, as Eco argues, is `language which draws attention to itself'? This idea is tested on William Blake's poem The Sick Rose, and we discover that while no `correct' interpretation of the meaning of a poem can ever be established, it will still have a basic area of meaning which must be observed. We conclude that writers use literary language to question received ideas in the world of everyday language, and perhaps to change that world.
Credits -
Presenter:
Graham Martin,with Umberto Eco
Director:
Tony Coe
Open University/BBC
