Match poets with periods, main events, literary movements Milton: Mid-17 centuryKeats, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga Match poets with periods, main events, literary movements Milton: Mid-17 centuryKeats y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! Match poets with periods, main events, literary movements. Milton: Mid-17th century Keats: Romanticism (younger generation) Philip Sidney: Elizabethan Tennyson: Victorian Wordsworth: Augustan Poetry Blake: Romanticism (1st Generation) Shakespeare: Elizabethan Arnold: Victorian Donne: Metaphysical Burns: Preromantics Hopkins: Victorian Lovelace: Restoration The Italian Sonnet and the English Sonnet: Italian form -> Octave (2 quatrains) and a sextet rhyming abbaabbacdecde, introduced by Wyatt, and some of them by Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella. The Volta or turning point occurs in line 9. English form -> 3 quatrains and a couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg, introduced by Surrey. The Volta often occurs in the 12th line. Themes: “The Sonnet” • Lady’s great beauty • Her power over the poet • Her cruelty to him • His sleeplessness • The fire of his love and the ice of her chastity • The pain of absence • The renunciation of love • And the eternity and originality of his poems. The Cavalier Poetry: Identified with the supporters of Charles I during the Civil War, loyalty to the King, love, beauty. War and sexual love were their main topics, often interrelating them. Sophisticated charm, libertine as a topic of poetry in the restoration. Ben Jonson’s plain style. Three Major English Poems: The Fairie Queen (Edmund Spenser), 1590. Spenser’s Arthurian epic was initially conceived as a 12 book poem with 12 cantos each, it portraits the virtues of a good ‘’courtier’’ in a series of romantic tales. Base on the romance of Knight-errantry (Italian chivalrous epic), Some stories are simply adapted from the Italian stories. Poem rich in visual details. It has a connection with the Arthurian Revival in which Spenser includes archaisms, sense of medievalism, due to his admiration for Chaucer and the Arthurian myth by means of which represents Queen Elizabeth. He wanted to symbolize the unbroken bound of British history and English Tradition. He created a world of his own (Fairy Land), and also included human beings (trial, problems…), inhabited places by knights and ladies, Britons (normal people), and bad creatures such as monsters, evils, and temptations. Spenserian stanza: ababbcbcc 1 Robert Burns (1759-1796) -Poems in English and Scottish dialect, popular poetry. -Defended French Revolution (the negation of the pillars of society: the King was both the head of the state and the head of the Church), & Scottish Nationalism. The Jacobite Revolution (not agree with the union with England), oppression of Scottish people. -Proletarian voice, revolt against Neoclassicism, social hierarchy (poets were aristocrats and poems were only for aristocrats, description of aristocratic life). -Glorification of the simple and humble life. He wanted to show the life and the attitude, not only the idealism of life, the rhythm of cultural and natural life. -Man’s interdependence with the rhythms of nature (“To a Mouse”). -Satire on Scottish religious life, against. He was Presbyterian, not Jacobite. -Essential goodness of life. Paradise Lost (John Milton, 1667). Paradise Lost were published in the Restoration but it WAS NOT Restoration Literature. Milton decided against another Spenserian National epic on Arthurian Literature (which was originally his intention) and committed himself to a biblical epic instead. Already blind, he dictated to his daughters an epic of the Fall and on Satan, the Fallen Angel. It is told in ‘’MEDIA RES’’ in 10 original books, later amounted to 12. It is written in BLANK VERSE, this is, lines of iambic pentameter with no rhyme. The first 2 books are set in Hell, where Satan holds counsel. Milton creates the epic simile (it implies an effort of imagination, because he has never been in Hell) Satan’s palace in Hell as striking an instance of the sublime in poetry, as the Garden of Eden is on the beautiful. For instance, in Book 3 Adam is created and Satan flies around the Earth. It is for Milton a personal way of coming in terms with his political and religious ideas in a much tormented period of English History. The Prelude (William Wordsworth, 1805-1850): Included in the Romantic Poets, Wordsworth was clearly influenced by Pantheism, the belief that everything composes and all encompassing, immanent God, or that the Universe (or Nature) is identical with DIVINITY. He celebrates of being alive! The Prelude, or growth of a poet’s mind, was an autobiographical poem, but not a conventional one. It omits many factual details; its purpose is to explore the psychology of a poet, determining what forces involves him to poetic utterance. Portraits the development of a Romantic Imagination and entitles the views of a man, nature, and society. Written in a simple language (not elevated, not artificial), the poet is now the hero. Awe-inspiring -> powerful moonlight lake nature. Human mind and mind of nature Connection with Paradise Lost the scheme of the poem pictures the initial Paradise of Nature in childhood, Paradise Lost in the poet’s wrong turn to the persuasive appeal of French Revolution, and Paradise regained in the return to the undiluted intercourse with Nature. Wordsworth’s revolutionary ideas about poetry: “The Preface” to Lyrical Ballads One main point of this preface is to relate Wordsworth's intention to depict the common man, using the common language of man in his poetry. Another goal outlined in the preface is to show how feeling gives importance to the action and the situation. A third goal of Wordsworth's poetry is to illustrate the way in which poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Wordsworth’s Conception of Poetry: Passion and Reflection Wordsworth propounded his views on poetry, its nature and functions and the qualification of a true poet in his Preface. So far as the nature of poetry is concerned, Wordsworth is of the opinion that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Poetry has its origin in the internal feelings of the poet. It is a matter of passion, mood and temperament. Poetry cannot be produced by strictly adhering to the rules laid down by the Classicists. It must flow out naturally and smoothly from the soul of the poet. But it must be noted that good poetry, according to Wordsworth, is never an immediate expression of such powerful emotions. A good poet must ponder over them long and deeply. 2 Differences between the Elizabethan and the Metaphysical Poetry: The Elizabethan Poets were simple and concerned with the expression of the simple and conventional themes in a fairly elaborate and artificial manner, while the Metaphysicals were much more intellectual, both in the subject and style matter, and they expressed their interest in their own experience (not in mythological and decorum ways) to change the world around them. Also, their poems are analytical and follow a logical order of development, combining thoughts, feelings, striking imagery, CONCEITS (extended metaphors to illustrate a theme leading to a wide range of emotions and subtle analysis of life and love) and a DIRECT COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE (not the artificial Elizabethan Language) including irregular stanzas, instead of the emphasis on decorum and elegance in Elizabethan Period. John Donne and the Metaphysical Wit: The Metaphysical Wit is an intelligence which one portrays by expressing himself in a manner that is beyond physical but is spiritual, and slightly emotional, this smartness comes about when a person is engrossed or devoted to a particular thing. John Donne, along with similar but distinct poets such as George Herbert, developed a poetic style in which philosophical and spiritual subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox. Donne’s wit is deliberate and peculiar. It impresses us with its intellectual vigour and force and does not merely lie in the dexterous or ingenious use of words. Secondly, it comes naturally from the author’s expansive knowledge and deep scholarship. Donne’s wit is a compound of many similes extracted from many objects and sources. His wit has certain distinct qualities. Donne’s wit is scholastic or dialectical rather than metaphysical. He is fond of a logical sequence, ingenious and far-fetched analysis. We can see the irregular stanzas of metaphysical poems. The topic he writes, for instance, love, is very common in this poems. He uses a lot of metaphors to create an atmosphere where love is the protagonist. Also, along the poem, he combines the topic of love and life into one. Wordsworth’s revolutionary ideas about poetry ‘’The Preface’’ to Lyrical Ballads: The Wordsworth's Preface established a point of inflection, that we can consider the establishment of the Romantic period. In this work, divided into two volumes, give us an approach to the principles of good poetry as it were a manual about nature poetry. In his books, he rejects the “rules” written by the authors of 18th Century; in fact, he deserves to go back to the principles of old great nature poetry. He denies the accusations that said poetic constitute a rank scale from upper to lower genres; moreover, he also rejects the term decorum in which is distinguished people by social classes. In his works he represents situations of common life, following his thoughts about simple matters; he’s definitely following the passions of his heart, a naked simple language and social outcasts, the joy of LIFE AND NATURE. In those situations he often uses 'simple people' such as children, mad people, thieves, etc. He also argue that all good poetry implies spontaneous words, because the spontaneously is the voice of feelings, no lies attached; all is truth–Wordsworth's dictions spread all over the world during his Era. He emphasizes the concept of simple and nature as sublime. Imagination and Individuality in the English Romantic Poetry: The English Romantic Poetry establishes a connection between the nature and the interior world of feeling, this imagination and individuality sees the poet as a ‘’seer’’ with demiurgically capacities. Renewal of reality. His relationship mind-external world in terms of joyous harmony and reciprocity, for the world influences the poet’s mind and the poet in turn responds with an imaginative truthful apprehension of the world, the LOVE FOR THE WILD, THE LOVE OF SUBLIME AND PICTURESQUE IN EXTERNAL HUMAN NATURE. Also, the romantic language uses the symbol as a fusion form-meaning-world-imagination. These poets produced works that expressed spontaneous feelings, finding parallels to their own emotional lives in the NATURAL WORLD, celebrating creativity rather than logic, excites his imagination. The romantics continually associated their poetry with nature. Their poems reflect their imagination, communing with nature. THIS is the inspiration but it is the power of the individual and their imagination that brings life to the poems. The Romantics feel in the observance of nature, the mind can be meditative. God does exist but can be felt through other senses, in the heart. It is not the God of indoctrinated religion. Looking at the world and its glory can be a spiritual experience. Humans are of the earth, and the life on earth interacts with us. The romantic period was a time of experiment, with freedom, with ideas and with individualism. What comes out is the INNER FEELING OF HUMAN BEING. Characteristics of the English Romantic Poetry: 5 The romantic poetry takes place from 1789 to 1832. It is a period characterized by a whole revolution, not only in poetry but in society, as the French Revolution or The Napoleonic Wars and also the Industrial Revolution. Many people characterized this period, but focusing on poetry, the Lake District Poets were the formal poets who began this new Era. It includes some themes as the… • Medievalism: influence of savage, wild, not rules, wilderness, OPPOSITE TO CLASSICISM or social perfection, etc. • Orientalism: passion, lovers, violence, place for the imagination (and forbidden things) • Primitivism: MORAL TEACHING (BUT A SAVAGE QUALITY: TH. GRAY -> THE CAT WHO IS DROWNED), man • NOT attached by rules of society. • The idea of PROGRESS: The political Revolution and industrial opened the belief on a glorious tomorrow. • Democracy: except for Scott, the rest support the Revolution, hostile to monarchical authority • Individualism: loss of sense of cultural centrality in benefit for the personal // SUBJECTIVE EXPRESSION, inversion in the hierarchy of society • POWER OF IMAGINATION: Power to create things -> FOR INSTANCE, Keats, best product of imagination, originality. • Sentimentalism: emotions, feelings (BYRON -> Sensitive to Nature, also Wordsworth) • Mistrust of the completely logical and rational: medievalism and primitivism, the reality is there, LOT OF VISIBLE THINGS: MIND, DISCOVER OF DREAMS. • Confessionalism: society KEEPS BEING NEOCLASSICAL, but some authors are in the exile because of that. INDIVIDUALISM-IMAGINATION-LOVE FOR THE WILD AND LOVE FOR THE SUBLIME. • New attitude to Nature: not the Universal rules, but the realms where the poet MEETS HIMSELF, HEALS HIS SOUL, EXCITES HIS IMAGINATION), what comes out ARE THE INNER FEELINGS OF HUMAN BEING. 6 ‘’Sonnet I’’, from Sidney’s ASTROPHIL AND STELLA (‘’Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show’’): Describe the form and explain what the poet is saying about writing poetry. Astrophil and Stella is Sir Philip Sydney's renowned sonnet sequence, comprised of 108 sonnets and 11 songs. Although the inspiration for the sonnets is not known for certain, it is believed that the sequence is largely autobiographical and inspired by his relationship with Penelope Devereux, who is represented in the sequence by Stella. The introspective, self-analytical nature of Sydney's sonnets highly contrasts from the way Sydney was said valued his personal privacy over the course of his life. Astrophil and Stella is without doubt one of the most influential sonnet cycles of the Elizabethan Age. While many people simply dismiss Astrophil and Stella as a typical Petrarchan sonnet sequence filled with the familiar Petrarchan conventions of love and desire, Sidney actually is presenting a new perspective on love, one that is quite different from that of Petrarch, Wyatt, and many other earlier writers. Although many of the sequences are predictable in their course of recitation, Sidney still finds a way to infuse a force and energy into his writing that causes the reader, not only to be caught by the paradoxical verses but also to question the entire psychoanalytical process of love. Sidney effectively creates in his work an anatomy of love. He dissects, explores and analyses love in all its different facets and stages, laying bare to us the mechanism and ethology of love, essentially taking the reader on a tour of the lover's mind and the psychological voyage that it induces upon all those that it wounds with it's pointed arrow. More importantly, however, he shows us that the expression of love has no pattern, convention, or set model, and that to try and conventionalize love is impossible, because love follows no set course. He essentially uses the Petrarchan convention to deride not only that very same convention, but also to show that describing one's love through the words or conventions of others is not only ineffective, but fails to express true love at all. Like most Italianate sonnets, this one breaks down into two parts of eight and six lines, respectively. The turning point in line 9 is introduced by the adversative, "But...". The first eight lines set out the idea and the motivation, and describe the failed technique, in a classic (and rational) mode; the last six create a sense of increasing agitation, both through their use of subject matter and by metrical manipulation, until the final release in the end of the last line with a romantic (primarily emotional) advice. The meter is an unusual six-foot line (twelve syllables); there are a handful of other sonnets in this collection that fit this description. Two lines might be misread by modern readers as having thirteen syllables: "Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain." Here I believe the "y" of "studying" needs to be treated as a semivowel/glide -- thus making it a word of two syllables. "Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain": here, "showers" (sometimes written "shoures") needs to be considered a monosyllable. The rhyme scheme can be represented as: ABAB ABAB CDCD EE Sidney varies his rhyme schemes rather freely throughout Astrophil and Stella; here the monotony of the ABAB ABAB tends to reinforce the notion of the tedious but fruitless study. The rhyme scheme tends to pick up speed, leading to the acceleration of the climax. ‘’Daffodils’’ (or ‘’I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’’, by William Wordsworth). Comment the poem with the revolutionary ideas on poetry. "I wandered lonely as a cloud" takes place in the Lake District of Northern England. The area is famous for its hundreds of lakes, gorgeous expanses of springtime daffodils, and for being home to the "Lakeland Poets": William Wordsworth, or, for instance, Samuel Coleridge. • Wordsworth gives a simple and humble yellow flower such as a daffodil triggers in him a sublime vision carried out by the power of his imagination, personifies the daffodils as a happy humanity, this sublime vision is the vision that the poet has from his subjective experience when he is face with objects of physical grandeur such as a immense field of daffodils that transcends (goes beyond) his understanding of the nature of things and gives rise to an overpowering and overwhelming force of depth, mystery and might that triggers his imagination. He becomes part of nature himself as he identifies himself as a cloud that is lonely. There is a personification when nature becomes humanized. He is blessed in his solitude by the sublime vision he recreates in his imagination. • There is a new attitude of nature. Nature becomes a space where the poet meets himself, heals his soul, excites his imagination. 7 ■ Poetic Devices – Use of simile and metaphor ■ The Sea of Faith - comparison of faith to water making up an ocean. ■ Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled - use of like to compare the sea to a girdle (a piece of clothing to hold a woman’s waist in) The girdle symbolises a sense of protection, now the sea has withdrawn, the land and beaches are left unprotected. And naked shingles of the world ■ Religious Message ■ There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting. This faith protected and comforted people just as the sea protects and wraps itself around the islands and the continents. ■ However now the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. Science challenges theology and religion causing people to feel miserable, lonely and despairing. As a result people put their faith in material objects. The speaker and his remedy ■ The speaker again addresses his beloved as in stanza one and offers the only cure for this loss of faith Ah, love, let us be true / To one another! The only remaining solution is to true to those you love and have moral standards. ■ The speaker is being quite limited through this notion as he is openly seeking isolation from the world. He is rejecting the world and what it has to offer as a sham and a dreamland which can offer us nothing. To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Use of language techniques ■ The use of simile to compare the world like a land of dreams, ■ The use of Anaphora (repetition of so) So various, so beautiful, so new, ■ The use of Anaphora (repetition of nor) Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Final Message ■ Challenges to the long-standing moral and religious beliefs have shaken the faith of people in God and religion ■ Consequently the existence of God was in doubt. ■ Arnold who was deeply religious lamented the dying of the light of faith as shown in stanza one. National elements: vegetation, nostalgia for the past. ‘’SEA OF FAITH’’ -> important. ‘’To His Mistress Going to Bed’’ (by John Donne) Comment the metaphysical elements in this poem. One metaphysical characteristic is the use of puns and clever plays on words: ingenuity and wit was an important aspect of Donne's verse and he often uses this technique to create very rude jokes. To His Mistress Going to Bed is very inventive with language play, on the word "labor", "standing", "flesh upright" etc. In his poems John Donne used to use arresting openings: he was the master of the arresting opening and many poems open with a burst of emotion to gain the reader's (or addressee's) attention: Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy/ Until I labor, I in labor lie. In this time was important the discovering of new lands and it was also showed in compositions “O my America! my new-found-land,..”, the learning of Greek and Roman culture would have been an important part of the education of the day. In this poem he refers to Atlanta, for example. The Elizabethan/Jacobean age was the great age of drama and it is no surprise that this is reflected in Donne's work. The Blazon is a literary term used by the followers of Petrarch to describe verses which dwelt upon and detailed various parts of a woman's body - a sort of catalogue of her physical attributes. This is a form of conceit. Donne clearly used this form in To His Mistress Going to Bed, although he uses it in a slightly different way by dwelling on his mistress' clothes as she undresses. Feminist critics have often found themselves disagreeing with Donne's perspectives on women. In this poem the woman is presented in the language of colonialism as if she is to become the possession of the male coloniser; these colonial images that Donne uses indicate that Donne viewed women as a possession, something valuable to be conquered and enjoyed. A closer reading reveals tantalising complexities. Even in a state of desire, Donne's speaker reveals his capacity for wit: he refers to his excited state using puns on "labour" and "standing." As he anticipates going to bed with his mistress, he is like a soldier waiting for battle: "standing" refers both. ‘’Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’’ (by Thomas Gray). Describe the characteristics of the Neoclassical Poetry. 10 This poem by Thomas Gray is clearly identified as Neoclassical Poetry (Augustan Poetry). The title, which is ‘’ode’’ is referring to a classical characteristic, just like the odes in Greek and Latin times. But this time is a mock-ode (laugh at someone).This poem relates the story of a cat, called Selima, who is a personification of a woman, presented as a cat, as the Augustan Poetry points out, being abused of this kind of element. The main characteristics of this poetry were its sophistication, the imitation of the classics (not copying at all), the nesting of literary genres (hierarchy, as the cat who seems like an aristocratic woman), being the abuse of personification right here, mythological features, references to Greek and Latin cultures, order and reason in the universe, nature as a reflection of the order in the mind of God, ARISTROCRATIC TONE (elevated, sophisticated, etc) the fight between the rationalism and the scepticism (the here and now) more critical and analytical spirit and the aim to instruct through pleasure. They were only concerned on the HERE AND NOW, not about Greek and Latin issues-but following the styles of that time and the classical decorum. Analytical spirit got a moral, find some meaning of the poem, comes to the mind of the poem. ‘’Kubla Khan’’ (by Coleridge): Vision, Imagination and Poetry. Samuel T. Coleridge’s well known poem, “Kubla Khan” is a prime example of how important the imagination was the Romantic writers and to their work. The entire poem is based on a vision Coleridge had during an opium trance. After he awoke from his drugged state, he began to write down what he had seen. He was interrupted and forgot the vision before he could write all of it down. The poem is a reflection of the vision, and of his desire to remember the supposed two to three hundred lines of poetry he meant to write down. It is in the fifth and final stanza of the poem in which Coleridge changes his haunting and dreamlike tone to wistful longing and makes clear his intentions. For the Romantic writers, the imagination brought together the real and unreal, as part of the synthesis of thesis and antithesis, to create what cannot be seen. By writing down what he saw in his hallucination, Coleridge would have solidified the pleasure dome of ice caves. This would have created a physical, geographical location for us to experience in our own minds. Had he been able to remember the topographical details, he could have shared this “miraculous” place with us, his readers. COMPLETAR ALGO CON LA PREGUNTA DE COLERIDGE'S THEORY OF IMAGINATION. And all who heard should see theme there And all should cry: “Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair Weave a circle around him thrice And close your eyes in holy dread: For he on honeydew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise!” Coleridge’s drug use also appears in the poem. These lines can loosely interpreted as Coleridge’s vision would have been so great and strange that people might have seen him as a wizard or a person of dark magic. They also might have thought he was crazy, not unlike many people think that Lewis Carroll, another opium addict, was crazy, too. This comes from the mention of weaving of a circle around him and the flashing eyes and floating hair. The implication of drug use might come from “For on honeydew he hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise!” Paradise could mean the “high” from the opium. With this poem Coleridge shows the fact that If we can share all of what our imagination has to offer with society, society can benefit. It can expose the world to another alternate universe where chaos is order and order does not exist, nothing is what we expect. -“The Windhover” and Gerard Manely Hopkins’ poetic innovations. "The Windhover" is a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). Hopkins dedicated the poem "to Christ our Lord". 11 The name of “Windhover” refers to the bird's ability to hover in midair while hunting prey. In the poem, the narrator admires the bird as it hovers in the air, suggesting that it controls the wind as a man may control a horse. The bird then suddenly swoops downwards and "[rebuffs] the big wind". The bird can be viewed as a metaphor for Christ or of divine epiphany. Gerard Manley Hopkins is now regarded as one of poetry’s great innovators, using Welsh and Anglo-Saxon traditions to create poems, crammed full of repetition and alliteration. The result is poetry bursting with dynamic energy. The confusing grammatical structures and sentence order in this sonnet contribute to its difficulty, but they also represent a masterful use of language. Hopkins blends and confuses adjectives, verbs, and subjects in order to echo his theme of smooth merging: the bird’s perfect immersion in the air, and the fact that his self and his action are inseparable. Note, too, how important the “-ing” ending is to the poem’s rhyme scheme; it occurs in verbs, adjectives, and nouns, linking the different parts of the sentences together in an intense unity. A great number of verbs are packed into a short space of lines, as Hopkins tries to nail down with as much descriptive precision as possible the exact character of the bird’s motion. “The Windhover” is written in “sprung rhythm,” a meter in which the number of accents in a line is counted but the number of syllables does not matter. This technique allows Hopkins to vary the speed of his lines so as to capture the bird’s pausing and racing. Listen to the hovering rhythm of “the rolling level underneath him steady air,” and the arched brightness of “and striding high there.” The poem slows abruptly at the end, pausing in awe to reflect on Christ. As a result of this sprung rhythm, many of these short lyrics exhibit a tension between the energy and force of the rhythm and the restriction of the form. Many of the best of these lyrics express Hopkins's ecstatic joy in the beauty of nature. His works revealed his constant effort to discern and reproduce the particular characteristics of a beautiful object or experience that distinguish it from any other. Hopkins called this individuality or "inscape" and designated the experience of perceiving inscape and thereby being joined more intimately with the object or experience as "instress." Hopkins extended his earlier, purely sensuous view of natural beauty to a sacramental view of nature as a material symbol of God's perfect spiritual beauty. The realization of natural beauty thus becomes a religious experience in which a perceiver is instressed with the inscape of a beautiful thing and thus instressed with God, the creator of that beauty. His most famous poem, "The Windhover,” records his realization of the inscape of Christ through the inscape of a hawk and poses his ecstatic joy in the beauty of both bird and Christ against his willing submission to the asceticism of routine religious duties. “The Lady of Shalott” (by Alfred Tennyson). Comment the poem. You should pay attention to its parts, stanzaic form (rhythm and rhyme), spatial division, Lady and Lancelot, supernatural elements, explanation of the conclusion, etc. Tennyson breaks up the lines in this poem. The most basic division in the poem is the four big chunks (Parts 1-4). It might help to think of these like acts in a play – they each focus on a different part of the plot. Part 1 describes the landscape around Shalott. Part 2 describes the Lady and the things she sees in her mirror. Part 3 deals with the appearance of Lancelot and how cool he is. Part 4 covers the Lady's boat ride and her death. The first four stanzas describe a pastoral setting. The Lady of Shalott lives in an island castle in a river which flows to Camelot, but little is known about her by the local farmers. Stanzas five to eight describe the lady's life. She suffers from a mysterious curse, and must continually weave images on her loom without ever looking directly out at the world. Instead, she looks into a mirror which reflects the busy road and the people of Camelot which pass by her island. The reflected images are described as "shadows of the world," a metaphor that makes clear that they are a poor substitute for seeing directly. Stanzas nine to twelve describe "bold Sir Lancelot" as he rides by, and is seen by the lady. The remaining seven stanzas describe the effect on the lady of seeing Lancelot; she stops weaving and looks out of her window toward Camelot, bringing about the curse. She leaves her tower, finds a boat upon which she writes her name, and floats down the river to Camelot. She dies before arriving at the palace. Among the knights and ladies who see her is Lancelot, who thinks she is lovely. In this particular poem, Tennyson makes it easy on us, because the stanzas are always nine lines long. There are a total of nineteen stanzas in the whole poem. If we count up the stanzas, we can see that the Parts of the poem get longer as we go along. The first two parts have four stanzas each, Part 3 has five stanzas, and Part 4 has six stanzas. Tennyson made a big deal out of the rhyming lines in this poem, which are super-noticeable once you start to focus on them. Each stanza in this poem rhymes in exactly the same way. The mysterious curse on the Lady of Shalott is a big part of the plot. It rules her life and causes her death. This little thread of black magic helps give "The Lady of Shalott" its spooky, sad atmosphere, and also connects it to the medieval fantasy world of wizards and spells. 12