English Literature III D - Guidotti, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica English Literature III D - Guidotti e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! EXAM: 140 minuti entrambi i moduli Due fogli -> Uno domande, uno griglia risposte 30 domande in inglese (15 modulo 1, 15 modulo 2) -> mod. 1 conoscenza del play
 -> mod. 2 “Who wrote the following prose passage (part of the poem) How describe trochaic tetrameter?” Traducete seguente brano (può essere entrambi moduli)
 Saggio 1 italiano (solo se si vuole in inglese) -> non più di due facciate complessive -> scelta tra due domande -> es. “Enrico V un eroe glocal” “francesi VS inglesi” Saggio 2 inglese -> no more than 2 pages -> choose one of 2 questions -> es. “nature in Wordsworth and Keats”, mention and explain “I wander lonely.. nightingale..” 60% to pass Less than 50% you don’t pass GLOCAL 2 ISLE OF WONDERS 4 METRE 7 WILLIAM BLAKE 13 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 33 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 52 JOHN KEATS 63 ENGLISH LITERATURE - D We will be dealing with English Romantic poetry, with myth and the cultural value of this kind of myth-making, in particular its relevance for national identity. The national parts, the local, and also the global. We will study the relationship between cultural representation and
 national identity with original contents and English heritage. We’ll analyze the theoretical works of the following authors: Blake (pre-romantic) Wordsworth (first generation) Coleridge (first generation) Keats (second generation) Selected because of their iconic stages GLOCAL - It’s a combination of meanings, indicating that we focus on global views but with a local perspective - These concepts were not always prevalent, they emerged in the 1980s, and then became particularly widespread in the following decade, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 
 -> the dissolution of the soviet world virtually erased the barriers that prevented International exchanges - Initially mainly referred to the economics field - There was a rediscovery of local aspects, the value of diversity and specificity, the elements that define what it means to be autochthonous, grounded in a specific place. However, coming to the second millennium something changed. 
 A new phenomenon also emerged: homogenization, which lead to the globalization of consumption. And with that the development of some movements opposing globalization, such as the G8, a political forum bridging together wight of the most advanced countries. The oppositions were born as a form of “no-global” movements, totally opposed to globalization, at the beginning. But then they transformed into “new-global”, starting with the idea that globalization is not erasable, and it would be useless to fight it -> you can’t refuse it, but you can govern it and make it better Globalization was more than homogenization: it was more extended and cultural. Another important date is 9/11 2001 (twin towers) For British culture this transition is crucial (as well as romanticism) “Jerusalem” sang by the choir in England -> British second unofficial national anthem -> written by Blake, it contains the quote “And did those feet in ancient time” -> part of a book called “Milton” And did those feet in ancient time, 
 Walk upon England’s mountains green: 
 And was the holy Lamb of God,
 On England’s pleasant pastures seen! 
 And did the Countenance Divine, 
 Shine forth upon our clouded hills? 
 And was Jerusalem builded here, 
 Among these dark Satanic Mills? 
 Bring me my Bow of burning gold: 
 Bring me my Arrows of desire:
 Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: 
 Bring me my Chariot of fire! 
 I will not cease from Mental Fight,
 Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: 
 Till we have built Jerusalem,
 In England’s green & pleasant Land. Blake uses the idea of Christ coming to England to celebrate the nation but also to invite the reader (or the listener) to change, to improve the condition of the present, to restore the glorious past. And the past is condensed in these images: England’s green and pleasant land (which is actually the title of the first section of the ceremony). It’s an invitation to undertake sacrifice, to work hard in order to restore this green and pleasant land, which used to be England, and hopefully continues to be. Now England is something different, worse -> dark, satanic -> critical reference to industrial revolution (destruction of nature) 
 -> the actors are mimicking movements of workers in factories who run the industrial machines -> so the message is to “please work hard to restore the green and pleasant land that England has to be again” This contains something crucial for Blake: radical critical attitude towards the present, invitation to do something -> everybody can change a situation if only they want to This poem was rediscovered in 1916, in the middle of The Great War. This poem put into music, could encourage British people to accept the sacrifice needed during the war, because they loved England and they wanted to have a happier future. This piece of music became a hymn, sang in some churches of England (marriage of William and Kate), and it’s also a sort of unofficial national anthem, used also for english’s rugby. Blake starts from hymns and does something very interesting and modern in order to provide a critical stands towards that kind of setting and ideological positioning Caliban’s “Be not afeard” speech: (quotation fo one of Caliban’s speeches in The tempest, by Shakespeare) “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 
 Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
 Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices 
 That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
 Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, 
 The clouds methought would open and show riches 
 Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
 I cried to dream again”. -> noises of celestial creatures (Prospero is a magician) -> introduces the noises of industrial revolution, and the isle becomes the British Island Pandemonium: - Smoking chimneys - British soldiers and poppies 
 (a minute of silence in remembrance of the sacrifice and loss of life of both the World Wars) - War poetry - Women suffragettes’ movement - The Beatles - The Olympics rings 
 Questions in order to become a permanent British resident -> prove that you know everything about the British history British culture is music, literature, paintings, sculptures, theatre, film -> transgression of boundaries METRE Reference: The poetry Handbook by John Lennard Prosody: The science of versification; that part of the study of language which deals with the forms of metrical composition Why metre? 3 objectives: - Increase your sensitivity to the formal aspects of poetry - Heighten your pleasure in reading poetry - Understand PROSODY (how you read out verses) How does metre work? - Artistic framing (metered language is different from ordinary language and thus “framed” as an artistic artifice) - Departure from expected metrical norms 
 -> this creates an emotional effect or estrangement: prosodic tension (between perfect or ideal metrical pattern and actual rhythm) - Association or convention
 -> having been associated to a certain genre of poetry, a given meter may retain some of the meaning(s) associated to that poetry. What does metre do? - Induces hypnosis (meter in most accentual poetry is slightly faster than the normal heart beat, and this creates an exhilarating effect) - Focuses reader’s attention and refines awareness 
 In the moment of composition, one of the main concerns of the poet is the arrangement of metric pattern to achieve some kind of musicality What’s the basic foot? The basic foot is the most common one, the one which can be found in most lines. With Shakespeare the basic foot is the iambic pentameter (although there are variations). Double and Triple metre Feet with two beats (iamb and trochee)
 Feet with three beats (anapest and dactyls) Rising rhythm -> start with something unstressed and then you rise, you get to the stressed part -> lines made up of iambic and anapestic feet -> the basic pattern, not only in most English poetry, but also in most English speech Falling rhythm -> you start with something stressed and then you get to the unstressed part -> lines made up of trochees and dactyls Basic foot = iambic Most English poetry is in iambics, with common variations of metre (trochaic, spondaic, anapestic) accepted as normal. For this reason we should speak of a loose iambic (with variations) more than strict iambic (no variations) Impossible feet -> spondees and pyrrhics are never used as basic metres, because lines made from them would be ictus or all unstressed beats Substitute feet (they replace a regular foot) Distinguishing foot -> different from those normally used Inverted foot -> when the change has something to do with an inversion (before it was iambic, then it becomes trochee). Catalectic lines Lines missing one or more beats These missing unstressed beats are at the beginning or at the end of the line. Some lines are shorter than they should be, usually one or more beats are missing. Hypermetric lines Lines with an extra beat, they’re longer than they should be Example:
 The famous Hamlet’s monologue “to be or not to be, that is the question” -> after “be” there’s a caesura -> “that’s the question” -> something more -> “that is” -> inversion -> trochee (starts stressed, then unstressed) To BE, | or NOT | to BE, | THAT is | the QUES- | tion Hyperbeats: Feminine endings -> additional unstressed beat Masculine endings -> additional stressed beat ! Metrical pattern is like a music score: musicians have some kind of indications in the music score, they know it should be made quickly and emphasized, but every musician plays differently, such as poets. -> the actual reading may differ, and place emphasis on a different syllable to achieve specific rhetorical effects Line lengths You have to recognize the foot, and how many are there. -> the most common one is the pentameter -> trochaic trimeter or tetrameter: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one The Iambic pentameter is found in: 
 Blank verse -> is unrhymed, there’s no rhyming pattern
 Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit A Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste B Brought death into the world and all our woe C 
 (Milton, Paradise Lost) Heroic couplet -> regular and rhymed Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me; A And may our oaths well kept and prosperous be! A Free verse -> poetry in which the metre varies -> most 20th and 21st century poetry is in free verse Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
 Look upon a little child;
 Pity my simplicity,
 Suffer me to come to Thee. Fain I would be as Thou art;
 Give me Thine obedient heart;
 Thou art pitiful and kind,
 Let me have Thy loving mind. 1,2 -> trochaic tetrameter, the last syllable is missing Lamb of God, I look to Thee;
 Thou shalt my Example be;
 Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;
 Thou wast once a little child. -> catalectic trochaic trimeter Loving Jesus, gentle Lamb,
 In Thy gracious hands I am;
 Make me, Savior, what Thou art,
 Live Thyself within my heart. I shall then show forth Thy praise,
 Serve Thee all my happy days;
 Then the world shall always see
 Christ, the holy Child, in me. -> 5 stanzas with 4 lines each -> apodictic: something rhetorically clearly established, beyond dispute Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own s The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among 10 Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door Translation: Era un Giovedì Santo, lindi i volti innocenti A due a due i bambini in rosso blu e verde Dietro a scaccini grigi con mazze bianco neve Sciamarono in San Paolo come acque del Tamigi. Quanti pareva essere questi fiori di Londra! Per compagnie sedevano, in loro chiarità. C’era brusio di folla, folla però d’agnelli, Che alzavano a migliaia le manine innocenti. Or come un forte vento levano al cielo un canto, Ch’è fra i troni celesti un tuono di armonia. Sotto di loro i vecchi, dei poveri i custodi; Coltiva la pietà, non chiuder fuori l’angelo. SONGS OF EXPERIENCE: Holy Thursday There is a huge difference between innocence and experience The event is the same (same ceremony and same children), but there are a lot of questions that express criticism with no comforting answers. 
 This poem shows the terrible reality of the orphans’ lives. 
 The focus is on society, and all these questions expresses social and moral justice. Holy Thursday Is this a holy thing to see, 1 In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reducd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? 5 Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine. And their fields are bleak & bare. 10 And their ways are fill'd with thorns. It is eternal winter there. For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall: Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall. Translation: Santa cosa è il vedere In terra ricca e fertile Dei bambini in miseria, Sfamati da usurai? Quel fioco grido è un canto? Può esser mai di gioia? E quanti i bimbi poveri? Terra misera è questa! Per loro il sole è spento, I campi spogli e squallidi, Le strade tutte spine: Per loro è eterno inverno. Dovunque il sole splende, Dovunque pioggia cade, Nessun bimbo abbia fame, Né povertà sgomenti. 1st stanza: The poem contrasts the rich and fruitful land (which echoes the green and pleasant land we heard before) with the cold and usurious hand -> resources are abandoned, there are ones, but they’re not given to the poor, left without anything -> these children are reduced to misery -> this is a criticism addressed to the churches, charity schools, organizations, that should help poor children -> so in Blake’s vision charity is a form of oppression and discrimination: because there is no equal distribution of richness -> there is a reference to London as an infernal city with oppression and physical and mental limits By using irony and a critical tone, Blake asks us to go beyond what we find and to never passively accept, to start imagining and questioning. Songs of Innocence was published with the illuminated printing technique in 1789. In 1794 Blake republished this volume but he added Songs of Experience. They are called the two contrary of the human soul. Each of these two parts was made from 20-25 short poems, full of monosyllabic words, written in a language that is considered quite simple today. - Innocence is usually considered as quite synonymical as infancy, beginning of human’s life. 
 For Blake childhood (and innocence) was not just an age, it was more a state of being, a way of being, you’re innocent when you can look at life through the eyes of a child, and this condition of innocence can also last thought years. - So the child (who is often the subject of Blake’s poems) is a symbol of a specific condition: they’re still in contact to his Devine imagination. - When the child grows they know what sorrow and grief are (experience is something you acquire by suffering, but it’s not something you’d like to avoid, it’s necessary and indispensable). The two opposites are complementary and contrastive, and provide meaning to one another. -> God protects innocent creatures when human society doesn’t, it becomes oppressive and limits their freedom (this has becomes sort of a stereotypical vision) -> God created imagination and a beautiful world but it’s also the creation of terror (something that belongs to human history). The theologist Isaac Watts wanted to promote religious education to train preachers (people who were there to educate) and train pupils. Blake was against this type of education, where children are just raw materials to be molded by teachers, having no previous knowledge. 
 -> These teachings are setting the limits
 -> The prescriptions is a limitation of the individual freedom and we should avoid to ask children to learn by heart (because they’re not chronically interpreting, just remembering). Blake makes what looks easy become difficult He challenges every interpretation, because nothing is simple, nothings is given as a straightforward message. Isaac Watts, Heaven and Hell (Song X) There is beyond the sky
 A heaven full of joy and love; And holy children, when they die, Go to that world above. 2nd stanza -> changes the focus: not on nature but something abstract, spiritual considerations -> you find the answer immediately after the question raised in then first part -> the explanation found is not that clear and exhaustive: we have no apodictic description of the truth, we have words that are repeated, but with different meaning throughout the text, and they’re not always clear -> Blake is showing us that the word “Lamb” is polysemic, it means different things -> to understand what the Lamb means I must look in what cultural series? In christian imagination and Bible, in the language used by preachers -> in that language Blake tells us “be careful, the Lamb is used with different meaning, it is an animal, a symbol of Christ, of the innocence fo the child…” -> this is not simple and apodictic, it is plural, open -> it’s the Lamb of God because he was sacrificed -> it’s the symbol of its maker, God as well as the poet and the painter, the engraver -> the pronoun “I”? (line 17, “I is a child”) -> the poet is a child? Not necessarily: but he wants to share something that the child, the poet, the lamb and Christ possess: imagination, the power of freedom.
 Blake sees himself as a child because he looks at the world with the imagination of childhood, just like the Lamb. The child represents the power of imagination. -> it repeats the language, uses the same words and interpretational sets (christian), and the type of meter -> Blake really believes in the message of the Bible, he’s an orthodox christian believer, he makes his own system -> in his opinion the Bible is an invitation to freedom, imagination, transgression -> he doesn’t wanna be forced in a belief, he merges things which are different from one another -> there are distributed qualities, not only the Lamb means different things, everything partakes the qualities of the Lamb, it’s not easy to distinguish what you mean by Lamb and Child here (they’re similar for certain qualities). The meter of "The Lamb" is extremely regular: trochaic tetrameter LIttle LAMB ( ), II WHO made THEE? ( )
 trochee| incompl.trochee|| trochee| incompl.trochee DOST thou KNOW ( ) II WHO made thee? ( ) trochee| incompl.trochee|| trochee| incompl.trochee GAVE thee | LIFE & | BID thee | FEED, trochee| trochee|trochee| incompl. trochee BY the STREAM & O'ER the MEAD; trochee| trochee|trochee| incompl. trochee Song of experience: THE TYGER Main difference: in the Innocence book the mediation is clear, you understand what kind of mediation is implied, what kind of encyclopedia you have to refer to: the Bible. In the case of experience the mediation is hidden, I don’t know what to look for. The tiger is the symbol of what? Is hidden, is more difficult for me to find. But there’s something in common: the images The image is something new, because images were not used in catechism, they were considered misleading. In this case, instead, they are always present, but they’re different from the Bible’s images. These are invitations to imagination, they’re not easily explainable, they have naturalistic qualities. They’re crucial, but not explanatory at all. The fact that he made copper plates is usually interpreted as something fix. He provides fix poetry with no variations which is still the same -> this is false! He changes a lot the images while composing them, he rewrites, there are different spellings and different images -> the poet was as free to change his mind just as we’re free to interpret Rhyme: 6 stanzas of 4 lines: six quatrains in rhymed couplets. Tyger! Tyger! burning bright A 
 In the forests of the night, A
 What immortal hand or eye b
 Could frame thy fearful symmetry? b
 
 -> an imperfect rhyme: it looks like a rhyme but it’s not (that’s why the lower case) -> the rhythm is quite aggressive, like a hammering (an image present in the poem) 
 In what distant deeps or skies C 
 Burnt the fire of thine eyes? C
 On what wings dare he aspire? D
 What the hand dare sieze the fire? D
 
 And what shoulder, & what art, E 
 Could twist the sinews of thy heart? E 
 And when thy heart began to beat, F
 What dread hand? & what dread feet? F
 
 What the hammer? what the chain? G 
 In what furnace was thy brain? G
 What the anvil? what dread grasp H 
 Dare its deadly terrors clasp? H
 
 When the stars threw down their spears, I
 And water'd heaven with their tears, I
 Did he smile his work to see? L
 Did he who made the Lamb make thee? L Tyger! Tyger! burning bright A In the forests of the night, A What immortal hand or eye b Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? b Translation: Tigre! Tigre! Che ardi e splendi Nelle selve della notte, Che immortale ti foggiò La tremenda simmetria? In remoti abissi o cieli Arse il fuoco dei tuoi occhi? Su che ali osa volare? Quale mani afferra il fuoco? The concept and the idea that the industrial present, revolutionary present, is made by fragmentation, where the imaginative soul wants to reach the wholeness: the fragments are a way of limiting what should be unified. Tools of blacksmith: evoke the images of industrial revolution -> it is more evident in Innocence, but it is also present in Experience, where you find symbolisms referring to the industrial images. Regular and rhythmic THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a short book composed of 27 engraved plates. Some plates are filled with illustrations, while others are mainly text. Blake explores the relationship between good and evil, and how they are necessary for each other's existence. Blake challenges traditional ideas of morality and religion and presents a vision of a world where the human spirit is free from the limits of societal norms. Through a series of proverbs, aphorisms, and paradoxical statements, Blake argues that the marriage of opposites is necessary for spiritual growth and creativity. Blake urges individuals to embrace complexity, challenging societal norms, and find personal growth through the marriage of seemingly contradictory elements. Through imagery, symbolism, Blake explores the power of embracing contradiction to achieve harmony. These texts were written in imitation of biblical books of prophecy, but expressing the poet’s own personal romantic and revolutionary beliefs. We assume it was composed in London between 1790 and 1793, a period of political conflict arising immediately after the French Revolution. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is split into ten sections that can be seen as chapters: 1. ”The Argument” 2. "The Voice of the Devil” 3. "A Memorable Fancy" (1) 4. "Proverbs of Hell” 5. "A Memorable Fancy" (2) 6. "A Memorable Fancy" (3) 7. "A Memorable Fancy" (4) 8. "A Memorable Fancy" (5) 9. "A Song of Liberty” 10. "Chorus" The book is about the first person narrator’s visit to Hell, a concept taken by Blake from Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.  However, Blake’s conception of hell strongly differs from the one of Milton and Dante: Hell is not seen as a place of punishment, but as a source of unrepressed feelings and creative energy. 
 Therefore, hell stands in opposition to the regulated and authoritarian perception of heaven. A MEMORABLE FANCY: He witness a dialogue between an angel and a devil: - The angel is saying that Jesus Christ preached the ten commandments, and those who don’t follow them are “fools, sinners and nothings”. - The devil speaks of God and Jesus Christ in very corrosive terms: he says that “no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules”, and he himself broke the ten commandments. - The angel then “embraces the flame of fire and arose as Elijah”
 -> he became a Devil, and the narrator and him often “read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense”
 -> he has finally learned to empower his imagination, to restore his imagination to the original power it used to have. What Blake means it that the Bible can be read in an imaginative way, not literally. If you use your freedom, and you think freedom is the highest quality men has been given, you can read these words as something open and prolific. He introduces “The Bible of Hell”: it’s the same Bible read in a different “diabolic” way. He makes an invitation to read holy books in a faithful and unfaithful way at the same time, to transpose the border, leave the questions open (as in The Tyger), being free to interpret and go over limitations imposed by society, institutions and conventionality. 
 This is the manifest of Blake’s poetry. 
 The opposites are not mutually exclusive, opposites are matched, they live together side by side, they have a dialogue, they can also have children (hybrid born from the contamination). And here the marriage is shown through the dialogue.
 There’s this idea of contraries that not only coexist but interact with each other, creating a progression. This kind of argumentation is dialectical. In Isaac Watts’s Heaven and Hell (song X), there is a hell to avoid and a heaven that’s perfection.
 In Blake heaven and hell are married and cannot be conceived as separates, they’re a combination, an oxymora (they’re not opposites if you marry them through imagination). ABOUT ILLUMINATED PRINTING:
 Men see the world as finite and corrupt, while it is infinite. “the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up” PLATE 3 “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.” PROVERBS OF HELL (plate 9): - The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion. - Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. - He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you. - As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers. - The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. - Expect poison from the standing water. - You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Proverbs are sentences providing rules and suggestion in a synthetical way, linked to a common experience. Every proverb conveys a rule which is linked to common experience. - The language is effective and poetical. It tells you what to do or what you shouldn’t do. It is similar to catechism. 
 The speaker's art is thus born from a creative interplay between himself and a spirit whose nature determines what he makes. Since the spirit who visits him is an innocent child, of course he ends up writing Songs of Innocence. First stanza - Encounter with the child (sitting on a cloud, symbolically representing heaven) - We have an ambiguity from the very beginning, because the first word “piping” refers to the act of playing a pipe (piffero), but we don’t know who’s the subject: it’s unclear wether it’s the speaker or the child who plays.
 -> the poem thus begins with a sense that the speaker and the child might equally be part of the song-making. Second stanza - Invitation made by the child to the poet to pipe a song. 
 Repetition of the same words. - This very simple stanza discusses the different moments of the making of poetry (splitting the process – get inspiration, then writing). Fifth stanza - In the last stanza, we have an anaphora, a repetition of the same starting of verses (“and I”). We are given the idea of something that is not as it should be, something that has been spoiled. - Rural pen -> a reference to a textual genre. It refers to the pastoral, to the idea of a rural poetry, which is something very in line with the trends of the future romantic poetry.
 These different parts convey an idea of fatigue: it is not easy to write poetry. 
 The idea that everything is immediate and spontaneous is a myth of english romanticism.
 
 Just as the child, that demands to hear the same song over and over again, in order to write the poem, the poet has to use repetitions of words and sounds). - The swift repetition of “piping”, with their clean alliterative /p/ sounds, summons up the sound of piping: a lively procession of little notes - “Merry chear” / “happy chear”: emphasizing the joy they’re both experiencing - “Wept to hear” / “wept to hear with joy” / “joy to hear”: again, suggesting an experience transmitted and shared. 
 The poem works as a spare-bound, it looks regular but things are never the same: even the audience is different (at the beginning is one child, then it became a general public and in the end every child). 
 Setting: It’s set in an idealized landscape of green pastoral valleys. 
 Nature helps the poet in his writing process: the speaker works with nature to produce his poems. Poetry, here, springs up from the landscape, the speaker's art literally grows out of the valleys: “hollow reed, rustic pipe”.
 However, this relationship between artist and nature is also not totally innocent. In order to make pen and ink, the speaker has to kill a reed and “stain the water clear”: his art mars the natural world at the same time as it grows from its earth and water. The lamb is written with the capital L, presumably symbolizing Christ (even though everything is asking for interpretation) This poem is plural: it includes different things that are put together and become a combination. Song of Experience - Introduction Hear the voice of the Bard! 1 Who Present, Past, & Future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk'd among the ancient trees, 5 Calling the lapsed Soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might controll The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! 10 "O Earth, O Earth, return! "Arise from out the dewy grass; "Night is worn, "And the morn "Rises from the slumberous mass. 15 "Turn away no more; "Why wilt thou turn away? "The starry floor, "The wat'ry shore, "Is giv'n thee till the break of day." Translation: Ascolta la voce del Bardo! Lui vede Presente, Passato e Futuro; Coi suoi orecchi egli ha udito La Santa Parola Passare fra gli alberi antichi l’Anima persa chiamando, Nella guazza serale piangendo; La Santa Parola, che il polo stellato Dominare potrebbe, E la luce caduta, caduta riaccendere! Personification “O Terra, o Terra, ritorna! Risorgi dall’erba rorida; La notte è allo stremo, Ed il giorno oramai Dall’ottusa materia su balza. E non volgerti più, Perchè mai lo faresti? Il pavimento di stelle, La liquida spiaggia, A te sono dati finche non erompa il mattino”. Structure:
 4 stanzas of 5 lines (iambic tetrameter) - Consonant rhymes (bard - heard - word / soul - control - pole / return - worn - morn / more - floor - shore) - Imperfect rhymes
 -> the first line is a trochee (variation). - “Hear” it’s imperative and stressed, divergent from the following lines, so it becomes very relevant: it’s a direct convocation of the listener who is actively involved in this poetical message.
 Theme: “Introduction” from Songs of Experience is a complementary counterpart to the introduction in Songs of Innocence. 
 While the latter portrayed a lamb symbolizing innocence, the former presents a Bard symbolizing wisdom and experience. This poem sets the tone for the rest of the collection in its portrayal of a harsh and cruel world of social injustice, signaling a departure from the innocent vision of childhood in Songs of Innocence. In this opening poem, as in the other, we find a description of what making poetry means: the Bard’s vision symbolize the enlightening power of imagination.
 He is the only good interpret, the only one who understands the meaning of the holy word: which represents poetic inspiration, as well as a prophecy that alludes to a hopeful vision for the future. 
 In this way he creates a shared national identity that wasn’t defined only by the upper class. Dealing with emotions Once again we have the natural landscape, but also the emotional part of that, which has something to do with imagination. His poems are described by himself as emotion recollected in tranquility. These emotions have been experienced in the past, and after some time, in a state of tranquillity, when you’re no longer strike by that emotion, you try to restore it, trying to provide the same kind of emotion through poetry. There is a painful loss, when you feel the need to express the original emotion, because it’s impossible to achieve it. He’s spontaneous -> this doesn’t mean that he is a straightforward writer, that he doesn’t think. His writing is cleverly planned and thought. Emotion is dealt with progressively, in order to make it more effectively provided. Spontaneity is not doing that immediately and without pondering, but taking time. Spontaneous means truthful to the original emotion, it doesn’t mean unfiltered. The Ballad The traditional ballad is formal verse of narrative, and particularly narrative poetry set to music. It derives from medieval french dance. 
 The ballads were originally sang by menestrelli, they were widespread and they were rediscovered by the 20th century music by folk and heavy metal. 
 (But as a form of poetry, they were rediscovered before that). 
 -> Samuel Pepys and Robert Harley 
 -> Walter Scott and Robert Burns (Scotland)
 -> A more systematic work was done by an American scholar, who put the ballads all together in an anthology: Francis James Child. 
 - Features: • No fixed number of lines and stanzas • Quatrains • Mostly iambic trimeter/ tetrameter • No couplets • Form of dialogue • Supernatural theme and magical things The Unquiet Grave I’ts an example of a famous English ballad. It is iambic (unstressed followed by a stressed one). The first line is a tetrameter, while the second line is a trimeter. In this poem there are two protagonists: the first one is in a grave thinking of his love, a love that belongs to the past recovered through a nostalgic emotion. In this poem in particular we notice a dialogue because the man who is speaking, and the ghost of the woman: there is the supernatural element. PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS First written only by Wordsworth in 1800 Then the final refashioned edition came in 1802. This is considered the Manifesto of English romanticism and it answers to several questions, but it never does in an explicit way. -> What is a poet? What does the poet do? Who is his addressee? 1. What does the Preface represent?
 Wordsworth explains that the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published as a sort of experiment to test the public reception of poems that use “the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation”. 
 The experiment was successful, better than Wordsworth was expecting, and many were pleased with the poems. 2. What’s the object that he chose and the language used? The principal object proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to describe them in a language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination. - The subject should be common life, that is not just plain reality: everything must be presented through imagination, so it becomes extraordinary - Showing that even humble people have a nobility: it’s in humble and rustic life that the passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity - They convey their feelings in simple and unelaborated expressions 3. Who is the poet? We can speak of common people but the poet is not a common man, the addresser who write the message is an exceptional being. He’s a man speaking to men but he’s more than other men. He has a greater sensibility and enthusiasm and tenderness, he has greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul.
 -> he understands human nature, he’s able to grasp the core of human existence and use it in emotional writing, which is not a common quality of the language spoken by real people. In romantic poetry usually there is a common and real reader, who could be anyone, but also the ideal reader (who the poet is thinking of when writing, who’s closer to him and can feel the same as him). 4. What is poetry? Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
 The basic idea that we are provided is that the poet, thanks to his greater sensibility, is more sensible than the common people. Daffodils - I wander lonely as a cloud I wandered lonely as a Cloud
 That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,
 A host, of golden Daffodils;
 Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way,
 They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-
 A Poet could not but be gay
 In such a jocund company: I gazed---and gazed---but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft when on my couch I lie
 In vacant or in pensive mood,
 They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils. Translation:
 Vagavo solitario come una nuvola
 che fluttua in alto sopra valli e colline,
 quando vidi all’improvviso una moltitudine,
 un mare, di narcisi dorati;
 accanto al lago, sotto gli alberi,
 tremolanti e danzanti nella brezza. Ininterrotti come le stelle che splendono e luccicano lungo la Via Lattea,
 si dispiegavano in una linea infinita
 lungo le rive di una baia:
 con uno sguardo ne vidi diecimila,
 che muovevano la testa danzando briosi. Personification of the daffodils Comparison between daffodils and stars (celestial imagery to emphasize the abundance and endlessness of the daffodils) Comparison between daffodils and waves Emotion recollected in tranquillity Metaphor Simile 1. Strange fits of passion have I known Strange fits of passion have I known: And I will dare to tell,
 But in the lover's ear alone,
 What once to me befell. When she I loved looked every day Fresh as a rose in June,
 I to her cottage bent my way, Beneath an evening-moon. Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
 All over the wide lea;
 With quickening pace my horse drew nigh Those paths so dear to me. And now we reached the orchard-plot; And, as we climbed the hill,
 The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
 Came near, and nearer still. In one of those sweet dreams I slept, Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
 And all the while my eye I kept
 On the descending moon. My horse moved on; hoof after hoof He raised, and never stopped: When down behind the cottage roof, At once, the bright moon dropped. What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a Lover's head!
 "O mercy!" to myself I cried,
 "If Lucy should be dead!" Translation:
 Strani impeti di passione ho provato, Ed oserò dire, Ma solo all’orecchio di colui che ama, Ciò che una volta mi è successo. Quando colei che amavo sembrava ogni giorno Fresca come una rosa a Giugno, Io mi sono diretto verso la sua dimora, Una sera in cui la luna splendeva. Fissavo intensamente quella luna, Che illuminava la vasta prateria; Affrettando l’andatura il mio cavallo si è avvicinato A quei sentieri a me così cari. E poi siamo arrivati al frutteto; E, mentre salivamo su per la collina, La luna scendeva e si avvicinava sempre di più Alla casetta di Lucy. Ero in uno di quei dolci sogni, Che sono il più bel dono della Natura gentile! E in ogni istante ho fissato La luna che scendeva. Il mio cavallo avanzava; sollevava Uno zoccolo dopo l’altro, senza mai fermarsi: Quando ad un tratto la luna luminosa È scomparsa dietro il tetto della casa. Quali pensieri amorevoli ed ostinati Passeranno per la mente di colui che ama! “Oh, pietà!” ho gridato a me stesso, “Se Lucy dovesse essere morta!” Structure:
 ABAB CdCd EfEf GHGH IJIJ KLKL mNmN - Imperfect Rhymes: June - moon / lea - me / slide - cried - The basic foot is iambic trimeter/tetrameter with some variations (spondaic, anapestic) 
 Themes: 
 The poem begins with the description of the tranquillity of nature, and then it shifts the tone as the speaker has an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and fear. 
 The central theme revolves around the inexplicable and uncontrollable nature of human emotions. 
 The poet explores the contrast between the calm picturesque surroundings and the passionate emotions. There is a question in the end: it’s not sure whether Lucy’s dead or not.
 It is a frightening possibility, confirmed by the poem, not directly and rationally, but speaking through the imagination. 
 He doesn’t mention death as a reality, he is making an hypothesis: “If Lucy should be dead”. Imagery: - We have here in this case two opposite images of movements: the dropping moon and the desperate trial to reach the cottage before the moon drops.
 And just when the poet is almost there, at one the bright moon dropped. - This is a way of expressing the death of Lucy through the eclipsed mood, through symbols and metaphors. - There’s the alternation of images of movement and lack of movement. 
 -> the lack of movement refers to the poet (first line of the 3rd stanza)
 A lover does not change his mind, his love is constant and there to last. 
 BUT this is an impossible desire: the changing moon is something distant and remote, just as the cottage is far away. 
 
 The symbolical representation helps awaken the readers’ emotion, make it possible for them to share the original emotion of the poet.
 - Here the ideal reader is described in the first stanza, where you find the poetical ego who wants to express his fits of passion but doesn’t want to tell everybody. - He chooses his perfect addressee: a lover, someone who is sympathetic, similar to the poet, that can understand his torment and fear of losing his beloved one.
 2. She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways She dwelt among the untrodden ways
 Beside the springs of Dove,
 A maid whom there were none to praise
 And very few to love:
 
 A violet by a mossy tone
 Half hidden from the eye!
 -Fair as a star, when only one
 Is shining in the sky.
 
 
 Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
 The bowers where Lucy played;
 And thine too is the last green field
 That Lucy's eyes surveyed. 15 Translation: Viaggiavo tra uomini sconosciuti In terre oltre il mare; Né, Inghilterra! sapevo fino ad allora Che amore portavo a te. È passato, quel malinconico sogno! Né lascerò la tua sponda Una seconda volta; perché ancora mi sembra Di amarti piú e piú. Fra le tue montagne sentii La gioia del mio desiderio; E colei (che) amavo girava il suo filatoio Accanto ad un fuoco inglese Structure: - Quatrains, same kind of rhymes (AbAb CDCD EFEF ghgh) - The meter in the first line is an anapest (variation), the other lines have a basic foot, iambic trimeter/ tetrameter. Themes and imagery: - The love in this case is the love for England (national poetry).
 But the reason of the love for England is that it is the home country of Lucy. 
 This is another way of concealing, and also of substituting. 
 Instead of speaking of his love for Lucy, the poet speaks of the love for England, the container, the place where she was (synecdoche). 
 - He uses anapest verse in the first line, while speaking of traveling, of moving through space, because the sound suggests the image of a long journey, of the fatigue and the uneasy. 
 In this case we have dynamism, because the poet is moving while she’s in her grave. They both live in the untrodden, in the unknown, but the difference is made by the movements.
 He and her are no longer in the same place, he travelled (past movement) in order to survive, to differ from the deadly stillness. 
 He tries to go elsewhere, but while he’s away he feels his deep connection to the place and to the woman who was there (extraordinary love for a place and for a woman): the two objects of his love become the same, they are equal. 
 The declaration of love is acted through a negative form.
 - In line 14 we find concealing balanced by shown.
 -> use your memory to transform things into something different. England is not lovely, but it becomes lovely because memory does this, it creates association that goes beyond immediacy. 
 - Substitution is the recollection, you cannot just have the original emotion, you have to find something which stands for the original. 
 -> the original feeling is unspeakable. He now finds a way through metonymical substitution: England is connected to Lucy as her birth country. Since through a specific mechanism, enthymeme, which means to anticipate conclusion, then state the premise. 
 - Each one of these poems is more distant from the previous one, the tranquillity is more effective, and in each and every stage, you try to recollect it through a new piece of poetry. 
 The main difference is that we have a reticence in the previous one, while in this poem we have several themes that are repeated. First of all, the image of traveling is a removal, a way of taking the distance. 
 The main similarity is that in both poems we find images of concealment, (here are explicitly mentioned in the first line of the last stanza). Alexander Pope - Famoso per la sua traduzione di Omero, e all’interno di essa afferma di ammirarlo per il suo modo di scrivere: lo traduce infatti attraverso un linguaggio molto artificioso. - Pope was famous for his long works, that took several years to be composed. “The rape of the lock” was one of his poem: the tone is heroic, as it was speaking of something epical, but it is a mockery because the incident is trivial. Belinda is the protagonist, a young man falls in love with her and wants to possess her, but she rejects him. Then he cuts and steals one of her locks (=ricciolo). It turns into an epical poetry, too noble for the meter: that is the mockery. 
 Poetic diction Poetry has a different diction, a diction of his own, different from everyday speech. A poem must have an aesthetic experience, different from that of daily reality because of the language: meant for a specific audience, who was supposed to be able to be entertained by the harmony of the language itself, elaborated and difficult. 4. Three years she grew Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own. "Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The Girl, in rock and plain In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. "She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And her's shall be the breathing balm, And her's the silence and the calm Of mute insensate things. "The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the Storm Grace that shall mold the Maiden's form By silent sympathy. "The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. "And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy dell." Thus Nature spake---The work was done--- Traduzione: Un sonno profondo sigillo il mio spirito Non avevo paure umane Ella sembrar insensibile Il tocco degli anni terreni Ora non ha movimento ne forza Non sente e nemmeno vede Avvolta nel corso del diurno avvicendarsi della terra Con le rocce e pietre e alberi Structure: - Quite regular - Iambic trimeter/tetrameter (like ballads) - 2 stanzas of four lines (quatrains) Themes: It’s very short but very impressive. All these poems were a path that lead to say little but mean a lot, utter your feelings by saying something else. 
 This is a combination of emotion recollected in tranquillity. It almost looks like a ballad for what it says. The poet speaks of a slumber: he was caught in a happy dream, not entirely aware of the reality, but then he woke up and expressed a statement. We are in a new stage in the poet’s development, because here he freely speaks of himself (“my spirit”).
 He criticizes himself, his past wrong ideas and behaviors: when he wasn’t afraid of losing Lucy. 
 The contrast between the past and the present is visible in the first and second stanzas. - The past was marked by the poet’s unawareness. He wasn’t aware that Lucy was going to die. He thought that Lucy’s insensitivity (the fact that she couldn’t feel physically, not emotionally) was a positive thing, but that was just because he was caught up in a dream: Love to him is the happy dream. - Then he wakes up, and the present brings us into a negative point of view: Lucy’s insensitivity is now deadly. She has no motion, no force, she doesn’t see or hear, and the poet suddenly realizes that.
 -> rocks, stones, trees: images of stillness and insensitivity.
 She’s now still, even though Nature keeps moving and renewing into new things. - As always, we can go back to our feelings through memory and Nature, because its motion will keep going on. 
 What is dead will be reborn in other forms, which are no longer Lucy, but nature will still be going on. 
 It’s a cosmic mystery, but no explanation is provided: it’s the end of Lucy, but not the world.
 Ultimately we have an idea of motion. - There is a negative structure, with the presence of “no”, 
 -> no motion, no force v.5 
 (Even if the situations presented in the two stanzas are completely different, this repetition makes them similar, verbally speaking). - In the last stanza we have a connection with the previous poem: how is nature described? 
 -> “rolled round”: alliteration 
 It’s an enveloping nature, an elementary force, a cycle that takes possession of each and every living creature and transforms them into material to be molded, that becomes part of nature itself. 
 -> That is it did with Lucy: she became part of nature, overwhelmed by it. 
 Nature turned her into someone who’s passive, and then inanimate.
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) In 1817 he wrote a biographical essay, where he speaks of his friend Wordsworth as the “mister” with whom he collaborated on the Lyrical Ballads. It’s said they were friends, but there were problems between them that started from the composition of the Lyrical Ballads: each of them had different tasks, however, in the second edition, the most prolific author was Wordsworth. 
 In the Lyrical Ballads we find 24 poems in volume 1, and 38 in volume 2, so globally they are 62 poems. Only 5 were written by Coleridge. Biografia Literaria, Chapter 14 He talks about the Lyrical Ballads, and the process of writing with Wordsworth. At the beginning they both had a common aim: -> “exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature” -> “the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination”
 Both believed in the common aim of being truthful, speak of something real, true and relevant for the common reader, but also using imagination to make it new and provide a new version of that reality But then, they decided to do different things: - Wordsworth speaks of his life and his opinions. For him, subject has to be chosen in ordinary and humble life. He uses imagination, but the subject always remains daily life and people, conveyed through a simple language. - The first key term for Coleridge is the supernatural: 
 Coleridge treats situations, characters and events which has to be, at least partly, supernatural. For him, nature is full of mysteries, and it cannot be explained through science. - The second keyword referred to Coleridge is the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. 
 While treating supernatural things, Coleridge had to present them in a plausible way so that the reader would willingly decide to accept them as true and plausible and they could excite the same kind of feeling. As a reader, if you want to share this poetic experience, then it’s your own choice to accept this poem (an illusion) as something true -> you must suspend your disbelief. As mentioned, the two poets had different views, but there was also a sort of envy on Coleridge’s part because the choices made by Wordsworth were very successful, he had many admirers.
 This extraordinary popular book, the Lyrical Ballads, was yes heterogeneous, but with a predominance of Wordsworth and with a definition of poetry in the preface written by him, that didn’t correspond to Coleridge’s ideals. 
 He in fact, later on, criticizes some of the views found in the preface. - According to the critics made by Coleridge, Wordsworth didn’t care much about his readers, they just had to share common grounds and sensibility. THEMES Main themes are: - The narration can be interpreted as a voyage from sin to redemption - The power of imagination - The importance of loving and respecting God’s creatures However, there is the absence of a conclusion, so the moral can only be guessed. It has an eery and mysterious atmosphere, that reflects the events. It’s a story that describes a crime committed by its protagonist, the mariner. It is the killing of an Albatross and there is a punishment. The mariner and his crew meet a ghost ship and he is sentenced to travel forever from one place to the other and tell his story. Before we find an epigraph, taken by an English theologian’s text, Thomas Burnet, who was very famous because he wrote a cosmogony, similar to mythology. It shares Coleridge’s idea of a cosmic life, which can be approached not only through reason, the idea that there’s a broader approach to life. 
 “Io credo senz’altro che nell’universo gli enti invisibili siano più numerosi di quelli visibili. Ma chi potrà enumerare i componenti di così vasta famiglia, i gradi di parentela, le differenze e le funzioni? Come agiscono? Dove risiedono? La mente umana ha sempre cercato le risposte a tali quesiti senza però trovarle. Tuttavia, non lo nego, è bello di quando in quando contemplare dentro di noi, come in un quadro, l’immagine di un mondo più grande e migliore, perché il nostro pensiero, abituato alle vicende di ogni giorno, non si restringa a piccoli fatti e non si abbassi in considerazioni di poco conto. Frattanto però dobbiamo badare alla verità per distinguere sistematicamente il certo dall’incerto, il giorno dalla notte.” In this poem as well, Coleridge wants to focus on this unknown and supernatural reality. PART 1 Summary: A mariner stops a wedding guest to tell him his terrible story, holding him spellbound with his hypnotic gaze and his powerful storytelling ability. 
 The story that he tells is full of mysterious element, symbols that need to be deciphered. The mariner talks about his experiences at sea, describing how his ship, going south, encountered a storm, followed by mist, fog and snow. There was a complete lack of life, but also a sense of the sublime due to the icebergs and glaciers they pass: the only noise was the cracking of the ice. This silence is broken by an Albatross, that the crew feeds everyday, believing him to be a sign of good luck. It start to accompany the navigation, and when the wind allows them to head north again, they attribute it to the Albatross. The mariner then shares his tragic mistake and sin: with his cross-bow he shot the Albatross. Symbols: - The guest that has to go to the wedding symbolizes the “mundane” trying to assert itself over the sublimity of nature, but fails. - The Albatross that appears in a lifeless land, it’s seen as both natural and supernatural: connection with God and the natural world. - The unexplained killing represents a crime against God, but it could also represent another attempt to assert the mundane over the sublime. PART 2 Summary: At first, everyone blames the mariner for his action, but when the mist begins to fade, the sailors attribute it to the Albatross’s death, and they justify the killing, for a moment. Then suddenly, the wind dies down and the sea becomes extremely calm. All the sailor become stranded in the ocean without water (ironically surrounded with water the cannot drink)
 -> Coleridge’s annotation here says “the Albatross starts to be avenged” There also are strange creatures crawling on the surface of the sea, symbolizing a supernatural being that is following them and plaguing the ship.
 All the sailors keep blaming and throwing guilt on the Mariner, deciding to hand the dead body of the Albatross around his neck, instead of a cross. Symbols: - The sailors keep changing their minds about the killing of the Albatross, thinking that humans can control nature with their interpretation: this also represents a sin for which they pay.
 Also, the poem expresses this difficulty of interpreting, understanding, going beyond the surface. This difficulty becomes insurmountable after the killing of the Albatross. - Their thirst, while being surrounded by water, is the first form of torture for the bird’s death - The creatures could still be seen as beautiful, because they’re God’s creation as well, but the Mariner hasn’t come to that realization yet. - The Albatross’s body hung on the Mariner’s neck represents Christ in an explicit way, as well as the mariner’s sin’s atonement (espirazione).
 -> his curse is the obligation to repeat the story until he finds the meaning. PART 3 Summary: With a visceral sacrifice (biting his own arm and sucking his blood) the Mariner alerts the sailor of a ship approaching. 
 The joy of thinking they can be saved turns into horror: they see a ghostly vessel with two allegorical figures representing Life and Death who are playing dice. -> Supernatural element. Life-in-Death has won the soul of the Mariner, and then one by one the sailors drop down dead, with their souls flying by the Mariner like shots from his cross-bow. He alone is left alive to face whatever penance is demanded for him Symbols: - Part of the Mariner’s punishment is the fierce desire to speak and the denial to do so. In order to communicate again, the Mariner must drink his own blood: this detail has a Christian allegorical meaning. - The ship approaching gives hope and then immediately crushes it: it also makes the sun go away, symbolizing the Mariner’s punishment transferring into the supernatural realm - With the characters of Death and Life-in-Death, Coleridge distances himself from the Christian tradition, moving into the supernatural.
 - Danse macabre -> Iconographic theme, skeletons together with men, symbol of death making people equal. Even if in their lives people used to be different and represented different social categories, after their death all humans are equal (the humble = the powerful) sort of a memento mori PART 4
 Summary: The Wedding Guest interrupts the story, afraid that the Mariner too is dead, due to his spectral appearance, but he reassures him that he remained the only one alive. Solitude, in fact, becomes a terrible part of the penance he must pay. He feels no pity from saints, and he’s terrified of the sea creatures and the deadly bodies that still stare at him with hatred. A week passes and he can’t sleep or die. 
 Then, he comes to his great realization: he finally appreciates the sea creatures in their beauty, praising and blessing their existence, and he finally feels the pity of saints. At this moment the Albatross slips off his neck and into the sea. Symbols: To contemporary scholars, the most extraordinary contribution of Coleridge was the symbolic part of his work. 
 When he tries to explain everything the taste of discovery gets lost, as well as all the different possible interpretations. FROST AT MIDNIGHT - 1798 Conversation poems “The above is perhaps not Poetry, but rather a sort of middle thing between Poetry and Oratory, ‘sermoni propiora’ . Some parts are, I am conscious, too tame even for animated prose” This last poem is described by Coleridge as a conversation poem, a completely different kind of poetry from what have been reading so far.
 An intimate and colloquial poetry, not very different from public and declamatory speech. The complexity of this work is quite remarkable, not only for its philosophical themes (knowledge, memory) but mostly because of its meta-poetic function. It’s a poem dealing with the function of poetic representation: poetry becomes the theme of the poem, even if it’s not explicitly discussed. Poetic process: - In the first stage of composition, a lyrical language expresses emotions, not in a linear way. - Then we have to work through iconic language and associations, so the image provided, the icon, becomes a semiotic instrument, a way of providing meaning, because it produces other icons and other meanings, through associations and polysemy (an image meaning more than one thing). - This association of ideas works through a mechanism we had already discussed with Blake: syncretism.
 That is the distribution of an analogy and the association between different icons
 -> With Blake syncretism was overcoming the distinctions imposed by society and rationalism.
 -> For Coleridge it means linking different semantic fields by overcoming their differences. In this poem in particular, memories of the past and the future all become one because of association. Setting: The poem is set on a frosty night in winter. The stillness and quiet of the winter night create a serene and contemplative atmosphere. 
 The frost serves as a symbol of nature’s transformative power and the potential for new beginnings. Coleridge reflects on the calming and inspirational aspects fo nature. The poem explores the idea that nature serves as a source of inspiration for the imagination, allowing the mind to wander freely into creative thoughts. Theme: - Coleridge uses first person to express personal thoughts and experiences. The poem is somewhat autobiographical, as Coleridge reflects on his own childhood experiences and expresses his hopes for his son, Hartley.
 The poet contemplates the impact of nature and solitude on the development of the individual, both in childhood and later in life. - He explores the idea that the imagination has the power to transcend physical and temporal boundaries. Though it, one can connect with past and future. “Spirit of the Universe” describes the universal interconnectedness. Structure:
 The basic foot is blank verse, iambic pentameter. It is the basic foot of English poetry, a poetry written in blank verse doesn’t sound artificial, but like a normal speech. It’s the rhythm of heartbeat. The poem is written a colloquial and introspective tone, le language is rich of imagery and sensory details, creating a sense of intimacy between the poet and the reader. Summary: The character represented here is the only person still awake in a cold winter night, around midnight. Only his infant child sleeps by his side in his cradle. The situation is marked by solitude, quiet, silence, it encourages meditation. You find in the 2nd line a reference to the owlet’s cry: reference to a noise, life. Then progressively every noise and movement is produced, up to the extreme silence in line 10. This absolute silence doesn’t erase reality, it’s still there: we find movement in line 12 and 13. But silence transforms the perception and interpretation of reality. The way our thoughts work is the way our dreams work: dreams interpret reality in a way which is not linear or rational, by creating associations. When everything is silent the poetic world starts reproducing itself with a mechanisms similar to that of dreams: iconic association. This working of thought is also helped by memory, which hostess this continuous shift from one world to the other. The poem starts from the description of present situation, but then moves quite freely though iconic associations and it shows a different way of thinking. v. 15 “Film”: residuo della combustione, fuliggine 
 According to an ancient tradition, when the fireplace leaves this film, then moved by the wind, it can be considered as an omen, a presage: it’s the foreshadowing of the arrival of an unexpected guest.
 -> then referred to as “stranger” in line 26 Message of this poem? Nature will be a universal teacher to him. This is not a rational discussion, it’s not a story to summarize, there’s not a thread of thoughts. What’s relevant here is not what’s been discussed, what the poet thinks, but how he is thinking, how this poetry is made. The problem is how to finish, to put to an end this iconic association, because it could go on for ever and ever. The solution is making it circular, by going back to the beginning. So in the end you find once again the same kind of words that you find in the first line, with variations. In the beginning there was this absolute silence, something was lacking. In the end instead, we have the presence of light (not something that can be heard but something that can bee seen) because everything is enlightened by the moon at the end. From one image something is transmitted to the other, a quality, an emotion. Each icon creates the following one, and each icon depends on the previous one. There’s a transmission of light just like in the poem’s there’s a transmission of thought. It shows very well the kind of thinking that lies at the base of Coleridge’s poetry. precedes the coldness of winter (death). Autumn shares the quality and features of the two. - It can also be seen as a meditation on artistic creation, revolving around the importante of negative capability, urging artists to embrace uncertainty in their creative process. This openness allows for a more profound exploration of the sublime. Structure: Three 11-lined stanzas of alternating rhymed iambic pentameter (ABABCDEDCCE)
 its not blank verse because it rhymes. Tripartire structure that follows the changing of seasons Translation:
 Stagione di nebbie e succosa fertilità, tu, intima amica del sole al suo culmine, che con lui cospiri per far grevi e benedette d’uva, le viti appese alle gronde di paglia dei tetti, tu che fai piegare sotto le mele gli alberi muscosi del casolare, e colmi di maturità fino al torsolo ogni frutto; tu che gonfi la zucca e arrotondi con un dolce seme i gusci di nocciola e ancora fai sbocciare  fiori tardivi per le api, illudendole  che i giorni del caldo non finiranno mai perché l'estate ha colmato le loro celle appiccicose: Chi non ti ha mai vista, immersa nella tua ricchezza? Può trovarti, a volte, chi ti cerca, seduta senza pensieri sull’aia coi capelli sollevati dal vaglio del vento, o sprofondata nel sonno in un solco solo in parte mietuto, intontita dalle esalazioni dei papaveri, mentre il tuo falcetto risparmia il prossimo fascio di grano coi suoi fiori intrecciati. A volte, come una spigolatrice, tieni ferma la testa sotto un pesante fardello attraversando un torrente; O, vicina a un torchio da sidro, con uno sguardo paziente, sorvegli per ore lo stillicidio delle ultime gocce. E i canti di primavera? Dove sono? Non pensarci, tu, che una tua musica ce l'hai -  Nubi striate fioriscono il giorno che dolcemente muore, e toccano con rosea tinta le pianure di stoppia: allora i moscerini in coro lamentoso, in alto sollevati dal vento lieve, o giù lasciati cadere, piangono tra i salici del fiume,  e agnelli già adulti belano forte dal confine delle colline, le cavallette cantano, e con un tenue acuto il pettirosso fischia dal chiuso del suo giardino: si raccolgono le rondini, trillano nei cieli. First stanza: 
 Is autumn the subject of this poem? Is he the address? We don’t know. The whole poem is an apostrophe to autumn, and here its contradictory nature is described. We find negative and positive connotations together: images of fatigue counteracted by richness and prosperity. - We have the mist, something that makes autumn mellow, but prevents you from seeing, - We have the season’s abundant fruitfulness, which means that autumn has reached its peak. - Also the animal kingdom, an idea of movement. So this idea of a season made of different and contrasting things, there is a sort of balancing between opposite qualities. There are also two stylistic trends that go along with this contrasting features. The first one is typical of classical rhetoric, a reference to something concrete, very detailed. This classical aspect, this rediscovery of classicism is matched with a romantic sensitivity (obscurity, polysemy, semantic plurality). v. 2: Close bosom-friend -> inseparable nature of friendship between autumn and the sun Second stanza:
 It deals with the human kingdom, as we see Autumn being compared to a fertile female goddess. The movement present in the 1st stanza stops, and here we have a different representation of autumn -> we start to think about death We have image of stillness, the movement stops. The lack of movement represents the stopping of life, the image of someone sleeping and passing time, bringing us closer to the end. We understand that this is a seasons which embraces both life and death, vitality and deadly traits. The rhythm, for this reason, is slowing down. v. 16: sound asleep v. 21: cider-press (sounds like cypress, a tre representing aging)
 v. 22: last oozing hours by hours Third stanza:
 Here Keats refers to Autumn herself, implying that Autumn is mourning the loss of Spring, and considers herself less than her beautiful counterpart. v. 24: think not of them, thou hast thy music too’ -> Keats is explaining that Autumn is just as beautiful as spring is and perhaps even more so. 
 He shows her beauty by diving again into gorgeous imagery, describing the sun setting over the land, the insects that come out at night, the animals that were born in springtime and are now grown, and the birds that one can find in autumn. v. 25-26: Soft-dying day, rosy hue -> melancholy shows up again, he’s describing moments of day, life and season which mark the line, the border, between two different things: day and night, and this is the climax of the day as well as the beginning of the decay of light. Autumn represents the moment of perfection which precedes the decline. It’s full of ambiguity, it’s plural, made of contrasting qualities. The focus here is on the sense of hearing: multiple reference to music v. 22: Songs of spring -> positive music v. 27: Wailful choir -> sad, the opposite
 v. 27: mourn So we have joyful music as well as sad and the musical mourning. Music is a trait of union, linking together all beings, from the small up to the birds in the sky. From the microcosm to the opening of the skies. v. 33: skies
 -> Here we find a reference to the sky: an indefinite and open space, that also represents an open finale. We have the end and a new beginning at the same time. 
 The poet has disappeared and the poem is left open, it keeps expanding outside the page, beyond the reach of its own original maker. This idea of circularity, symbolically reminds us of perfection, brightness. ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE Written in 1819, the most prolific year, in which Keats wrote his most famous and beautiful works of art, just before dying. Somehow it’s also biographically. The nightingale is a bird (usignolo), and the biographical event is that they say that the bird had nested near to the poet’s house. The poem is part of a series of odes that Keats wrote in a burst of creative inspiration. Structure:
 Rhymed Iambic pentameter (lines 1-7, 9-10)
 With some shorter lines in iambic trimeter (line 8) Magiche finestre aperte sulle schiume
 Di mari pericolosi in incantate terre deserte. Deserte! Come una campana risuona questa parola
 Che da te mi riporta alla mia solitudine.
 Addio! L’immaginazione non può più illudermi,
 Come si dice sia solito fare questo folletto ingannatore.
 Addio, addio. Il tuo canto malinconico svanisce
 Oltre i prati vicini, oltre il fiume quieto,
 Al di là del colle – ed è sepolto adesso
 Tra i boschi della valle vicina.
 E’ stata una visione? o un sogno a occhi aperti?
 La musica è svanita: — son sveglio o dormo? FIRST STANZA The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; There’s the presence of classical references in Keats’ poetry, there are mentions to greek mithology Line 7 -> dryad 
 line 4 -> Lethe, the river that stands in the land of the death We are introduced to the nightingale, which is a real bird at the beginning, then it will become a symbol with different possible meanings. This transformation of something that’s real into something symbolic is developed through a contrast between the bird and the poet. 
 The bird is happy while the poet feels numb -> oxymoronic situation -> it’s a painful condition, but numbness is a sort of an anesthetic condition, where you don’t feel pain. In fact he says he’s happy for the bird, but this insistence on happiness is in sharp contrast with the pain of line 1. There are several things here referring to death, drowsy numbness, hemlock (veleno). So there’s closeness between the poet and the bird but also a sharp contrast. SECOND STANZA From the second stanza on, the stanzas will develop some meditation caused by the contemplation of the bird. Here the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, that would let him “leave the world unseen” and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale.  v. 13: Tasting of Flora (roman goddess of fertility) v. 15: Hippocrene: fountain All these images are abstract and based on synesthesia (putting together different senses) Then there’s a shift from the idea of drinking wine and forgetting, to the idea of drinking the water of poetical inspiration. Maybe it’s possible to escape from the sadness and limits of human condition through poetry, and by drinking that, getting closer to the nightingale as a symbol of happiness. THIRD STANZA Here he explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. v. 26: “Youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” 
 v. 29: “beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes” This description is a clear presentation of a universal condition. That’s the sad condition typical of mankind, not just the poet, Everybody in that sort of awareness aspire to a union with that symbolic bird, so poetry, art, is crucial for everybody, because it offers an escape from that condition. The bird as a singing bird, it can be interpreted as a metaphor of art. FOURTH STANZA In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, to escape the limitations of human condition, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him invisible wings (imagination). He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches.  From now on there’s a representation of a new condition: an escape highly desirable. It coincides not as hoped for, as expected, with a fullness, but with a loss, with something that’s lacking, in this stanza we see that something is lacking because we find a world that is the void of light. It presents a dark world tender is the night. v. 38: there is no light, something is lacking, there is not that fullness hoped for. v. 35: tender is the night -> Fitzgerald decided to make it the title of his book There’s the possibility to escape the limits, symbolically represented by this lack of light, this obscurity. He understands that it is impossible to reach a fullness through the identification with the bird, and yet he goes on declaring in a very passionate way his fondness, his hope, desire to find this fullness, this completeness, and at the same time his awareness that once you get closer to completeness then you’ll realize that something is lacking, that decay is there. So from now on the lyrical ego is progressively forced to take a distance from the bird. FIFTH STANZA In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see the flowers in the glade (radura), but can guess them in darkness: white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose. There’s a declaration of obscurity, and when you can’t see you have to rely on other senses. This stanza deals with the sense of smell. References to things that bring deadly connotation into this poem, such -> v. 42, incense, burnt in churches at funerals.
 v. 43: embalmed darkness -> rendere balsamico, imbalsamare References to both smell and death SIXTH STANZA In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pours its soul. If he were to die, the nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would “have ears in vain” and be no longer able to hear. He’s still surrounded by darkness, so he uses hearing. He expresses desire for death, that seems like a release from that painful condition. -> The nightingale is the bird that sings at night. Theres a famous scene in Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, when the two have slept together, and a skylark sings in the morning (I have to leave / no it’s a nightingale). In a few minutes it will be morning and everything will finish, so the bird marks the border between night and day, and what does it mean to die at midnight? It means to die after having fully lived the cycle of the day, having reached something similar to brightness in a moment of high excess. It’s like the rosy of the sunset in the Ode to autumn. Now everything is almost perfect, but I’m aware that even if I die now and I realize my dream, this is not the perfection, I’m missing something, and that’s what you find at the end of this stanza: the bird will go on singing, yet I will not be able to listen to it. This is a perfect representation of negative capability.