Apuntes Textos Poéticos Británicos e Irlandeses, Apuntes de Filología Inglesa

¡Descarga Apuntes Textos Poéticos Británicos e Irlandeses y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! TEXTOS POÉTICOS BRITÁNICOS E IRLANDESES: EXAMEN CONTINUA 2020 Rhetorical devices. Alliteration: use of several nearby words or stressed syllables beginning with the same consonant: o wild west wind, thou breath of autumn's being. Anaphora: repetition of words at the beginning of lines, or clauses, so that an effeect of emphasis is produced: if I were a dead leaf thou mightiest bear; If I were a swift cloud to flyy with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share Epanalepsis: the word/s that occurred at the beginning of a line, phrase, or clause is/are repeated at the end of the same line. Anadiplosis: the repetition of a word of one line or clause at the beginning of the next. Gradatio (climax) : sentence construction in which the last word of one clause becomes the firrst of the next, through three or more clauses (like an extended anadiplosis). Polyptoton: repetition of words of the same root with diffeerent endings (or prefirxes). Antanaclasis: the repetition of a word whose meaning changes in the second instance. Diacope: repetition of words with one or some words in between: “she, dear she” (Sidney), “to be or not to be” (Shakespeare). Epizuxis: repetition of words with no others between. Asyndeton: joins words or phrases by commas only, the polysyndeton by conjunctions. Parallelism: the parallel construction of phrases, is varied by chiasmus, repetition  in inverted order. Enjambment: the statement flyows over the end of the line into the next one. Emphasis: highlights a word by placing it in an unusual position in the line. Hyperbaton: is a derivation from the common word order in a sentence. Metaphor: a word or phrase that ordinary designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit, as in “a sea of troubles”. Simil: giants like mills. Metonymy: involves the substitution of a word or phrase with another closely associated with it. “sweat” can mean “hard labour”. Symbol: a word that has literal meaning as well as an alternative identity or meaning that represents something else. Hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration. Pun: play on words. Irony: when the meaning intended is the opposite of what is said. Oxymoron: combination if contradictory words about the same thing. Paradox: the use of concepts or ideas contradictory to one another. Allegory: transforms a general, abstract concept into a concrete image, person or story. Personifircation: transforms things or abstract concepts into human agents. Italian form: octave (2 quatrains) and sextet, rhyming Abba Abba cdecde. Thee Volta or turning point occurs in line 9. English form: 3 quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Thee Volta or turn often occurs in the third quatrains or in the ending strophe (tercet or couplet). Based on the Petrarchan tradition, but subverting it (Idealism VS Realism; chaste lady VS dark lady, promiscuous Lady; lovely boy (not the lady) is the object of praise, love and devotion, etc. Rhetorical strategy: to elaborate an initial statement to reach a conclusion in the firnal couplet, or to turn the situation into another direction in the firnal sextet. Types of Poetry When studying poetry, it is useful firrst of all to consider the theme and the overall development of the theme in the poem. Obviously, the sort of development that takes place depends to a considerable extent on the type of poem one is dealing with. It is useful to keep two general distinctions in mind (for more detailed defirnitions consult Abrams 1999 and Preminger et al 1993): lyric poetry and narrative poetry. Lyric Poetry A lyric poem is a comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song which is said to be its origin: For Greek writers the lyric was a song accompanied by the lyre. Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic monologue and most occasional poetry: In modern usage, elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular person (for example Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.). More broadly defirned, the term elegy is also used for solemn meditations, often on questions of death, such as Gray's Elegy Writteen in a Country Churchyard. An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject writteen in an elevated style. Famous examples are Wordsworth’s Hymn to Duty or Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn. Thee sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lover’s suffeerings and hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Renaissance, when Theomas Wyatte and the Earl of Surrey translated and imitated the sonnets writteen by Petrarch (Petrarchan sonnet). From the seventeenth century onwards the sonnet was also used for other topics than love, for instance for religious experience (by Donne and Milton), reflyections on art (by Keats or Shelley) or even the war experience (by Brooke or Owen). Thee sonnet uses a single stanza of (usually) fourteen lines and an intricate rhyme patteern (see stanza forms). Many poets wrote a series of sonnets linked by the same theme, so-called sonnet cycles (for instance Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Drayton, Barret-Browning, Meredith) which depict the various stages of a love relationship. In a dramatic monologue a speaker, who is explicitly someone other than the author, makes a speech to a silent auditor in a specifirc situation and at a critical moment. Without intending to do so, the speaker reveals aspects of his temperament and character. In Browning's My Last Duchess for instance, the Duke shows the picture of his last wife to the emissary from his prospective new wife and reveals his excessive pride in his position and his jealous temperament. Occasional poetry is writteen for a specifirc occasion: a wedding (then it is called an epithalamion, for instance Spenser’s Epithalamion), the return of a king from exile (for instance Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis) or a death (for example Milton’s Lycidas), etc. Narrative Poetry Narrative poetry gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a sequence of connected events, it propels characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator. Narrative poems might tell of a love story (like Tennyson's Maud), the story of a father and son (like Wordsworth's Michael) or the deeds of a hero or heroine (like Walter Scotte's Lay of the Last Minstrel). Sub-categories of narrative poetry: Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the founding of a nation (Virgil’s Aeneid) or the beginning of world history (Milton's Paradise Lost), they tend to use an elevated style of language and supernatural beings take part in the action. Thee mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely insignifircant occurrences. A famous example is Pope's Thee Rape of the Lock, which tells the story of a young beauty whose suitor secretly cuts offe a lock of her hair. A ballad is a song, originally transmitteed orally, which tells a story. It is an important form of folk poetry which was adapted for literary uses from the sixteenth century onwards. Thee ballad stanza is usually a four-line stanza, alternating tetrameter and trimeter. Descriptive and Didactic Poetry Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions (descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry). Thee purpose of a didactic poem is primarily to teach something. Theis can take the form of very specifirc instructions, such as how to catch a firsh, as in James Theomson’s Thee Seasons (Spring 379- 442) or how to write good poetry as in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism. But it can also be meant as instructive in a general way. Until the twentieth century all literature was expected to have a didactic purpose in a general sense, that is, to impart moral, theoretical or even practical knowledge; Horace famously demanded that poetry should combine prodesse (learning) and delectare (pleasure). Thee twentieth century was more reluctant to proclaim literature openly as a teaching tool. Lyric forms of love and devotion tend to incorporate the new intellectual energies: departures from the Petrarchan tradition in form and expression - we are going to firnd elements of other cultures. Thee poets experiment and explore new ways of poetical expression; they inspire in the classics. Theey try to imitate the poetical energy of the classics. Classical inflyuence: Lyric, Elegy, Epigram, etc. Theey don't copy, they imitate expressing their anxiety. Theeir poems are analytical and follow a logical order of development to persuade the reader that they are right. Theere is a combination of thought and feeling. Striking imagery: Images would be inappropriate, exaggerated, far-fetched Theis is what made metaphysical poetry metaphysical. Ben Jonson did not like that but it is actually the feature that defirnes it. Thee Metaphysical conceit: Conceits (or extended metaphors) that illustrate a theme leading to a wide range of emotions and subtle analysis of life and love. Often hyperbole and oxymoron (whatever that could be striking) Theey used direct colloquial language (not the artifircial Elizabethan language) and irregular stanzas. Theey liked to experiment. John Donne Elegy XIX Theere is a male speaker in the poem who seduces his mistress to open her clothes so as to have physical intimacy. Thee poem slowly processes forward as the unclothing processes from top to toe and from the belly to vulva. Theroughout the poem the speaker praises the beauty of a naked woman and says that the clothing is just the external adornment. He compares the situation to going to bed with the situation of a soldier waiting for the war. Thee word ‘standing’ puns with both to the standing soldier and to the erection of the speaker. He compares her naked body with the newly found land, America and expresses his unbound joy of watching it. CONCEIT → related to wit For him going to bed to have sex is not a sin but an act of innocence. By the imagery of childbirth, he tries to prove that to have sex is natural and even a pious act as it continues the human race. If the act of sex is stopped, then there would not be human kind in the earth. So, he wholeheartedly praises this physical union of male and female with many wits and metaphors. 48 lines of rhyming couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter. Not an elegy at all in the traditional sense of a poem writteen to commemorate a death, it instead celebrates the end of a woman's resistance to the speaker's sexual advances. Thee poem rhymes couplets with an iambic pentameter. Thee poem is full of erotic imagery, as well as religious. We have the examples of her being a mystery and her covering, and the topic of geography (America being discovered). We can firnd as well Neoplatonism, departure from the Petrarchan tradition, the topic of carnal desire and going to bed seems to be reflyected as a comparison with a soldier waiting for war. From lines 18 to 19 the speaker praises the body of a woman. Thee poet compares his naked beloved with the New Found Land, America. If she were a kingdom, the speaker would be the king. Theis advocates the superiority of male over female, and she silently appreciates his governance. Equally important is that without the mistress, the speaker would not be a king. Thee Sublime Much is spoken of with regard to that which makes someone or something Beautiful, but very littele is said these days about what makes something Sublime. In fact, the Sublime is a concept lost in the twenty-firrst century, though there was much debate on it only two centuries ago. Thee Sublime is a feeling terrifying yet desired. In this respect it diffeers from a feeling of the Beautiful which lacks the aspect of terror. Examples of that which cause an experience of the Sublime could include a vision of the starry universe on a cloudless night, a grand view of the ocean, a powerful speech that conveys more than can be immediately setteled by the mind, a piece of sober music that over-awes, a tract about the dark metaphysical, about the eternal, about that which overpowers. Thee Sublime in essence then is a feeling of delightful awe caused by some terror, at least according to its most famous proponent, the Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke. His book on the subject, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published in 1757, set a precedent for further discussion – most notably by the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant. Burke’s Enquiry, however, was itself a reaction to William Smith’s 1739 translation of a book on the Sublime by the Greek literary critic, Longinus, writteen at the start of the firrst millennium. Burke analyses the Sublime into a number of categories. I list them below with a brief explanation: – Terror Burke argues that a perception of terror becomes a feeling of delight when the person subconsciously realizes that the potential pain or danger is removed. As pain and danger are the most powerful of all emotions because they are conversant about the preservation of the individual, the relief from these causes supreme delight. We even delight in the misfortune of others when it does not directly affeect us, writes Burke. Theis may explain the popularity of hangings in the past, or today’s popularity of catastrophes in the news, or the prevalence of murder and violence in popular firlms. As Burke writes, ‘terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close’. – Obscurity When we know the full extent of a danger, that perceived danger then diminishes. Theus keeping it obscure maintains its dread. Darkness can add to terror as we are unaware of what surrounds us. Despotic governments and religions keep their chief shrouded in mystery as familiarity kills fear. Burke writes, ‘It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chieflyy excites our passions … A clear idea is therefore another name for a littele idea.’ Because of this, writing can be more sublime than painting because writing can rouse great and confused images which thus remain unfirxed and obscure. As an example, he gives a passage from Milton concerning a portrait of Satan. – Power Anything that is relatively more powerful than we are can inspire sublimity, but only if this power is potentially threatening. Theough a donkey is generally stronger than a man, a donkey is not a threat so its power is not considered sublime. A lion, however, is both powerful and threatening and in this case can inspire the Sublime. In Burke’s time, sovereigns were frequently addressed with the title ‘Dread Majesty’ to indicate both their power and threat. For a believer in God, He is the most Sublime partly for this reason. Thee theologian Rudolph Otteo wrote a book on this very subject arguing that the term ‘Holy’ originally connoted the sublime fear of God and only recently came to incorporate a moral dimension. Thee gods of the pagan religions were often powerful super-humans whose general occupation was destruction, suggestive of the Sublime. Thee goddesses were often epitomes of the Beautiful in contrast. Thee king of Gods in the Nordic pantheon, Odin or Wotan, was the god of war and poetry, for example. His wife Frigg was the goddess of beauty and love. Theis couple thus signify this distinction between the Sublime and the Beautiful – something to consider on Wednesdays and Fridays as these days are respectively named after the deities. – Privation ‘All general privations are great because they are terrible: Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude and Silence’. Man seems to be a social animal so privations cause terror. A particularly terrifying report of a man who was revived after clinical death was his description of experiencing a total void and believing that he would stay there eternally. – Vastness A massive expanse or building may cause an entrance of the Sublime. Burke argues that depth can be more sublime than height, and both are more sublime than length. Vastness strikes us as a power and danger, not necessarily on a conscious level. Burke also adds that extreme minuteness can also cause the Sublime, ‘for division must be infirnite as well as addition’. Thee world of microorganisms, discovered in the 17th Century, must have inspired the Sublime: not only were these creatures vast in their smallness, as it were, but also obscure in their ways. A whole new universe of life opened up with this discovery, akin to the feeling of Sublimity that would accompany us were we to discover extraterrestrial life. Thee obscure, immensely powerful world of subatomic physics could be Sublime. Theat ‘particles’ change according to whether they are being observed or not, for instance, is so odd and incredible, that an understanding could provide cause for sublimity. – Thee Infirnite Much like vastness, yet bigger! Many things appear to be infirnite as the eye cannot make out the boundaries. Again, obscurity and a sense of vastness ensue resulting in the Sublime. Thee infirnite vis- à-vis time and space seem to be themselves infirnite mysteries hence capable of producing the Sublime. Kant showed that considering both space and time as either firnite or infirnite causes logical errors, yet it seems to us that it must be one or the other. His response was to say that time and space were not real but had a mere existence within the mind. Einstein, who had read Kant later in life, added to the sublimity of the subject by combining time and space and stating that time could accelerate or decelerate according to spatial speed. In fact, at light speed time slows down to a stop – physics adding to our bank of sublime causes. – Difficculty When any work seems to have required immense labour and ingenuity, the idea has grandeur thus sublimity. Burke gives as an example Stonehenge which would have still been near impossible to construct in his age. Thee age of the structure must also contribute to its awe in terms of the vastness of time that has elapsed since its inception. – Suddenness A sudden extreme light, such as lightning, can prove Sublime. Thee shock of this powerful light must cause delight, so long as we are removed from its immediate danger. Being struck by lightning would not be sublime but painful, possibly fatal, and also somehow ridiculous. closer after they married two sisters, Sara and Edith Fricker. Naturally independent, Coleridge found marriage difficcult, and he separated from his wife in 1804. Southey was also responsible for introducing Coleridge to Wordsworth. Despite being temperamentally incompatible, Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated successfully on a collection of poems published in 1798 under the title Lyrical Ballads. Together, the two poets walked for miles, discussing and planning the poems. Wordsworth would write simple ballads of everyday life, using the ‘language of men’, while Coleridge considered an epic on the theme of Cain’s guilt for the murder of his brother Abel, which eventually evolved into his masterpiece Thee Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Thee Ancient Mariner is writteen in the metre of the old English ballads, and Coleridge utilises their characteristic alliteration and repetition, adding the occasional archaic word to lend authenticity. Thee poem is a metaphor for life, as the Mariner is driven through ice and drought at the mercy of the spirit world after his mindless act of killing one of God’s creatures. He experiences deprivation and undergoes suffeering both physical and mental before being granted redemption after his spontaneous outburst of love for the unatteractive snakes of the sea. His penance is to repeat his tale for ever as a moral lesson to mankind. In later life Coleridge came to identify himself with the Mariner’s plight— the outsider, alone and prey to supernatural sensations. Thee poem’s meaning has been hotly debated since it firrst appeared, some critics at the time firnding it meaningless, others seeing it as a powerful religious poem. For the 21st-century reader, the poem’s ‘green’ message, that man has his place in nature and that wanton destruction of the natural world will have its consequences, has perhaps the strongest resonance. After 1804 Coleridge’s friendship with Wordsworth cooled. Theis led to his deeper reliance on opium, producing bouts of paranoia and erratic mood swings that affeected his poetic output. In 1816 Coleridge became, in effeect, a resident patient with Dr Gillman in Highgate, becoming known as the Sage of Highgate. It was while he was in Gillman’s house-hold that he wrote Christabel, which, although inflyuenced by Chatteerton and by the medieval ballads found in Bishop Percy’s Reliques, is not strictly a ballad itself. Its chilling Gothic tone is an example of Coleridge’s mastery of creating atmosphere: the poem exudes fear and horror and an anticipation of evil. Thee beautiful Geraldine seems to challenge the heroine, Christabel, to choose between good, represented by the memory of her dead mother, and evil. A dark sexual liaison between the two women is more than hinted at, and the imagery of the serpent and the forest further increases the overall mood of anxiety and terror. It is a fragment, and how Coleridge would have developed it is anyone’s guess. Its intensity of mood and Gothic fairy-tale setteing is a forerunner of Keats’s excursion into the genre with La Belle Dame sans merci. Thee poem Love, again inflyuenced by Percy’s collection, is a pastiche of the medieval poems of courtly love. It was writteen shortly after Coleridge met Sarah Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, in 1799. Despite his being married, Coleridge saw her as an ideal woman, at once unatteainable yet desired. And in Love there is an air of eroticism—the narrator’s tale of a doomed love, with its repetitive rhythms, is interrupted by the maiden Genevieve, who clasps him in a sensuous embrace, vowing that she will not reject him as the maiden in his tale rejects her love. Another unfulfirlled Coleridge dream. Coleridge’s ‘conversation’ poems were perhaps his most original contribution to poetry. In these he developed an intimate conversational tone—quiet, reflyective and confirding. Set in a solitary, often domestic, environment, these poems are dramatic monologues, in a relaxed style. Thee poet is indulging in a subjective conversation. In Theis Lime-tree Bower my Prison, for instance, Coleridge is unable to accompany his friends the Wordsworth and Charles Lamb on a country walk, after his wife Sara has accidentally spilt boiling milk on his foot. His disappointment created one of his most congenial poems, in which he imagines and shares in the joy that his friend Lamb, ‘long in the great city pent’, discovers in the natural wonders of the local landscape, while the poet, ‘imprisoned’ in his lime-tree bower, in turn rediscovers a joy in the nature that surrounds him there, seeing it with fresh eyes. Thee poet is confirned physically, but his imagination is free to rove and through this he experiences a sense of freedom. It is a poem of catharsis. Theis same overpowering inflyuence of natural forces is felt in another conversation poem: Frost at Midnight. In the silence of a dark night, the poet muses on education and how that of his child (sleeping in his cradle) will diffeer from his own. With joy he imagines how his son shall have a more fulfirlled education through his association with nature, seeing and hearing God in all things. Thee silence of the night leads to further musings on how, once the day’s occupations are over, the life- force continues to exert its inflyuence almost imperceptibly, just as the frost ‘performs its secret ministry’. Both these conversation poems are poems of friendship and—although they were not writteen for the Lyrical Ballads of 1798—they reflyect the spirit of that collection. As Coleridge’s poetic output dwindled, his skills as a lecturer and conversationalist increased. Thee public, however, would always remember him as the author of Kubla Khan. Coleridge claimed that he only published this poem at the request of Lord Byron who thought it ‘a psychological curiosity’. Thee poem’s history is well-known. Coleridge explained that he wrote it in 1797 while suffeering from dysentery for which he was taking opium. Falling asleep from its effeects, having just read about the great palace of Kubla Khan, he dreamt for three hours of the mighty Khan and envisaged the whole poem in about two to three hundred lines. On waking he hurried to get those lines on paper, but, being interrupted by ‘a person on business from Porlock’ who kept him talking for an hour, he found on his return to the poem that ‘with the exception of some eight or ten scatteered lines and images, all the rest had passed away.’ As a ‘fragment’ of the product of his fertile imagination, stimulated by opium, Kubla Khan is full of vivid exotic imagery and sensation in a series of impressions, rather than being a coherent narrative. It is a sketch for a poem, a work in progress, possibly the beginning of an Ode, that might be in praise of human invention and the richness of the imagination—Alph, the sacred river, representing the life-force, and the ‘caverns measureless to man’ being the uncharted and unfathomable human mind. Many books have been writteen on the meaning of this poem but in the end its power lies in its strange, surreal and bewitching atmosphere. Charles Lamb, perceptive as ever, described it ‘as an owl that won’t bear daylight’. It is a dream and maybe that is all we should consider it to be. Coleridge’s unique genius was captured by Lamb, in his description of him as ‘an Archangel, a littele damaged’. Coleridge’s theory of imagination Coleridge’s theory of imagination idealizes turning something into an idea (with your discovery of the knowledge). According to him, imagination has two forms; primary and secondary. Primary imagination is the power of receiving impressions of the external world through the senses, the power of perceiving the objects of sense, both in their parts as a whole. It is a spontaneous act of the mind. It is universal possessed by all. Thee secondary imagination may be possessed by others also, but is the peculiar and typical trait of the artist; it is what makes artistic creation possible. It is more active and conscious; it requires an effeort of the will, volition and conscious effeort. It is the power which harmonizes and reconciles opposites. Thee primary and secondary imaginations diffeerence in degree. Thee secondary imagination is more active, more a result of volition, more conscious and voluntary than the primary one. Thee primary one is universal while the secondary is a peculiar privilege enjoyed by the artist. Imagination and fancy, however, diffeers in kind. Fancy is not a creative power at all. It only combines what is perceived into beautiful shapes, but like the imagination it does not fuse and unify. Fancy is the drapery of poetic genius but imagination is very soul which forms all into one grateful and intelligent whole. Kubla Khan In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a A stately pleasure-dome decree: b Where Alph, the sacred river, ran a Therough caverns measureless to man a Down to a sunless sea. b So twice firve miles of fertile ground c With walls and towers were girdled round; c And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, d Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; e And here were forests ancient as the hills, d Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. e But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitteed burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffey grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flyung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Therough wood and dale the sacred river ran, Theen reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! Kubla Khan has ordered the construction of a majestic pleasure palace, near the river Alph, that nuns through caverns limitless for men and in a dark sea where the sun does not penetrate. To build this palace, ten miles at ground are enclosed with walls and towers all around. In this palace there were gardens and streams and in these gardens, there are blossoming trees. Theere are also ancient forest that surrounded grassy spots that the sun would warm. With this, we are taken to a beautiful place. Theere is described a savage place that was so holy and enchanted that it looked as if it had been haunted under the warning moon by the spell of a witch that laments her demon lover. As if the earth was breathing, there was a fountain that flyoured so violently that it will not throw up huge fragments of rocks that fell to the ground in all directions like hail stones from the sky or like mashed grain obtained when crushed with a flyail. From this abyss it sprang up the sacred river, Alph, that flyoured in a labyrinthine way through the forest and valleys and then it would reach the limitless caverns and ended in the noise of a lifeless ocean in which Kubla Khan heard the war prophecies of the ancestors. Thee shadow of Kubla Khan’s building would reach the waves, and there, the noise can be still heard. Theis place had a strange construction: it had a sunny place combined with caves of ice (which never melted). Fragmentary rather than complete: Thee moment of inspiration was important when they contemplated something because they appreciated it and maybe some poems would be unfirnished. Thee idea of fragmentation was also linked with the poets revising their works/compositions. Organic rather than preconceived in form: Debatable. It illustrates that poets are not interested anymore with the heroic couplet. Thee idea would be the form of a poem and they would not use the form of the stanzas that already existed. Thee 1" generation tried to embody the idea of giving the form to the poem; they experimented with the form. But Wordsworth used the blank verse and Byron the terse, which are preconceived ideas. Theey were interested in nature, the self, the wonderful, and the supernatural as well as the confusion, flyuidity and indeterminacy (world of dreams). Thee Romantic Poet. English Romantic authors were diffeerent (they did not want to die). - Thee poet does not escape from the world, but casts a sharp eye on the world around him Theey did not firt in the melancholic mind; they are in the world trying to do something for the people around them. Theey were committeed with the problems of society. - Thee poet has a sense of enjoyment (of life, world and his apprehension and understanding of them). Shelley, Byron… they enjoyed life even when they were sick or depressed, it is not possible to sense that in their poetry. - Extraordinary sense of life and energy, of freshness and excitement: they tried to answer questions about their individuality, their existence and role in society, about art and politics, about the future… and struggled to formulate the answers using their own way and own poetic technique. - Interest in NATURE – the creation and reality (the same concept of nature that we have today). But also in dreams, fairy tales, legends, Gothic enchantments, and magic, etc. - Interest in the SELF, that individuality "which imprisons and gives freedom". Thee consciousness and also the unconsciousness: Dreams were a source of inspiration which meant freedom. -A new understanding of the poet and his function: they could bring new ideas to the society; they thought they had a big role in the society because of their mentality so humanity could progress. Thee Romantic Poet and Nature. Except Blake, all the Romantics celebrated nature. Blake talked about nature as symbols. Nature was opposed to cities. Theere is a "genuine pleasure at seeing, hearing, and feeling the freshness of the natural world" (Wordsworth felt his soul connected with the universe at seeing nature). Thee landscape is seen for its ability mind" (Wordsworth) Nature is associated with moral and physical health (Wordsworth). Nature is a site of the numinous, and a source of the SUBLIME. Thee poet as visionary 3 diffeerent. possibilities 1. Thee poet had visions. Blake had when he was a child angels…) 2. Dreams – real "visions". Theey create something that is not real but has memories of it 3. Idealism of Plato (world of ideas) Thee imagination enjoys a creative freedom (for revelation, political change, spiritual truth, and for purely excitement. Thee capacity of creating ideas, something new and bringing it to the world, to disclose something new to amplify our understanding or just for pleasure. Thee imagination is God- like (it parallels that of god in creation), and unique to every individual. Thee imagination had power to create new worlds. It is escapism, but also domination of the external world. Romantic poets are never detached from the society. Originality: Because of their use of creating new options and their use of imagination they were original. Thee Romantic Poet and the Poetic Self. Recognition of power within the individual. Poetry is more preoccupied with the expression. We want to know what the poet wants to tell us. Maybe what the poet wants to tell us is more important than the form. Poets were visionary. Blake searched for his spirituality, the sense of God is undefirned. Intense use of metaphors and much more of symbols (Biblical, prophetic language). Shelley was amazed by the Greek mythology. Symbols are chamaleonic. Thee moment of inspiration was important, holy, or sacred for them: "is mysterious, natural, instinctive, and holy, the working of the human spirit inspired by something greater than itself". Thee Romantics does not think of the Muse but the understanding of another level of the perception of the reality. Other aspects. Thee poet as prophet (like Ezekiel): keeping alive a sense of national identity and encouraging a spirit of resistance. Higher awareness of history. Illuminating the path towards a betteer future. Poets have another perception of reality; they can see new ideas and tell them to those who don't understand them. Shelley was an atheist looking for an answer regarding transcend. In the 2nd generation, Byron insisted in a catholic education but was not so much a believer. Wordsworth believed in a transcendental being, and Coleridge believed in one God. Dreams: private and unexpected workings of the individual mind. To make new worlds, combinations and things previously unthought-of both beautiful and fearful. Mysterious, freer, and operation in symbols. Dreams are often seen as symbolic. Thee Romantics would have mixed feelings towards God. Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land, a Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone b Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand, a Half sunk a shatteered visage lies, whose frown, b And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, a Tell that its sculptor well those passions read c Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, d Thee hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; d And on the pedestal, these words appear: e My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; d Thee speaker has met someone from an ancient place. Thee traveller tells the speaker about two pairs of legs with no body. Thee face lies near the legs but it is shatteered as the whole statue is. Thee statue is shatteered but it is still possible to see the expression of its face. Horrifired about something because he is frowning and sneezing. How the speaker talks about the sculptor, that has understood the command of doing the statue. Thee passions of the ruler person who commanded the statue are visible in its face that now is shatteered. Thee sculptor copied in the statue the man’s passions that have gone from the sculptor’s hand and the boss heart and viceversa. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! e Nothing beside remains. Round the decay f Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare e Thee lone and level sands stretch far away.” f Ode on a Grecian Urn Today we are reading Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Keats is the 'poet of beauty' as much as Wordsworth is 'the poet of nature'. Keats's poetry was not as popular as Byron's in 1810-1822, but his poetry will strongly inflyuence Tennyson, the great Victorian poet. It tells us the type of composition ODE (not musical, but poetical composition). Thee object to be praised, celebrated, is an urn and this urn is Greek, which implies classical culture and ART. 5 stanzas, 10 lines each, the rhyme is the same for the initial lines, but the scheme of last six lines varies from stanza to stanza, thus creating a kind of irregularity, a kind of poetical experimentation, irregularity. Thee rhythm is not always iambic. Many lines are, like the very last one, but we firnd a great variety of feet. Stanzas 1 and 5: ABABCDEDCE Stanza 2: ABABCDECED Stanzas 3 and 4: ABABCDECDE. Theis type of experimentation with the rhyme and rhythm (like the one of Ozymandias) will continue in English poetry throughout until the present. Thee English poetry is NOT as experimental as the American poetry. Thee experimentation is not so conspicuous, but we shall see some more experimental poets during the Victorian period. In the firrst part of the firrst stanza, Keats talks directly to the urn and says (using personifircation) it is (1) the bride of quietness, (2) the foster child of silence and slow time and (3) a historian who lives in the forest. Moreover, he introduces the history of the urn, which it can tell betteer than his poetry can. It has an anaphoric structure. We know that the poet is REPEATING the structure of his statement. First of all, he repeats the addressee, which is the urn. Notice that the poet is NOT speaking to the urn. He does not expect to be heard or replied. It suggests a kind of closeness, mental concentration on the object. It is as if the poet were in a museum, observing a piece of art. His atteention as been caught by its beauty, and yes, he admires it and speaks in the meantime. We cannot see the object, but we can picture it in our minds by his words, from the real visual object to the readers' mental image of the object mediated by the poet's words. We go back to the firrst four lines. Notice that the 3 statement runs through lines 3 and 4 linked by the enjambment. So, altogether, we have 3 statements addressed to the urn, describing WHAT THE URN IS in this poem, ITS ROLE. Thee firrst one is "still unvarnished bride of quietness". Thee firrst information we receive is Bride, and this bride is pure. I think the firrst line introduces the topic of the poem, it is going to be about an object which is pure and will be static, unmoved, like pieces of art in a museum. Lets now focus on the second line. Thee poet mentions the "parents" the foster-parents of the urn silence and slow time. In the statue appears an inscription that says who it is: it is Ozymandias, he calls himself the Kings of Kings. Theere is nothing equal of his works (other statues or temples). He tells not to have hope because eventually your statues or works will be destroyed by time. Nothing last forever; but the shatteered head, the pedestal and the legs of this colossal wreck. It has to be a huge statue because of Ozymandias’ ambition → he calls himself King of Kings. He describes a desert that goes on forever the sounds now are lone → maybe something was near the in the past, but now its gone. Thee poem was writteen after Napoleon was defeated and it is applied to his time as well. It is a sonnet that rhymes ababacdcedefef with iambic pentameter. It does not firt a conventional Petrarchan patteern. Thee poem is a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of political power and of the pride of all humanity. effeect of desolation and waste that he transmits with words and it is difficcult to transmit with pure images. Theis is the art of Hardy: his capacity to describe nature in such a way that the realistic description is always shaped to order to create the right atmosphere, sometimes even giving it an extraordinary life. It is no surprise that the landscape of a novel such as Thee Return of the Native is almost another character in the story. What is new about the second stanza? Thee poet compares the landscape he sees with the 19th century. It is the poet's personal perception, TO HIM this landscape LOOKED LIKE a corpse. and he goes on to create a funeral scene by comparing other natural elements (wind, etc) with participants or actants in a funeral. However, if you read only the firrst stanza of that ode you will understand the end… when Shelley concluded the stanza with (sorry, I am telling by heart) "destroyer and preserver" as the wind spread the seeds which are like cofficns out of which a new beginning would take place in due course (read, spring). However, he cannot see any sign of that rebirth, of hope…. he is not enthusiastic, he is—he says—fervourless, as every one around him is. It is very important because the way in which the landscape has been described in the previous stanza can now be applied to the end of the 19th century and the prospects for the forthcoming century. Thee third stanza. In the third stanza the poetic persona hears a bird singing, referring to it as old and frail but also joyous while singing. It is an acoustic image: the firrst half ... the second half is about… the description of the bird. 4th stanza: I think ecstatic has to do with the intensity of the song, not because the poet or the bird became a kind of mystic beings. In fact Hardy was agnostic or at least very critical with the Anglican church for personal, intimate reasons. Carols, carol-singing are Christmas songs..songs of the season of Christmas… that is more popular and folkloric than religious. the poet witnesses the desolate landscape, a voice (from nature, or maybe—poetically—a supernatural message) brings in full joy, the poet is sensitive to that perception and read it accurately, but his minds refuses—or at least—doubts. about the authenticity of the nature's (bird's, supernatural message's) certainty. It is a wonderful example of Hardy's scepticism. My Boy Jack Thee next poem is "My Boy Jack". First, it is already a 1 War World poem, and therefore a full 20th century poem. Second, it is a kind of ballad. there are littele and words which are repeated several times throughout (you will see how each time… wind blowing and tide have diffeerent connotations sometimes they mean their literal meanings, but some other times they mean historical times, war, ever, etc. We cannot see this but it is interesting that you realise that tide can have other poetical meanings. it has the form of a ballad, but it is a dramatic poem since we hear a dialogue of two people talking. We have seen more poems of this kind. We saw in the theory for Coleridge the conversation poems and "My Last Duchess" the poem by Robert Browning who wanted to write dramatic pieces, but became a poet… always writing monologues (soliloquies) and dialogues. First stanza → the poet refers a scene in which a person comes to ask. in which a male speaker comes to ask for HIS son. we suppose the other person is an officcer which says that he has no news. We see it is a very realistic scene all the words make sense, they are used to mean their literal meaning. Second stanza → the meaning moves forward in the lines which are not repeated while the repeated lines function like a refrain (estribillo). the mother wants to know if he knows something about Jack. still a common question… but the officcer's reply is that He must be dead because the boat he was on sank. Theird stanza → the mother asks which conform can get now that she knows her son is dead. Thee officcer's answer is that Jack died with honour and not as a coward. Fourth stanza → She now must be proud and walk with the head up. Dulce et Decorum Est It belongs to the book Thee War Poems. It is a satire against war and against the fact of transmitteing from generation to generation the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, that is, "it is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland". Owen (1893-1918) echoes the great damage that this kind of propaganda does. He received a solid academic education and entered the University of London. He was working as a tutor in France when World War I broke out. He joined the army in 1915. After two horrifirc experiences, he was diagnosed with combat neurosis or combat fatigue which was what PTSD was then called, he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital and changed his way of understanding and writing about war. Thee poem sums up the horrors of being a soldier in World War I. Owen was in that war and experienced what he talks about in the poem. He writes the poem at a time when military propaganda to get young men to enlist to firght is still going out. He questions the statement “Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori” at a time when it is not very popular to have it questioned. People in power wanted to have young British men to feel and think that dying for their country was honourable. Thee poem is an anti-recruitment poem and when it opens, Owen and the other soldiers have done their last stunt on the front lines, and they are running away from them to get to their distant rest zone. In the firrst lines, Owen shows that the prototype of English soldier as young, clean and upright are not there, instead, he compares them with beggars. He as well shows that it is not the glorious English land but a sludge. Theey are decreasing, exhausted, away from the front lines, they have gone far enough away so they cannot be killed by the gas bombs that fall behind them any more. But although they were out at range at the artillery, they are not out at a range of the gas bombs, and one of them falls near the soldiers. Theey managed to put on the gas masks in time but someone does not make it. Theat soldier staggers towards Owen and calls him out as if he was on firre; he saw him drowning through the misty green panes of the gas mask, he is unable to help the soldier. He does not forget this experience. He has nightmares at this soldier staggering him, drowning. Thee soldiers had picked up the soldier that had breathed the gas, he is not dead yet and they have put him in the back of a wagon of which Owen is pacing behind. Theey knew he was going to die so they had “flyung” him there. It seems as if those dreams have smothered the life out him, and he is saying to the person that he addresses this part that if she/he could go through what he went through, that agony, watching his hanging faith or his blood gurgling from his lungs as the wagon jointed, she/he would not be keen to tell young men, kids, who want to be heroes, that it is sure and firtteing to die for your country because he had seen those young men dying to it, and was nothing glorious about it. All that Owen asks at the end is to be him, the person who has watched one of his friends die for his country. It can be said that before the poem was writteen, they would not know what the reality of war is. Futility At the beginning of the poem, the speaker asks for the dead soldier to be moved into the sun in the hope that it will wake him as it would from sleep. However, faced by the firnality of death, the speaker breaks down into anger, feeling hopeless about life itself. Thee firrst stanza of the poem is gentle and tender. Thee sun is characterised as being wise and caring and the soldier is to be moved into its warmth and light. Thee speaker also remembers the safety of ‘home’ and the intimacy of the ‘whispering’ firelds. Thee sun is reliable and powerful, waking the soldier ‘even in France’, a foreign country far from the safety of his home. Yet this reliability makes the sun’s inability to wake him now even more striking and frustrating. If the sun could always wake him before, why can’t it do so now? Intriguingly, there is littele hint of war and death. In fact, the firrst real indication comes late in such a short poem with the line ‘if anything might rouse him now’. After all, the speaker is in denial, still hoping the soldier will awake in the sun. Thee mention of France is also the only subtle suggestion of war. Many British soldiers were sent to firght in France in World War 1. Theis connotation of France as a batteleground rather than a holiday destination will only really be picked up if the reader is familiar with the context of the poem and know that Wilfred Owen is specifircally a poet of WW1, himself a British soldier. However, the tone of the poem changes dramatically in the second stanza, ending with three frustrated questions that resist resolution. Thee gentle confirdence and predictability of the firrst stanza is gone. Thee speaker is in disbelief that although the sun ‘wakes the seeds’ from the ground, it can’t awake a body that is ‘still warm’. He bitteerly calls the sun ‘fatuous’, or foolish, and rages at the futility of the sun even bothering ‘to break earth’s sleep’, or rising, ‘at all’. Thee needless death of the soldier has made the speaker feel so hopeless that he has become disillusioned with all of life. Overwhelmed with feelings of futility, the speaker asks – what’s the point of anything if young men can so suddenly and easily lose their lives in war? It is a short poem. Two stanzas, the metrical patteern is trimeters in the opening and ending lines and tetrameters in the other lines. Thee poet seems to give orders… move him into the sun… apparently, the poem is about whether he is dead or not. In the firrst 5 lines, the poet expect that the sun (which you can associate with life giver or whoever you think gave you life) will revive the soldier. It is of the two nouns about nature (clearly a symbol, therefore), the other one being firelds (literally firelds to sow, but also firelds in connection with fertility… the combination of sun and earth, from an English point of view, which does not need rain!!!). Thee last two lines are about the bitteer realization that the body will not be revived. Now the group of lines are inverted: the firrst 2 lines are still about hopes of the benefircial life-giver (or whoever/whatever you think gives life)... the 5 last lines are 3 questions which are not rhetorical questions. In rhetorical questions, no reply is expected, because they are only used to express what everybody agrees on… in this case they are philosophical question… questions which we are still asking and never get an answer. we arrived late to the shooting… but that is not the climax the poet wants us to see…the actually shot…. but his meditation about the sense of life, what are we doing on this planet, is war or violence the result of the effeort of nature, or God, or evolution or cosmic waves/radiation… to end like that? It is also about how especially every one of you are… as part of nature creation and dwellers of this planet. His philosophical questions are the eternal questions of humanity…. what are we doing here? What it for THIS that I was born? In this case this experience of war. Owen invented this type of rhyme, called half-rhyme some sounds are the same, some not. Theis is also an atteempt to capture the "aesthetic" of the war by breaking the ornamentation of the traditional rhyme. Leda and the Swan ABAB CDCD EFEGEFE Thee huge wings of the swan beat the girl, that is staggering. Thee swan caress her tights with its dark webs. He (the swan) grabs her by the neck with its bill. He holds her, she is helpless, he holds her breast upon his. 1#RHETORICAL QUESTION How could she have prevented it? She could not (he is Zeus) because she was terrifired and because of that her firngers were “vague”. 2#RHETORICAL QUESTION How Leda could help feeling the swan’s heart beating against her chest? Thee swan has completed the sexual act. Leda becomes pregnant → with Helen of Troy over whom the Trojan war