Poems Analysis (Romantic 19th Century and Victorian 19th Century), Sintesi del corso di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Poems Analysis (Romantic 19th Century and Victorian 19th Century) e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! ANALISI OPERE 1) Thomas Gray (1716-1771),  Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard o 33 stanzas o Heroic quatrains as stanzas. o Four lines with iambic pentameter constitute each stanza. o A pentameter consists of ten syllables o The first and the third lines rhyme at the ending o The second and the fourth line rhyme at the ending of each stanza o The rhyming scheme is abab, cdcd, efef o Figures of speech in the stanza that talks about ‘hidden gems’ and ‘desert flowers’ - Elegy => mourns the death of ordinary men (representative piece of literature for the genre of elegy) - The poem follows the conventions of an elegy => there is a pastoral setting (no pastoral characters) - The poem ends in the poet’s own epitaph -> he says that his life is full of sadness and depression. However, he feels proud of his knowledge -> incomparable - Omniscient speaker - Graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire - DEATH: The speaker contemplates the end of human life throughout the poem Inevitability of death that every individual has to face => death is an unavoidable and natural thing in everyone’s life. When one dies today, tomorrow, a stranger will see the person’s tombstone. Out of curiosity, he will ask about the person buried there to a villager. The villager will reply that he knew the man. He will also remark that he had stopped seeing the man one day, and then there was the tombstone. - ‘No one is perfect in this world.’ => asks the reader not to judge anyone in the graveyard. Each and every soul is different and takes rest for eternity in the graveyard. - Man’s efforts and his struggles to succeed in life comes to an end in death => death conquers man regardless of his successes and/or failures in his endeavors during his life. - It speaks of ordinary people, it is an elegy for poor villagers => the poet has written this poem in honoring them. The poem talks about death as an equalizer. Rich or poor should end in death. - Setting: the time is evening and every living being on earth is retiring for the night; the speaker is seen at the churchyard. Evening sounds: the church bell is ringing the shepherds and their cattle are returning home after the day’s work. the location is rural the atmosphere is subdued and melancholic -> darkness and silence fill the place except for the hooting of the owl, the buzz of the beetle, and the ringing of the bells. Regardless of all this gloom, the speaker stands in the middle of tombstones in the graveyard. And while there, he imagines the lives of the dead people who silently sleep there. 1 2) William Blake (1757-1827),  Songs of Innocence: Introduction o It is written in the form of lyric. o Five quatrains o Some following heroic stanza form o The rhyme scheme of the poem varies depending upon the stanza form. Stanzas 1 and 4 follow the “ABAB” pattern, while stanzas 2, 3, and 5 use an “ABCB” pattern - First poem in William Blake’s collection of poetry the ‘Songs of Innocence’ written in 1789. - Naive, childlike view of salvation -> most of the poems are addressed to children. In his simple perspective of life, the world is beautiful, and Jesus died for our sins. - This poem titled ‘Introduction’ sets the tone for the entire sequence. - The poet is projected as a visionary who is divinely inspired through angels. - Context of pastoral poems -> simple rural life. - Plot: the narrator is described as a piper. He is happily piping when he sees a child on a cloud. The child asks him to pipe a song about a lamb, when he does sing, the child weeps on hearing it. Again, the child asks the piper to sing and he sings the same song. But now the child cries with joy when he hears it. Further, the child tells the narrator to write a book before he disappears. Inspired by the child, the piper takes a reed to make a pen. With it, he writes happy songs for children to bring them joy. => the voice of the poems is written as that of a child and/or accessible to children. - Being the first of the series it serves as a preface and gives a brief overview to the ‘Song of Innocence.’ The poem is structured like a conversation between the child and the speaker who describes it to his audience. - Theme = poet’s inspiration for writing poetry -> the poem alludes to the poet’s simple perspective of life and his religious beliefs (Blake, as a young boy had visions of seeing angels in the trees, which returned throughout his life). - Setting: the speaker is “piping down the valleys” before seeing the child on the cloud. The poet using the “reed as a pen” denotes the rustic setting => an ideal, idyllic world of innocence and simplicity, before the industrial revolution which considered by many as a Fall of humankind. - Symbols: The ‘child’ on the cloud symbolizes the angels of God. ‘The lamb’ also refers to God, alluding to the innocence and the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ on the cross. The place ‘Valleys wild’ where the piper is singing the happy songs, symbolize the rural/rustic life, evoking a world of simplicity and innocence. ‘Stain’d the water clear’ refers to coloring of the water to make ink, but this could be seen as the way the poet’s view on the blood of Christ being stained by the sins of the people. - Idea of a simplistic life and religious belief. His dreams of angels play a major role in his poetry. - His compassion towards the poor children left to do odd jobs, who are the victims of society is the major concern of his poetry.  The Lamb o Two stanzas o Each with five rhymed couplets 2  The Sick Rose o Two stanza poem o Two sets of four lines, or quatrains o Rhyme scheme: ABCB DEFE. This very even pattern contributes to the overall tone of the text. It helps foster a feeling of dread, as if something is going terribly wrong. o Complicated metrical pattern that is most closely associated with anapaestic dimeter. o The other lines vary somewhat from this base form. The stresses, more often than not, shift places in the lines. - Symbols: The rose itself -> represent nature and fragility, but also has a deeper, more important meaning. The rose is also used as a symbol for female purity, and in this case, chastity. The worm, without which there would be no poem -> the reason for its sickness is the worm which is in the process of destroying the roses life. Both nature perspective but also a reader should really take into consideration the phallic nature of the worm and the way it enters into the roses “bed” and uses “his dark secret love.” The worm takes the roses virginity, therefore ruining her life. - It describes the loss of a woman’s virginity through the metaphor of a rose and invisible worm. - Plot: the poem begins with the speaker telling the rose that she is sick. This sickness is caused by the “invisible worm.” The phallic shaped worm comes to the rose at night in the middle of “the howling storm.” There is a real sense of danger and dread in these lines that only builds as the poem progresses and Blake makes use of enjambment. In the second stanza of ‘The Sick Rose’ the worm finds the rose’s bed. The rose is afflicted with the worm’s “dark secret love” and has its life destroyed. The worm, which clearly represents a phallus, kills the rose—the woman’s, virginity.  The Tyger o Six-stanzas with each stanza o 4-lines each o Rhythmic synchronization with a regular meter -> neat, regular structure with neat proportions. o Literary devices -> alliteration, enjambment, and allusion. The latter is one of the most important as Blake alludes to the major question at the heart of the poem, if God created the tiger, what kind of creator is he? Throughout the piece, by referring to the tiger’s fearsome nature, Blake is in turn referring to the darker sides of life itself. - ‘The Tyger’ gives no visible answers except offering more questions. - ‘Songs of Innocence’ and ‘Songs of Experience’ juxtapose opposing sides of human nature, comparing and contrasting innocence with corruption => ‘The Tyger’ is an extension of the same theme, representing two diverse perspectives of the human world. - Plot: ‘The Tyger’ in essence is a poem where the poet asks the tiger about its creator and his traits. Each stanza poses certain questions with a vague subject (Tyger) in consideration. The poem largely questions the existence of god and its metaphysical attributes referring to Tyger’s multiple corporeal characteristics as purely a work of art. The poet wonders how the creator would have felt after completing his creation. Is he also the creator of the lamb? - All living entities must reflect its creator in some mannerism in ‘The Tyger.’ 5 - Primary objective of the poem: contemplating God in the heavens above. In essence, the tiger is a beautifully enigmatic creature, yet lethal at the same time. This also reflects the nature of God as he contemplates that a God could be just as loving and just as lethal when needed be. - Religion is one of the primary themes of the poem. - God created the tiger as a dominant creature while the lamb is simply a weakling compared to the tiger. - On the whole, ‘The Tyger’ consists of unanswered questions, the poet leaves his readers pondering the will of the creator, his limitless power and awe of his creation, a three-fold subject. In conclusion, the poet ends his poem with perspectives of innocence and experience, both a subject of great interest to him.  London o Four-stanza poem o Sets of four lines, known as quatrains o Rhyme scheme of ABAB throughout o The third stanza of the poem is actually an acrostic, it spells out the word “HEAR” with each first letter of the first word in every line. o Metrical pattern known as iambic tetrameter. o Literary devices: caesura, metaphor, and enjambment. - Blake’s feelings toward the society in which he lived. - The speaker makes it very clear that he believes the government to have too much control and society to be too stringent. - Difficulties of life in London through the structure of a walk. - Plot: the speaker travels to the River Thames and looks around him. He takes note of the resigned faces of his fellow Londoners. The speaker also hears and feels the sorrow in the streets, this is the focus of the final three stanzas. There is a true pain in the hearts of men, women, and children. The most prominent of those suffering in London’s streets are the prostitutes. ‘London’ ends with a fantastical image of a carriage that shuttles love and death together around the city. - Themes: urban life, childhood, and corruption. The latter relates to both childhood and the broader nature of life in the city. It’s clear from the first lines of the poem that Blake has a widely negative view of what it’s like to live and work in London. He is surrounded by misery, mostly due to the way the adult world destroys the innocence of childhood. These children are in distress throughout their lives, forced to deal with the sins of their family members and the darkness of the urban streets. 3) William Wordsworth (1770-1850),  Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey o Both a dramatic monologue and a lyrical ballad. o Not clear rhyme scheme because he was addressing another person. This allows the poem to be read as one side of a conversation rather than a grand declaration. o Meter: iambic pentameter; five sets of beats per line. The first beat is unstressed, followed by one stressed. o Told from the perspective of the writer - The speaker is not alone as he describes the world around him, but his is the only voice that the reader will hear. 6 - The power of Nature to guide one’s life and morality - Plot: The poem begins with the speaker, Wordsworth himself, having returned to a spot on the banks of the river Wye that he has not seen for five long years. This place is very dear to him and is just as beautiful and mystical as it was when he left. The “beauteous forms’ of the landscape have not been lost from his mind though. They have stayed with him through his absence and supported him. Whenever there was a moment he felt trapped in the modern world or dragged down by “dreary” life he would cast his mind back to this specific spot. It is here he finds solace. - Landscape: due to its beauty and the importance that it holds in the speaker’s mind, it has allowed him to disregard his own body. He finds greater value in the soul and the “deep power of joy” that can be found in all things. - He was acting as a man escaping from something he dreaded, not relishing something he loves. - Nature is more important than the base satisfaction it can provide. He feels within it a “presence” which will now support him for all time to come. This “presence” is the unity of all things. - In the final stanza of the poem, it becomes clear that this entire time the poet was speaking to his sister, Dorothy. - He has been attempting to explain to her why he is the way he is. He hopes that she will share in his joy and give her heart over to Nature as he has. - He will remember this moment for its beauty as well as for whom he was with.  Preface to Lyrical Ballads - Begins with a discussion of the collection of poems, written mostly by Wordsworth with contributions by S.T. Coleridge - Wordsworth added an earlier version of the Preface, which he extended two years later. Because he felt his poems were of a new theme and style. - The majority of the poems in the collection are by Wordsworth - The purpose of the collection = to write poems that dealt with things that happen in everyday life (each poem in the collection = an experiment in language usage, or diction). - What, then, is poetry? Wordsworth outlines his definition of the nature and function of poetry—as well as identifying the qualities that make someone a true poet. - Poetry must reflect spontaneity and an “overflow of powerful feelings.” Passion is key, as are mood and temperament. Although poetry must emerge from spontaneity, it must not be written spontaneously. - A poem should be the result of long and deep reflection. He also cautions against being too concerned with the poetic rules of Classicism. - The poet’s process into four stages. The first is observation. A person, object, or situation must stimulate powerful emotions in the Romantic poet, and those observations must be noted. Recollection follows, which is the stage when the poet contemplates those observations. For this, tranquility is a must. Memories may surface that are days old or older, and the poet should contemplate those memories to explore how the emotions they provoke relate to past experiences. The third stage is filtering, when the poet clears the mind of all non-essential elements. The result of this is that the poet’s personal experience becomes relevant to a wider audience. 7  Prelude, from Book Eleventh o The thirteen books of The Prelude are different lengths and in hundreds of lines. o Unrhymed blank verse o Its stanzas do not follow patterns, unlike those in his many lyrical poems. - Epic poem ("Poem to Coleridge," subtitled "Growth of a Poet's Mind.") - His poem was about his poetic sensibility as it developed from experiences from his early childhood on. - Each book carries a title pertaining to a period of his life, his hopes, and his experiences, as well as other information. - In totality the poem is a record of his emotional, spiritual, and lyrical development from earliest times and his interactions with those closest to him, especially his sister Dorothy and his collaboration with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. - The Prelude was composed by a 30-year-old man looking back on the effects of nature on his development as an individual living in society and as an artist. It unfolds as an extended discourse with himself and those closest to him (especially his sister and his best friend), and it explores his growth into the figure who could make an epic from a poet's life. - The poem is sometimes called an introduction or autobiography of the life of the poet (psychological and philosophical insights on the nature of humanity) - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) published his Confessions in two parts, in 1782 and 1789, and he influenced Wordsworth and others who followed. - Following Wordsworth's example, other Romantic and Symbolist poets in the 19th century often spoke freely and frankly of their lives. - Wordsworth explores both himself and his surrounding society in The Prelude. Whereas the first books of the poem often relate his youthful fears and indiscretions, he included in the final books of the poem more mature information about the political situation in France and England, changing and extending the arc of the autobiography to cover the world around him. - The Prelude is a "profession" of the poetry he felt he had been created and chosen to write. - Book 11, "Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored," gives personal insights into the poet's mental and emotional struggle following his return to England and the need to rebuild his life as a poet. - He moves between Reason and Passion and tries to find the balance. Finally, he finds meaning in "spots of time," memories of significant minor events he witnessed long past. These now give direction and inspiration for his art. - In Book 11 the poet moves from depression and despair over the breaking of his hopes for great events to come from the French Revolution, to the realization that those hopes were false. France and England went to war as enemies, and his dream for the betterment of man seemed empty to him. - “Spots of time" = the image conveys the idea that memory can soothe the external disturbances of the mind, just as poetry lives on long after events recorded in it have taken place. At first he remembers coming upon the site of an execution when he was a small child on horseback and being deeply afraid when the scene is worsened by the figure of a woman being tossed about by the wind as she attempts to carry a water jug. Then, he relates, he experienced at Christmas time a particularly depressing view atop a misty mountain, only to learn soon afterward that his father had died, and he was an orphan. Wordsworth's faith and human connectedness enable him to deal later with such memories, revisit the places, and transform them to affirm life. 10 - "There are in our existence spots of time" is one of Wordsworth's most significant observations and beliefs. The poet must dig very deeply into his past, which he never hesitates to do. - He has experienced doubts and delusions, disappointment and dark fears, but throughout it all, the goal has remained clear. The "spot of time" is vital because it has invigorating strength against "false opinion and contentious thought." Such resistance is important for Wordsworth because he has gone out of his way to engage opinions and troubling thoughts all his life. He senses that if he continues to do this, he will eventually get past the memories he rejects and, instead, gain an illumination of what is good and lasting. - So, while a "spot" of time may appear minute or less than the high point of a mountain, it nevertheless "lifts us up when fallen." - It is childhood to which we are returned through spots of time. Childhood provides moments that are captured in memory when the content is least and the receptivity the greatest. Finding the "spots" is not an easy task, as The Prelude shows in its thousands of lines, but the adult makes the strong effort to get back to a childhood vantage point and is richly repaid. 4) Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),  The Eolian Harp o 64 lines o Five stanzas o Conversation poem o Blank-verse form - Entitled after the ‘Aeolian harp’, which creates melodious music while the wind blows across its strings. It is much like wind chimes. - Main focus of the poem orbits around a lute, its title is appropriate and suggestive. - Coleridge has made best use of this smallish ornamental harp to express his personal feelings towards his fiancée, Sara, and God. - The harp symbolizes the poet, and the wind symbolizes God’s breath. - Images of nature to explore philosophical ideas. Throughout the poem, the lyrical voice will present opposite ideas and how these can be reconciled. - The Eolian Harp deals with humanity’s relationship with nature and the divine component found within nature itself. - A dialog will be established between philosophical and religious matters, in order to understand the universe, and especially nature, in a deeper and better way. The lyrical voice’s philosophical thoughts will collide with religion and he/she will experiment a spiritual conflict, between the figure of god and nature. - Themes: his engagement and his future marriage (the central theme of the poem is not love) Image of the Eolian Harp: how it represents both the order and the wildness found in nature.  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge first published his famous ballad (anonymously), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in Lyrical Ballads, his 1798 joint effort with his close friend and colleague William Wordsworth. o Loose rhyme scheme and archaic language (provoke) 11 o Remove much of the archaism from the poem - Themes: subjectivity of experience and the importance of the individual. - The poem is told largely from the Ancient Mariner's perspective, despite the minor involvement of a separate narrator, who describes the Ancient Mariner and Wedding Guest's actions. - The Ancient Mariner tells his self-centered tale for a self-centered purpose: to allay his agonizing storytelling compulsion => focus on the protagonist's empirical experience of the world, rather than on a didactic message. - Romantic fascination with the holy in nature. Romantic poets as well as painters like Caspar David Friedrich emphasized the natural world's majesty by dwarfing humans in comparison to it. - Out in the open ocean = making him very small and vulnerable in comparison to the forces of nature. - The Romantics also went against the earlier trend of championing religious institution and instead locating the spiritual and sublime in nature. Despite the Ancient Mariner's expression of love for communal prayer, his message reveals his belief that the true path to God is through communing with and respecting nature. Characters: - Ancient Mariner: the poem's protagonist. He is unnaturally old, with skinny, deeply-tanned limbs and a "glittering eye." He sets sail from his native country with two hundred other men who are all saved from a strange, icy patch of ocean when they are kind to an Albatross that lives there. Impulsively and inexplicably, he shoots the Albatross with his crossbow and is punished for his crime by a spirit who loved the Albatross. He is cursed to be haunted indefinitely by his dead shipmates, and to be compelled to tell the tale of his downfall at random times. Each time he is compelled to share his story with someone, he feels a physical agony that is abated only temporarily once he finishes telling the tale. - Wedding Guest: one of three people on their way to a wedding reception; he is next of kin to the bridegroom. The Ancient Mariner stops him, and despite his protests compels him to sit and listen to the entirety of his story. He is afraid of the Ancient Mariner and yearns to join the merriment of the wedding celebration, but after he hears the Ancient Mariner's story, he becomes both "sadder and... wiser." - The Sailors: They begin to suffer from debilitating heat and thirst. They hang the Albatross's corpse around the Ancient Mariner's neck to punish him. When Life-in-Death wins the Ancient Mariner's soul, the sailors' souls are left to Death and they curse the Ancient Mariner with their eyes before dying suddenly. Even though their souls fly out, their bodies refuse to rot and lie open-eyed on the deck, continuously cursing the Ancient Mariner. After the rain returns, the sailors come alive and silently man the ship, singing beautiful melodies. When the ship reaches the harbor, they once again curse the Ancient Mariner with their eyes and then disappear, leaving only their corpses behind. The Ancient Mariner is destined to suffer the curse of a living death and continually be haunted by their cursing eyes. - Albatross: a great, white sea bird that presumably saves the sailors from the icy world of the "rime" by allowing them to steer through the ice and sending them a good, strong wind. The Albatross, however, also makes a strange mist follow the ship. It flies alongside the ship, plays with the sailors, and eats their food, until the Ancient Mariner shoots it with his crossbow. Its corpse is hung around the Ancient Mariner's neck as a reminder of his crime and falls off only when he is able to appreciate the beauty of nature and pray once 12 writer relies on "the talking cure" to relieve himself of his psychological burden. But for the Ancient Mariner, the cure - reliving the experience that started with the "rime" by repeating his "rhyme" - is part of the torture. Coleridge paints an equally powerful and pathetic image of the writer.  Kubla Khan - Coleridge composed his poem, Kubla Khan, in a state of semi-conscious trance either in the autumn of 1797 or the spring of 1798 and published in 1816. The whole poem is pervaded by an atmosphere of dream and remains in the form of a vision. The vision embodied in Kubla Khan was inspired by the perusal of the travel book, Purchas His Pilgrimage. Coleridge had taken a dose of opium as an anodyne, and his eyes closed upon the line in the book, “At Zanadu Kubla Khan built a pleasure palace.” But this opened his creative vision, and the poem of about 200 lines was composed in this state of waking dream. On being fully awake, he wrote the poem down. The theme of the poem is unimportant. It describes the palace built by Kubla Khan, the grandson of Chengis Khan, the great rule of central Asia. - Kubla Khan is the finest example of pure poetry removed from any intellectual content. Being essentially of the nature of a dream, it enchants by the loveliness of its color, artistic beauty, and sweet harmony. Its vision is wrought out of the most various sources – oriented romance and travel books. Its remote setting and its delicate imaginative realism render it especially romantic. The supernatural atmosphere is evoked chiefly through suggestion and association. The musical effect of the poem is unsurpassed. The main appeal of the poem lies in its sound effects. The rhythm and even the length of the lines are varied to produce subtle effects of harmony. The whole poem is bound together by a network of alliteration, the use of liquid consonants, and onomatopoeia. The judicious use of hard consonants has given occasionally the effect of force and harshness. - The unnamed speaker of the poem tells of how a man named Kubla Khan traveled to the land of Xanadu. In Xanadu, Kubla found a fascinating pleasure-dome that was “a miracle of rare device” because the dome was made of caves of ice and located in a sunny area. The speaker describes the contrasting composition of Xanadu. While there are gardens blossoming with incense-bearing trees and “sunny spots of greenery,” across the “deep romantic chasm” in Xanadu there are “caverns measureless to man” and a fountain from which “huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.” Amid this hostile atmosphere of Nature, Kubla also hears “ancestral voices prophesying war.” However, Kubla finds relief from this tumultuous atmosphere through his discovery of the miraculous sunny pleasure- dome made of ice. - In the last stanza of the poem, the narrator longs to revive a song about Mount Abora that he once heard a woman play on a dulcimer. The speaker believes that the song would transport him to a dream world in which he could “build that dome in air” and in which he can drink “the milk of Paradise.” - A recurring motif throughout Coleridge’s poetry is the power of dreams and of the imagination, such as in “Frost at Midnight,” “Dejection: An Ode,” and “Christabel.” In “Discovery and the Domestic Affections in Coleridge and Shelley,” Michelle Levy explains that Coleridge’s “fascination with the unknown reflects a larger cultural obsession of the Romantic period” (694). - Perhaps the most fantastical world created by Coleridge lies in “Kubla Khan.” The legendary story behind the poem is that Coleridge wrote the poem following an opium- influenced dream. In this particular poem, Coleridge seems to explore the depths of 15 dreams and creates landscapes that could not exist in reality. The “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice” exemplifies the extreme fantasy of the world in which Kubla Khan lives. - Similar to several of Coleridge’s other poems, the speaker’s admiration of the wonders of nature is present in “Kubla Khan.” Yet what is striking and somewhat different about the portrayal of nature in this particular poem is the depiction of the dangerous and threatening aspects of nature.  Biographia Literaria: Chapter 4 - In chapter 4 of the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge writes about the Lyrical Ballads, the book of poetry he published together with Wordsworth, which is often regarded as having launched the Romantic Movement in English literature. He says that almost all the criticism which the book attracted could have been avoided by the omission of about a hundred lines. Even these lines only offended readers because Wordsworth had directed attention towards them in the preface to explain his theories of poetry, meaning that it was the Romantic theory to which readers really objected. When Coleridge discussed the specific poems in the volume with readers, he usually heard people both praise and denigrate all the ones which used the humblest, most straightforward language, in line with Wordsworth's theory. - Coleridge then uses Wordsworth's poetry to begin to illustrate his famous distinction between "Fancy" and "Imagination," which he develops later in the book. Here in chapter 4, he says that Wordsworth displays both qualities, though his explanation of them differs from Coleridge's own. He does not attempt a full explanation of his distinction, which is essentially that fancy merely associates ideas, while imagination creates coherent new ideas out of them. However, he does hint at this difference by his description of Cowley as a fanciful poet and Milton, a far more important literary figure who influenced Wordsworth significantly, as an imaginative one. - Fancy and Imagination are two distinct and widely-different faculties. They come from, respectively, the Greek phantasia and the Latin imaginatio. In the popular usage of these English words, their meanings have, in recent times, come to be almost synonymous. But they should not be, for their root words were not too similar. - The character and privilege of Genius, and one of the marks that distinguish genius from talents: the prime merit of genius: to "represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them and a freshness of sensation." - "Genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission."  Chapter 13 - Coleridge considers the imagination to be primary or secondary. According to Coleridge, the primary imagination is "the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am." The secondary imagination co-exist with the conscious will. It is an echo of the primary imagination. The secondary imagination will diffuse, dissipate, and dissolve in order to recreate. - IMAGINATION: PRIMARY IMAGINATION. This is the "living power and prime agent of all human PERCEPTION." SECONDARY IMAGINATION. This is an echo of the 1ary imagination; it differs from the 1ary imagination in DEGREE and in the MODE of operation. More specifically, it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to RECREATE--or, if that is impossible, to idealize and identify. I take that to mean, the functions of memory and mental 16 interpretation of sensory data into meaning within the mind. Coleridge says that the secondary imagination is "essentially VITAL" even as all objects, as objects, are essentially fixed and dead. I take that to mean that the secondary imagination is pliable and malleable on the voluntary (conscious) or subconscious level, as in dreaming. - INTERPRETATION OF THE SENSES: "FANCY is a mode of MEMORY emancipated from the order of time and space--blended with and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will.....CHOICE. This seems to be what I usually mean by imagination: to use the mind's "eye/ear. . .etc." to simulate another sensation of something that might be absent, or nonexistent. All materials are ready-made from the Law of Association. So Coleridge seems to be saying that one can use FANCY as a kind of power to create memory-mosaics or collages, rearranging what we've experienced into a new combination or shape to suit our "fancy" (in the common usage). - IMAGINATION is an "esemplastic power"--Norton says that that phrase is Coleridge's coinage, and is built from root words, to mean that imagination has the power to MOLD INTO UNITY.  Lectures on Shakespeare - His thoughts on Shakespeare, mostly delivered as lectures, were never gathered together during his lifetime. Coleridge was aware of the requirements of a number of different audiences for his varying literary output: he writes of the need to keep his audience at a lecture entertained. Fortunately many sources still exist: lecture notes, newspaper reports, notes taken by members of the audience, mentions in letters. Editing these fragments has been a challenging job ever since. - The lectures took place between about 1808 and 1819, and as well as Shakespeare he spoke on a variety of philosophical and literary subjects. Talking of Shakespeare, though, he focused on a handful of plays: Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard II, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Macbeth, and with the narrative poems. He admired King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, but hated Measure for Measure: - “This Play, which is Shakespeare’s throughout, is to me the most painful, say rather the only painful part of his genuine works. The comic and tragic parts… the one disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of Justice (for cruelty, with lust and damnable Baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of) but it is likewise degrading to the character of Woman.” - He took a surprisingly modern view of the need to put Shakespeare into historical context: “so as to see and be able to prove what of Shakespeare belonged to his Age and was common to all the first-rate men”, and often compared Shakespeare to other writers such as Spenser and Milton. - He’s extraordinarily observant about how Shakespeare works as a dramatic writer. “In his mode of drawing characters… from the whole course of the play, or out of the mouths of his enemies of friends.” He takes Polonius as an example “which actors have often misrepresented: Shakespeare never intended to represent him as a buffoon. It was natural that Hamlet, a young man of genius and fire, detesting formality,…should express .himself satirically; but Hamlet’s words should not be taken as Shakespeare’s conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character arose from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, the reverence of his memory by Ophelia, and we shall find that he was a statesman”. On The Characteristic Excellencies of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1813. 17 the Lenten season — the Christian tradition of preparing for the symbolic anniversary of the death of Jesus — has begun, and the nights have been replaced by “abstinence and sacred music.” Afterward, he describes feeling as though his sword is wearing out its scabbard, and laments that this is happening to him, even though he is only twenty-nine years old. He follows this with So We’ll Go No More a Roving. - The letter is dated February 28, 1817, and was published by Moore, along with the poem it contained in his 1830 work, along with other letters he received from the then-late Lord Byron, and was republished some years later, in The works of Lord Byron: in verse and prose. Including his letters, journals, etc., with a sketch of his life. - By this point in his life, Lord Byron had been living in exile for nearly a year. He spent much of 1817 in Italy, particularly Venice and Rome. This, along with the contents of the letter, suggest that it is written more as a lament to his growing up than for any one person in particular. For someone who spends so much of his youth sleeping around, taking personal liberties, and enjoying the expressions of his own emotion, to discover at the age of twenty-nine that he was beginning to feel tired must have come as a surprise. This poem was meant for Moore as a way of expressing how he was feeling, perhaps in a way that he felt could not be conveyed as well through unadorned words. It seems likely that his intention was not for the poem to be published at all, and yet reading is still provides fascinating insight on the life and in the mind of Lord George Gordon Byron at the age of twenty-nine.  On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Six Year - On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year’ by Lord Byron is a ten stanza poem that is divided into sets of four lines, or quatrains. The lines follow a consistent rhyme scheme. It conforms to the pattern of abab cdcd, and so on, alternating end sounds as the poet saw fit. - In regards to the metrical pattern, the lines are also very well structured. The first three of each stanza are written in iambic tetrameter. This means that the lines are made up of four sets of two beats. The final line is in iambic dimeter, in which each line only has two sets of two beats. In both cases, the first beat is unstressed and the second is stressed. - The most important images of this text are those which refer to themes of glory and heroism. The last five stanzas in particular are filled with references to “manhood,” a “soldier’s grave,” dying an “honourable death” and the elements of the battle. Byron uses these images to depict a change in his demeanour and a desire to end his life as a man worthy of having lived at all. - Before beginning this piece a reader should take note of the subtitle at the beginning of the text. It notes that the poem was written on Byron’s birthday, the 22nd of January in Missolonghi, Greece. This also makes it clear that the speaker of the text is in fact Byron himself, who is writing in a tone that is sometimes solemn, sometimes inspired, about his future. - ‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year’ by Lord Byron describes the poet’s own opinion of the youthful, passionate life he has lived. - The poem begins with the speaker stating that he is no longer loved. This lack in his life makes him feel as if he is now unable to feel love himself. His main pleasure has been taken away from him, due to his age, and now he is faced to contend with what he has left. - In the following lines, it becomes clear the speaker does not see himself as having much left at all. There are worms, fungi, and grief, that’s all. He compares himself to a dying tree, which has lost its ability to produce fruit or flowers. Now, in this depressed state, the love 20 he used to nourish in his breast (the fire) is consuming him. It is more like a funeral pyre than a source from which others can take. - The second half of the poem is different. The final five lines are more uplifting. They signal a change in the speaker’s mindset. He decides he’s not going to complain about his loss any longer. He’s going to take a hard look at himself and address how “Unworthy” he’s been up until this point. The speaker regrets his youth and knows the only thing he can do to repent for how he’s lived is find a way to gloriously end his life, like a soldier. - A great deal of “heroic” battlefield imagery is followed by the speaker asking his soul to find a grave for his body. This is where he’s going to come to a final “Rest.”  Letters - The letters of Lord Byron, of which about 3,000 are known, range in date from 1798, when Byron was 10 years old, to 9 April 1824, a few days before he died. They have long received extraordinary critical praise for their wit, spontaneity and sincerity. Many rate Byron as the greatest letter-writer in English literature, and consider his letters comparable or superior to his poems as literary achievements. They have also been called "one of the three great informal autobiographies in English", alongside the diaries of Samuel Pepys and James Boswell. Their literary value is reflected in the huge prices collectors will pay for them; in 2009 a sequence of 15 letters to his friend Francis Hodgson was sold at auction for almost £280,000. - Although in his letters Byron adapted his style and stance to his different correspondents, they all share an unstudied, unliterary appearance, an "offhand eloquence", which at its best resembles the talk of a conversationalist of genius. He never wrote to produce an effect. Lord Macaulay, in one of his essays, wrote that Byron's letters "are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole, [and] have more matter in them than those of Cowper"; if literary art was employed it was "that highest art which cannot be distinguished from nature". All are deeply imbued with his volatile and indefinable personality, which, for those who find his personality offensive, can be something of a disadvantage. They are marked by rapid alternations of mood, by common sense, wit, intellect and sincerity, and by a cool and unshakeable scepticism. They fascinate the reader through the huge zest for life they manifest. They share with his poems the characteristics of vigour and movement. "Everything is said without reserve, without attenuation, savagely", wrote André Maurois; they "[sweep] the reader along in an irresistible onrush". They repeat words as if they were rhymes, and have rhythms that resemble those of the poems apart from being more varied. They share the outlook on life of Byron's more realistic poems, like Beppo, Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment, rather than the darkly romantic Childe Harold, Manfred and The Corsair. - Although Byron's life was cut short at the age of only 36, almost 3000 letters of his are known. There are three main reasons why that number is so large: one is simply the pleasure Byron took in composing them; another is the fact that Byron spent many years in self-imposed exile in Italy and Greece, which made it necessary for him to write to keep in touch with his friends in England; and finally, the sensational success of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage when Byron was only 23 turned him into a national and then international celebrity, making his letters valuable relics to be collected rather than thrown away. - Byron's correspondents can be divided up into successive groups. As a boy he wrote to his mother, his half-sister Augusta, and the family lawyer John Hanson. At Southwell there were John Pigot and his sister Elizabeth. Byron's friends at college included Scrope Davies, John Cam Hobhouse and Francis Hodgson. With the publication of Childe Harold he 21 became known to a new circle, the poets Robert Charles Dallas, Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers, along with his banker Douglas Kinnaird and his publisher John Murray. Then there were the women who fell in love with him: Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Frances Webster, Lady Oxford, and his future wife Annabella Milbancke; also his confidante Lady Melbourne. A new group of friends in Switzerland included the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's wife Mary and sister-in-law Claire Clairmont. Members of the Shelley circle with whom Byron corresponded included Thomas Medwin, Edward Williams and his common- law wife Jane, Edward John Trelawny, and the poet Leigh Hunt. In Venice there were Byron's lover Teresa Guiccioli, her brother Gamba and husband Count Guiccioli, the British consul Richard Belgrave Hoppner, and Alexander Scott. Finally, Byron's Greek adventure brought him into contact with a new circle: the rebel leader Prince Mavrokordatos, the banker Samuel Barff, and members of the London Philhellenic Committee, including Colonel Leicester Stanhope. 7) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)  Hymn to Intellectual Beauty - The speaker says that the shadow of an invisible Power floats among human beings, occasionally visiting human hearts—manifested in summer winds, or moonbeams, or the memory of music, or anything that is precious for its mysterious grace. Addressing this Spirit of Beauty, the speaker asks where it has gone, and why it leaves the world so desolate when it goes—why human hearts can feel such hope and love when it is present, and such despair and hatred when it is gone. He asserts that religious and superstitious notions—”Demon, Ghost, and Heaven”—are nothing more than the attempts of mortal poets and wise men to explain and express their responses to the Spirit of Beauty, which alone, the speaker says, can give “grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.” Love, Hope, and Self-Esteem come and go at the whim of the Spirit, and if it would only stay in the human heart forever, instead of coming and going unpredictably, man would be “immortal and omnipotent.” The Spirit inspires lovers and nourishes thought; and the speaker implores the spirit to remain even after his life has ended, fearing that without it death will be “a dark reality.” - The speaker recalls that when he was a boy, he “sought for ghosts,” and traveled through caves and forests looking for “the departed dead”; but only when the Spirit’s shadow fell across him—as he mused “deeply on the lot / Of life” outdoors in the spring—did he experience transcendence. At that moment, he says, “I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!” He then vowed that he would dedicate his life to the Spirit of Beauty; now he asserts that he has kept his vow—every joy he has ever had has been linked to the hope that the “awful Loveliness” would free the world from slavery, and complete the articulation of his words. - The speaker observes that after noon the day becomes “more solemn and serene,” and in autumn there is a “lustre in the sky” which cannot be found in summer. The speaker asks the Spirit, whose power descended upon his youth like that truth of nature, to supply “calm” to his “onward life”—the life of a man who worships the Spirit and every form that contains it, and who is bound by the spells of the Spirit to “fear himself, and love all humankind.” - Each of the seven long stanzas of the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” follows the same, highly regular scheme. Each line has an iambic rhythm; the first four lines of each stanza are written in pentameter, the fifth line in hexameter, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 22 he is satisfied that the wind hears him, he begs the wind to take him away in death, in hopes that there will be a new life waiting for him on the other side. - ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley focuses on the west wind, a powerful and destructive force, yet a necessary one. - In the first lines, the speaker addresses the wind and describes how it creates deadly storms. it drives away the summer and brings with it the cold and darkness of winter. He imagines what it would be like to be a dead leaf lifted and blown around by the wind and he implores the wind to lift him “as a wave, a lead, a cloud!” The speaker sees the wind as a necessary evil, one that eventually means that spring is on the way. - Shelley engages with themes of death, rebirth, and poetry in ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ From the start, Shelley’s speaker describes the wind as something powerful and destructive. It takes away the summer and brings winter, a season usually associated with death and sorrow. It’s not a peaceful wind, he adds, but despite this, the speaker celebrates it. It is necessary for the circle of life to progress. Without death, there is no rebirth. The wind serves an important role in preserving this. Poetry is one of the less obvious themes in ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ The speaker seems to allude to a process of creation in the text, one that involves him personally. This might, considering the format, be the creation of poetry. - ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley is written in terza rima. This refers to an interlocking rhyme scheme. The first stanza is written in the pattern of ABA while the second uses the same “B” rhyme sound and adds a “C.” So it looks like BCB. This repeats throughout the text until the final two lines which rhyme as a couplet. Despite the pattern, there are several half0rhymes in this piece. FOr example, “everywhere” and “hear” in lines thirteen and fourteen. - The majority of ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is written in iambic pentameter. This means that most of the lines contain five sets of two beats. The first of which is unstressed and the second which is stressed. This pattern does change in some lines more than others. This is particularly evident in the first stanza where all the lines are irregular. - Shelley makes use of several literary devices in ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ These include alliteration, personification, and apostrophe. The latter is an interesting device that is used when the poet’s speaker talks to something or someone that either can’t hear them or can’t respond. In this case, the speaker starts out the poem by talking to the “West Wind” as though it can do both. In addition to this, the poet also personifies the wind or gives it human abilities that forces or animals don’t naturally have. Alliteration is a common type of repetition that appears when the poet repeats the same consonant sound at the beginning of words. For example, “lie” and “low” in line one of stanza three of canto one as well as “steep sky” in stanza one of canto two. Enjambement is another common technique. It occurs several times in ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ For example, the transition between lines two and three of stanza one, canto one as well as lines two and three of stanza three, canto one. Readers who enjoyed ‘Ode to the West Wind’ should also consider reading some of Shelley’s other best-known poems. For example, ‘Adonais,’ ‘Mutability,’ and ‘Ozymandias.‘ The latter is a very memorable poem, one that’s often studied in schools around the world. It describes a long-abandoned and broken statue in the desert, one that looks out over a domain that no longer exists. in ‘Adonais,’ Shelley writes a tribute to fellow poet John Keats who died at the age of twenty-five. In ‘Mutability,’ Shelley takes everyday elements of life, from wind, to the sky, and emotions, and compares them to human nature and the facts of life. 25  Prometheus Unbound - Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a lyrical drama told in four acts. In the first act, Prometheus, the Titan, is bound to a rock. When morning dawns, Prometheus cries out against the “Monarch of Gods and Daemons,” who is Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek pantheon). As the hawks begin to tear at his flesh for the day, he recounts his suffering and claims that he is greater than Jupiter. The Earth commiserates with him against Jupiter’s tyranny. She tells him that there are two realities—the current reality and the shadow reality. - Prometheus summons the Phantasm of Jupiter to restate his curse and then repents, but Mercury—the messenger god—arrives with words from Jupiter and the Furies. He tells Prometheus that Jupiter has willed a new punishment for Prometheus. Mercury offers him pity but reminds him that he has to oppose him because Prometheus opposed Jupiter. Mercury asks Prometheus to reveal the secret that he alone knows—the fate of Jupiter— but Prometheus refuses, even when Mercury offers him freedom and exaltation. Thunder rolls and Mercury leaves; the Furies begin torturing Prometheus by telling him that they attack humankind; for the champion of humankind, this is a great blow indeed, but Prometheus accepts it as part of his martyrdom. - He reflects that even though he would never want to be a mortal, there is a promise of peace with death. Spirits come and speak to Prometheus, proclaiming that he will “quell this horseman grim” because of his secret knowledge. - In act 2, Oceanid Asia summons her sister Panthea. They talk about life since Prometheus’s fall. They discuss dreams, and when the Echoes arrive, they follow when beckoned. The Echoes promise that if they do, an unspoken voice will wake in an unknown world. They arrive in a forest among spirits and fauns. From there, they are sent to the cave of the Demogorgon, where Asia questions the Demogorgon about the world’s creator. The Demogorgon answers that God created everything, both good and bad. Asia demands the Demogorgon provide her with a name for God. They talk about how Jupiter rules the universe, and how Prometheus gave humans fire, mining knowledge, speech, science, and medicine. - Asia asks when Prometheus will be freed. The cave opens and Demogorgon leaves on his chariot. The Hours come to transport Asia and Panthea. On this journey to a mountaintop, Asia undergoes a change that reveals to her that it is through her love that she discovers paradise. - That is where act 3 takes place—in heaven. Jupiter and the other gods hold court, and Jupiter claims to have conquered everything but the soul of man. He speaks of the rise of Demogorgon, who appears then and says he is Eternity, Jupiter’s child—and therefore more powerful than the sky god. At first, Jupiter seeks Eternity’s mercy, saying that not even Prometheus would make him suffer. When Eternity does not answer, Jupiter attacks him. However, the elements will not help Jupiter; he falls. - Ocean and Apollo talk about Jupiter’s fall. Hercules frees Prometheus, who thanks him. He tells Asia there is a cave where they can be with one another for all time. Earth describes death to Asia, who does not understand at first because she is immortal. Earth summons a spirit to guide Prometheus, Asia, and their friends to a temple that was once dedicated to worshipping Prometheus and tells them that they can live there in that cave. When they arrive, the Hours tell them that since Jupiter’s fall, mankind is free. They have abandoned their thrones and live peacefully but not without passion. - In act 4, the spirits of the dead Hours and the human mind rejoice over the peace brought about by the end of Jupiter’s tyranny. Panthea and Ione describe a chariot with a winged infant—the Spirit of Earth. The Earth and Moon sing together about the peace and 26 freedom mankind is now experiencing, and how there are no secrets left hidden from them —humans even control the lightning. The Demogorgon appears and speaks at the end of Prometheus Unbound, to laud Prometheus’s victory. - Prometheus Unbound (1820) deals with the aftermath of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. Shelley was inspired to write Prometheus Unbound by the classical trilogy of plays known as Prometheia, written by Aeschylus during the height of Ancient Greek power. The great difference between the two works is that in Aeschylus’s work, Prometheus and Zeus reconcile; they do not in Shelley’s work. Prometheus Unbound is what is known as a closet drama—that is, Shelley never intended it to be performed on stage. It was meant to be performed in the reader’s mind’s eye.  To a Sky-Lark - ‘To a Skylark‘ by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a twenty-one stanza ode that is consistent in its rhyme scheme from the very first to the last stanza. The piece rhymes, ABABB, with varying end sounds, from beginning to end. - This strictly formatted pattern is also consistent in the meter. The first four lines of each stanza are written in trochaic trimeter, meaning that a stressed syllable comes before an unstressed (trochaic). Additionally, each of the first four lines has three of these beats (trimeter). Different from the other four, but consistent with the rest of the poem, the fifth longer line of each stanza is written in iambic hexameter. This means that each line has six beats of unstressed syllables preceding stressed. - It is also important to make note of the speaker in “To a Skylark.” As has been revealed in poems such as “Ode to the West Wind,” this piece is based on an actual experience the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, had. Therefore, the poet himself will be considered as the speaker of the poem. - ‘To a Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley is an ode to the “blithe” essence of a singing skylark and how human beings are unable to ever reach that same bliss. - The poem begins with the speaker spotting a skylark flying above him. He can hear the song clearly. The bird’s song “unpremeditated,” is unplanned and beautiful. - Shelley is stunned by the music produced by the bird and entranced by its movement as it flies into the clouds and out of sight. Although he can no longer see it, he is still able to hear it and feel it’s presence. The bird represents pure, unbridled happiness that Shelley is desperately seeking. This desperation comes through in the next stanzas. - The poet then embarks on a number of metaphors through which he is hoping to better understand what the bird is and what he can accurately compare it to. He sees the bird as a “high-born maiden” that serenades her lover below her and spring, or “vernal,” showers that rain on the flowers below. The skylark is like “rainbow clouds” and the epitome of all “Joyous” things. - The next section of the ode is used to ask the skylark to reveal what inspires it to sing such a glorious song. Is it, the poet asks, “fields, or waves, or mountains?” Could it be, he speculates, “shapes of sky or plain?” Whatever it may be, Shelley has never seen anything that could force such sounds from his own voice. - He states that for a creature to have the ability to sing in such a way, it must know nothing of sorrow or “annoyance.” The bird must have the ability to see beyond life, understand death, and feel no concern about it. This is why humans may never reach the same state of happiness that the skylark exists within. “We” pine for things that we do not have, and even our “sweetest songs” are full of the “saddest thought[s].” 27 recover his lost Cynthia, spirit of the moon. He encounters an ancient/man, Glaucus, whom he releases from a spell cast by Circe: thus reanimating the bodies of drowned lovers, and attends the celebratory rites paid by the resurrected crowd to Neptune and Oceanus, gods of the seas. The vision vanishes and in Book 4 he rediscovers his goddess incarnated as an Indian damsel who sings the Ode to Sorrow before she declares her undying love for him, and her unattainability for mortal men. Yet again, he is abandoned, but as his sister returns to welcome him back to the solid, human world, the goddess of the moon, alias the Indian damsel, alias Phoebe, alias Cynthia, returns, and 'spiritualizes' Endymion so that he is fit for celestial living." In the last line as well she might say, 'Poena went Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.' - Endymion is an extended narrative poem divided into four books of about one thousand lines each, written mostly in heroic couplets. The title Endymion is named after a figure from Greek myth. The poem starts from Endymion’s impossible desire to get the love of the goddess Diana (also known as Cynthia). In the end when he feels the love for the mortal Indian maiden, he realizes she is really Diana, his immortal desire in mortal disguises. He apprehends the dangers of denying his own human nature and learns that he can achieve the abstract ideal only if he accepts the concrete human experience. This is the central idea the Keats wants to deliver through this poem. Endymion (A thing of beauty) is usually read as a direct and honest declaration which caters a main idea that any beautiful thing provides us with continuous pleasure. Even if the beautiful thing fades away, decays, loss or dies, we never stop loving them despite the adverse situation. - Keats has used the metaphor, alliteration and imagery as poetic devices. Metaphor is obviously used in “wreathing a flowery band”, “bower quiet”, and “sweet dreams”. The vast use of imagery can be found in the phrase “flowery bands”, “shady boon”, “daffodils in green world”, “clear rills”, grandeur of dooms” etc. “Cooling covert” and “endless fountain of eternal drink” are one of the notable examples of imagery used in this poem. This poem received many scornful criticisms after its publication. Though Keats himself noticed the incoherent style, he did not regret writing it.  La Belle Dame Sans Merci o "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a ballad, a medieval genre revived by the romantic poets- o Keats uses the so-called ballad stanza, a quatrain in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines. o The shortening of the fourth line in each stanza of Keats' poem makes the stanza seem a self-contained unit, gives the ballad a deliberate and slow movement, and is pleasing to the ear. o Stylistic characteristics of the ballad: simplicity of language, repetition, and absence of details - Plot: An unidentified speaker asks a knight what afflicts him. The knight is pale, haggard, and obviously dying. The knight answers that he met a beautiful lady, "a faery's child" who had looked at him as if she loved him. When he set her on his horse, she led him to her cave. There she had sung him to sleep. In his sleep he had nightmarish dreams. Pale kings, princes, and warriors told him that he had been enslaved by a beautiful but cruel lady. When he awoke, the lady was gone, and he was lying on a cold hillside. - Keats sets his simple story of love and death in a bleak wintry landscape that is appropriate to it: the repetition of these two lines, with minor variations, as the concluding lines of the poem emphasizes the fate of the unfortunate knight and neatly encloses the poem in a frame by bringing it back to its beginning. 30 - Keats does not identify his questioner, or the knight, or the destructively beautiful lady. What Keats does not include in his poem contributes as much to it in arousing the reader's imagination as what he puts into it. - La belle dame sans merci, the beautiful lady without pity, is a femme fatale, a Circelike figure who attracts lovers only to destroy them by her supernatural powers. She destroys because it is her nature to destroy. With a few skillful touches, he creates a woman who is at once beautiful, erotically attractive, fascinating, and deadly. - Some readers see the poem as Keats' personal rebellion against the pains of love. In his letters and in some of his poems, he reveals that he did experience the pains, as well as the pleasures, of love and that he resented the pains, particularly the loss of freedom that came with falling in love. However, the ballad is a very objective form, and it may be best to read "La Belle Dame sans Merci" as pure story and no more. How Keats felt about his love for Fanny Brawne we can discover in the several poems he addressed to her, as well as in his letters.  Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats is perhaps most famous for his odes such as this one, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. As well as ‘Ode to a Nightingale‘, in which the poet deals with the expressive nature of music, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is another attempt to engage with the beauty of art and nature, this time addressing a piece of pottery from ancient Greece. - The urn itself is ancient. It’s been passed down over the millennia to finally reach Keats’s presence and, to him, seems to exist outside of the traditional sense of time. Ageless, immortal, it’s almost alien in its distance from the current age. - This allows the poet (or at least, the speaker in the poem) to mull over the strange idea of the human figures carved into the urn. They’re paradoxical figures, free from the constraints and influences of time but at the same time, imprisoned in an exact moment. For all that they don’t have to worry about growing old or dying, they cannot experience life as it is for the rest of humanity. - ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ represents three attempts at engaging with the urn and its scenes. Across the stanzas, Keats tries to wonder about who the figures are, what they’re doing, what they represent, and what the underlying meaning of their images might be. But by the end of the poem, he realizes that the entire process of questioning is fairly redundant. - Like other entries in Keats’s series of odes, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ builds on a specific structure. Its closest formal cousin is probably Ode on Melancholy, though it contains a slightly different rhyme scheme. Split into five verses (stanzas) of ten lines each, and making use of fairly rigid iambic pentameter, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is very carefully put together. - The rhyme scheme is split into two parts, with the final three lines of each stanza varying slightly. For the first seven lines, a rhyme scheme of ABABCDE is used, though the instance of the CDE part is not always as strict. In verse one, the final three lines are DCE; in the second verse, they’re CED; stanzas three and four both use CDE, while the fifth and final stanza uses DCE. This gives the piece a ponderous feel, adding a sense of deliberation to the final lines of each verse while still adhering to the form. - Just like in his other odes, the splitting of the verses into rhymes of four lines and six lines creates a distinct sense of there being two parts to each verse. As it is, this typically means that the first four lines (ABAB) are used to set out the verse’s subject, while the final six lines mull over what it means. 31  Ode to a Nightingale - The six odes are among the most famous of John Keat’s poems, they include ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. While it is unclear in what order they were written, Keats wrote them in batches, and scholars argue that when one reads them in sequence, one can see them form a thematic whole. - ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ was written in 1819, and it is the longest one, with 8 stanzas of 10 lines each. It was written at Charles Brown’s house, after Keats was struck by the melancholy singing of a nightingale bird, and it travels through the cabal of the Greek gods, all the while emphasizing the feeling of melancholy – a tragic and often very Greek emotion that Keats would have no doubt learned through his readings. - The poem itself is very unhappy; Keats is stunned at the happiness of the bird, and despairs at the difference between it and its happiness and his own unhappy life. At the start of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, the heavy sense of melancholy draws allusions to Ode to Melancholy, and Keats – despite the death imagery – does not really want to die. The conflicted nature of human life – a mixture of pain/joy, emotion/numbness, the actual/the ideal, etc – dominates the poem, so much so that, even at the end, it is unclear whether or not it happened – ‘do I wake or dream?’ - It can also be assumed that the heavy imagery of death and sickness could hark back to his experiences taking care of his elder brother, who died of tuberculosis underneath John Keats’ care. The unhappiness, however, that Keats feels in the poem is not necessarily miserable – Keats writes that he has been ‘half in love with easeful Death’, and describes the joy of listening to the nightingale’s song in a sort of euphoria. It can therefore be considered that Keats would rather forget his unhappiness than die: the references to hemlock, and Lethe, solidify this argument, as both would blur the memory enough to allow Keats to forget. - There are heavy allusions to mythology: Lethe, the river of forgetting that flows through the underworld; Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses made by Pegasus’ hooves which brings inspiration; dryads, the spirit protectors of the forest; Bacchus, god of wine and debauchery; Ruth and the corn-field is a reference to the book in the Bible; hemlock, the poison that killed Socrates; Flora, the Roman goddess of nature. - Nature and imagination are shown to be a brief reprieve from human suffering, hence the song of the nightingale, and its impressions. There is also a shi from reality to idealism: Keats says that he would like to drink from ‘a draught of fine vintage’ (a very fine wine) and transport himself to the ideal world that the nightingale belongs to. He states that he will not be taken there by Bacchus and his pards (Bacchanalia, revelry, and chaos) but by poetry and art. Keats then goes on to describe his ideal world, making reference to the ‘Queen Moon’ and all her ‘starry-eyed Fay’ – however, Keats cannot actually transport himself into this world, and the end of the nightingale’s song brings about the end of his fantasy. ‘Country green’, ‘Provencal song’ and ‘sunburned mirth’ all point to a highly fantastical reality, especially considering the status of the world at the time, and the mythological references help to maintain a surreal, dreamlike state throughout the entire poem and to charge Keats’ fantasies with identifiable ideas and figures. - Keats uses the senses heavily in all his poetry, relying on synaesthetic description to draw the reader into ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. It works especially well here because Keats’ fantasy world is dark and sensuous, and he ‘cannot see what flowers are at my feet’; he is ‘in embalmed darkness’. The darkness may have helped his imagination to flourish and furnish his ideal creation, as well as lending a supernatural air to ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. 32 Keats ends his letter with discussion of his ill health, and that it is not the same as his brother’s illness. It is believed that Keats was suffering from a venereal disease, and that he was trying to get rid of the ‘bad blood’ by taking doses of mercury (Davis, 86). He encourages his friend to continue on his course of learning theology, but also increase his “knowledge in all things.” He tells his friend that sometimes he becomes distracted, that he sometimes “does not feel passion of affection during a whole week” but that it does not mean he is “heartless” and wishes his friend well. - Keats does not often comment on his own poetry often in his letters. He does however in a letter to James August Hessey on October 9th 1818 mention his own poetry in the context of criticism. He references their shortcomings and “the pain beyond comprehension” of his own criticism (White, 458).” As can be seen in this letter he does reference another of his works, “Ode to A Grecian Urn.” The phrase what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth can also be seen in Keat’s “Ode To A Grecian Urn”. - This letter is a perfect example of his tie to the Romantic period. He discusses imagination and uses strong use of emotions. As is typical of the Romantic Period, Keats emphasizes imagination rather than reason of importance. He tells his friend Benjamin specifically that his hunger after truth or use of reason, is futile and that he must seek the beauty of truth in imagination.  Dec. 21, 27 1817 - To George and Tom Keats - In this letter, for the first and only time, Keats mentions his now-famous theory of negative capability. This capability is described as "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Keats mentions the poet Coleridge as an example of someone without this capability, someone who, because he was "incapable of remaining content with half knowledge," would let a "fine isolated verisimilitude" (truth) go by in pursuit of a higher logical system. - Keats did not favor such a reductive approach; he himself was more inclined to pursue what he called “the beautiful” without feeling any special need to place it within a higher rational or logical system. He would encourage poets to be purely receptive and to "negate" themselves in order to "receive" the beautiful and poetic. The objective is to fuse emotional intensity with the object, so that the object becomes representative of the emotion -- as in Keats' odes, such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". The origin of the term negative capability is not clear, but some scholars have suggested that Keats' education in chemistry and medicine may have influenced him. The "negative pole" of an electric current is passive and receptive, much as the ideal poet is.  Feb. 27 1818 - To John Taylor - Keats wrote this letter while revising Endymion and, in it, lays out his axioms for poetry. - This transcription is faithful to that of Jeffrey N. Cox, who, in turn, is mostly faithful to Rollins (the author of the authoritative version of the letters), both of whom were faithful to Keats himself most of all, transcribing from either the true originals or replications of them (in this case the Signed, Autographed Letter in the Morgan Library – MA 828). - Lit Genius has made one change, in that we provided a space between the paragraphs of this piece. We are also unable to replicate the raised writing Keats used on a few parts of his writing – 2nd, oblig[d] and so on. Otherwise no changes have been made — odd spelling is Keats’s, missing punctuation is Keats’s, everything is Keats’s 35  Oct. 27 1818 - To Richard Woodhouse - First, Keats describes the "poetical character itself," which is marked by its not having a character and a sense of self. The poet is like a "cameleon" (chameleon) which reflects whatever environment it finds itself in. Bound up with this, the poet speculates on positive as well as negative things, and does no harm, because the poet's ultimate aim is speculation itself. Keats argues, somewhat paradoxically, that "A poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence, because he has no Identity." He writes that he himself has an almost "porous" relationship to other people: when he is socializing, "the identity of every one in the room begins to so press upon me that I am...annihilated." He goes on to say that this phenomenon is not limited to his interactions with adults; he would be the same when spending time among children. - Keats then speaks of his ambition "to do the world some good." He hopes to "be spared" from illness, since he thinks that his most ambitious work will come in his "maturer years." He also writes that it is not admiration or acclaim which pushes him to do his work; it is "the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful" that propels him. But, as a "chameleon poet" himself, he points out that "even now I am not speaking from myself."  Nov. 30 1820 - To Charles Brown - Keats incorrectly dated this letter 28 September. It was written on board the Maria Cowther. Joseph Severn, Keats’s traveling companion, was writing to friends as well and confessing his worry over Keats’s state of mind. - Keats’s final letters to Charles Brown reveal the depression and grief he experienced over leaving Fanny Brawne, and the hopelessness of his physical condition. - On 30 November 1820 Keats wrote his last known letter, having been in Italy for a month. It was addressed to his friend Charles Brown at Wentworth Place, Hampstead and arrived on 21 December 1820. By the time Brown received this letter Keats had suffered a major relapse from which he would never recover. - Unaware of this, Brown immediately wrote back with all the news and gossip from Hampstead, including about his former servant ‘Abby’, who was the mother of his son Carlino. 9) Jane Austen (1775-1817) 10) Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)  A musical instrument - A Musical Instrument’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a seven stanza poem that is separated into sets of six lines, or sestets. Each of these sestets confirms to a consistent and structured rhyme scheme, following the pattern of abaccb. From stanza to stanza only the fourth and fifth lines change end sounds. That means there is a significant amount of repetition with the use of the words “Pan” and “river” and those with the same endings. Browning has done this deliberately to make the text as musical as possible. It is meant to reference the music inherent to the subject matter. - A reader should also take note of the fact that Browning numbered the stanzas herself with Roman numerals. This is a classical technique that has largely fallen out of style. 36 - ‘A Musical Instrument’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning describes the decimation of a riverbed and the crafting of the god Pan’s famous flute. - The poem begins with the speaker describing how the god Pan is in the river, searching for something. He is destroying the lilies and scaring off the dragonflies. His actions are violent and show complete disregard for anything other than himself. In the story on which this piece is based, the god is seeking out a reed that was once a woman he attempted to rape. - He finds the reed, cuts it to the right size, and crafts it into a flute that makes the most beautiful music. The speaker concludes the poem by condemning Pan for his violence. - Additionally, some background information is necessary for one to complete a full and accurate reading of ‘A Musical Instrument’. In the first line, the speaker references the “great god Pan.” He is said to be “Down in the reeds.” This character is the main subject of Browning’s poem. He is the god of the wild, flocks, and rustic music. He is often depicted with a seven-part flute which features prominently in this text. - In the mythological record, it is said that Pan fell in love with and pursued a wood-nymph Syrinx. She attempted to escape his advances and in order to save her from him, her sisters turned her into a reed. Pan was troubled by this as he could not figure out which reed, of which there were many, she had become. Rather than searching, he cut out seven pieces and fashioned them into the flute that now carries his name.  To George Sand: a recognition - This piece by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is very much like “To George Sand: A desire” in theme. It expresses the same aspect of George Sand breaking through the gender barrier and becoming a successful female author. However, “To George Sand: A Recognition” uses a much more dramatic tone and really brings to light how much of a battle it was for George Sand to have such a career. It expresses the agony that Sand as well as other women had to go through to be respected in a male dominated field. She also uses vivid imagery to express the triumph of Sand finally breaking through that gender role. This piece is more dramatic than Sand ever showed herself to be in her career. One may assume that George Sand was a powerful motivating feminist figure. Although she was just that, she went about her work very lady like, without ever causing a stir or controversy and writing all romance novels. Her feminine style in such a male dominated era makes her work even more impressive. 11) John Henry Newman (1801-1890)  The Idea of a University - This ideal can be traced to John Henry Newman, who gave the title 'The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated' to a series of lectures originally given at Dublin in the 1850s. Newman thought that knowledge should be pursued 'for its own sake'. But by this he did not mean pure research. For him the search for truth was part of an educational ideal which shaped the personality of the cultivated man, and was inseparable from moral and religious education. This ideal required a pastoral relationship between teacher and student, and it derived from Newman's early experience as a college tutor at Oxford. - Newman thought that the personal gifts needed for research and teaching were quite different, and that research was best conducted outside universities. He also described the university as a place of 'universal knowledge', in which specialized training, though valid in itself, was subordinate to the pursuit of a broader liberal education. These ideals, later developed by other Victorian apostles of culture like Matthew Arnold, became the basis of a characteristic British belief that education should aim at producing generalists rather 37 - Much of the poem’s charm stems from its sense of mystery and elusiveness; of course, these aspects also complicate the task of analysis. That said, most scholars understand “The Lady of Shalott” to be about the conflict between art and life. The Lady, who weaves her magic web and sings her song in a remote tower, can be seen to represent the contemplative artist isolated from the bustle and activity of daily life. The moment she sets her art aside to gaze down on the real world, a curse befalls her and she meets her tragic death. The poem thus captures the conflict between an artist’s desire for social involvement and his/her doubts about whether such a commitment is viable for someone dedicated to art. The poem may also express a more personal dilemma for Tennyson as a specific artist: while he felt an obligation to seek subject matter outside the world of his own mind and his own immediate experiences—to comment on politics, history, or a more general humanity—he also feared that this expansion into broader territories might destroy his poetry’s magic. - Part I and Part IV of this poem deal with the Lady of Shalott as she appears to the outside world, whereas Part II and Part III describe the world from the Lady’s perspective. In Part I, Tennyson portrays the Lady as secluded from the rest of the world by both water and the height of her tower. We are not told how she spends her time or what she thinks about; thus we, too, like everyone in the poem, are denied access to the interiority of her world. Interestingly, the only people who know that she exists are those whose occupations are most diametrically opposite her own: the reapers who toil in physical labor rather than by sitting and crafting works of beauty. - Part II describes the Lady’s experience of imprisonment from her own perspective. We learn that her alienation results from a mysterious curse: she is not allowed to look out on Camelot, so all her knowledge of the world must come from the reflections and shadows in her mirror. (It was common for weavers to use mirrors to see the progress of their tapestries from the side that would eventually be displayed to the viewer.) Tennyson notes that often she sees a funeral or a wedding, a disjunction that suggests the interchangeability, and hence the conflation, of love and death for the Lady: indeed, when she later falls in love with Lancelot, she will simultaneously bring upon her own death. - Whereas Part II makes reference to all the different types of people that the Lady sees through her mirror, including the knights who “come riding two and two” (line 61), Part III focuses on one particular knight who captures the Lady’s attention: Sir Lancelot. This dazzling knight is the hero of the King Arthur stories, famous for his illicit affair with the beautiful Queen Guinevere. He is described in an array of colors: he is a “red-cross knight”; his shield “sparkled on the yellow field”; he wears a “silver bugle”; he passes through “blue unclouded weather” and the “purple night,” and he has “coal-black curls.” He is also adorned in a “gemmy bridle” and other bejeweled garments, which sparkle in the light. Yet in spite of the rich visual details that Tennyson provides, it is the sound and not the sight of Lancelot that causes the Lady of Shalott to transgress her set boundaries: only when she hears him sing “Tirra lirra” does she leave her web and seal her doom. The intensification of the Lady’s experiences in this part of the poem is marked by the shift from the static, descriptive present tense of Parts I and II to the dynamic, active past of Parts III and IV. - In Part IV, all the lush color of the previous section gives way to “pale yellow” and “darkened” eyes, and the brilliance of the sunlight is replaced by a “low sky raining.” The moment the Lady sets her art aside to look upon Lancelot, she is seized with death. The end of her artistic isolation thus leads to the end of creativity: “Out flew her web and floated wide” (line 114). She also loses her mirror, which had been her only access to the outside world: “The mirror cracked from side to side” (line 115). Her turn to the outside 40 world thus leaves her bereft both of her art object and of the instrument of her craft—and of her very life. Yet perhaps the greatest curse of all is that although she surrenders herself to the sight of Lancelot, she dies completely unappreciated by him. The poem ends with the tragic triviality of Lancelot’s response to her tremendous passion: all he has to say about her is that “she has a lovely face” (line 169). Having abandoned her artistry, the Lady of Shalott becomes herself an art object; no longer can she offer her creativity, but merely a “dead-pale” beauty (line 157).  Ulysses - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson was written in the aftermath of a close friend’s death (Arthur Hallam). In this poem, Tennyson attempted to come to terms with the loss. Taking one of the most famous characters from one of the most famous stories ever told – “Ulysses” (otherwise known as Odysseus) from Homer’s epics, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” – and repurposes the story to fit Tennyson’s themes. The story of Ulysses is perhaps most famous for the kidnapping of Helen of Troy and the efforts of Ulysses and his men to take her back from the Trojans. Homer’s story involves the Trojan horse, the Cyclops, and Ulysses’s efforts to make it back home to reach his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson presents the indomitable courage and adventurous zeal of old Ulysses. - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson attempts to imagine life from the perspective of the title character, Ulysses. After ten years away from home, the Greek is now faced with the prospect of one final voyage. But, after a decade of adventures, the character dwells on whether he wants to remain with the mundanity and boredom of life at home, as well as whether he is the same man who left all those years ago. - Put simply, Ulysses is a man of adventure. The poem focuses on whether he could ever tolerate a simple, traditional home life. Instead, he imagines life on the open seas, the perils of his adventures, and the chances to demonstrate his bravery. But he is growing old. Looking back over his life, as well as his present and potential future, Ulysses considers how he feels about his mortality. - Structure and Form of Ulysses - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson contains an important poetic form. The text takes the form of a dramatic monologue, delivered directly to the audience. There is not exactly an intended target – not the protagonist’s son or wife – but more, the world at large. In fact, in the 49th line, Ulysses does make one indication of who his audience might be, suggesting that both ‘you and I are old,’ indicating the aged nature of the world around him, hoping to elicit some sympathy from the reader. - This form is slightly different from a soliloquy (such as the Soliloquies in one of Shakespeare’s plays) in that it is not spoken to a theatrical audience, but rather to the wider readership. Readers can think of it as one half of a conversation. Such a narrative technique in poetry is referred to as dramatic monologue. - Meter and Sound of Ulysses - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson uses a very specific meter. An incredibly talented poet, Tennyson knew exactly how to fit his words into the exact structural templates he selected. In this instance, he chose iambic pentameter, a traditional form used in the English language. This choice means that every line has ten syllables, split into five groups of two (known as ‘iambs’ or ‘feet.’) Each one of these two-syllable features first an unstressed 41 syllable, followed by a stressed one. For example: “It little profits that an idle king”. Breaking this down, we can see the unstressed/stressed syllables as: - It lit/tle pro/fits that/ an id/le king - The bolded words are the stressed syllables, each one following the first, unstressed syllable of the iamb. Let’s look at another line: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. Becomes: - To strive,/ to seek,/ to find,/ and not/ to yield - Perhaps the most famous line in the poem, the closing line demonstrates how iambic pentameter most obviously adds a pounding rhythm, formally imposed by the meter. Having resolved to turn his attentions back to the adventure, Ulysses’ thoughts beat with the definitive pounding of a war drum and this is reflected in the poet’s arrangement of the words. - But occasionally, Tennyson throws in a slight variation. In the 69th line, for example, the words ‘made weak’ are both stressed, implying the revulsion and disgust the speaker feels about such a subject, almost as though he is spitting them out. When there are two stressed syllables in a meter such as this, we refer to it as a spondee. - Another variation is a trochee, which refers to swapping around the stressed and unstressed parts of the syllables. In the 7th line, for example, “Life to” places the stress very much on the first word of the line, emphasizing its importance. Little variations such as these can help to add a more natural feel to language, seeing as no one really speaks in iambic pentameter at all times. - Literary Devices in Ulysses - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson contains significant literary devices that make the speaker’s voice forceful and appealing in the poem. Likewise, the speaker of the poem Ulysses uses “still hearth” and “barren crags” as metaphors. These two metaphors refer to a single idea of immobility and idleness. The line, “That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me”, is an anticlimax. Here, the ideas get arranged in descending order of importance. It heightens the verbal effect of the speaker on the audience. “I will drink Life to the lees.” Who does not know this line? It is a beautiful example of a metaphor. Here, life is compared to water or wine. However, the idea is simple. The poet as well as his persona wants to dive deep into life and drink its essence to the end. There is an antithesis in the phrases in juxtaposition, “enjoy’d greatly” and “suffer’d greatly”. - In the poem, there is a personal metaphor in the phrase “hungry heart”. Here, the poet associates desire with spiritual hunger. The poet makes use of sound effects by employing the device called onomatopoeia in the line, “Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.” There are several epigrams in the poem like “To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”, Old age hath yet his honour and his toil”, and “It is not too late to seek a newer world.” There are other literary devices too in the poem that are important concerning the overall idea and essence of the poem. The poet ends his poem with a climax and the line is also a famous one in English Literature. It is, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” The poet, Tennyson never yielded to the circumstances like Ulysses. - Themes and Symbolism in Ulysses - ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson encompasses many important themes. The first and foremost theme of the poem is optimism. The poet presents the spirit of hope by using the character of Ulysses. Ulysses was old enough for continuing his lifelong voyage. Still, he was persistent. For an optimistic attitude towards life, he started for the sea again. Another important theme of the poem is brotherhood. Ulysses is the greatest example of brotherhood. He never left his companions even if they were old and dropping. He injected 42 - Wordsworth was another poet who identified the "Gleam" as the "fitful nature of inspiration" in Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont (1806). - Without doubt Tennyson's identification of Nimue with the "Gleam" resulted from his reading of the poem "Merlin" by the Scottish poet, philosopher, and historian John Veitch (April 1889). - Veitch writes of the Merlin of the North, Merlin Caledonius, known also as Merlin Wylt and Silvestris, and stresses he should not be identified with Myrdin Emrys, or Merlin Ambrosius, the prophet of Vortigern. The is the Merlin who was present at the battle of Ardderyd in 573 who, after the defeat of his leader Gwenddoleu and his army, fled into the Caledonian forest. - In Veitch's poem, “The Gleam” is Merlin's early love, the Hwimleian, who appearing as a glint on the hill, sings. - From the earliest accounts of Merlin the wizard has been attached to sources of inspiration. Veitch's Merlin seems to have been inspired by the Myrddin poems from the Red Book of Hergest and the Black Book of Carmarthen centred on the Merlin (Myrddin) of the North. Veitch's poem is a conversation between Merlin, Gwendydd (The Dawn) his twin-sister and Hwimleian (The Gleam) his early love. This is reminiscent of Cyfoesi Myrddin a Gwenddydd ei Chwaer ('The Conversation of Myrddin and his Sister Gwenddydd'). - In the Myrddin poems from the Books of Hergest and Carmarthen the Hwimleian is a spirit, the Voice of the Forest and the source of the wizard's prophetic inspiration.  From In Memoriam A.H. H. - "In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1850. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, aged 22. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest poems of the 19th century. - The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and emotions as he grieves over the death of a close friend. He views the cruelty of nature and mortality in light of materialist science and faith. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense. - Form: “In Memoriam” consists of 131 smaller poems of varying length. Each short poem is comprised of isometric stanzas. The stanzas are iambic tetrameter quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABBA, a form that has since become known as the “In Memoriam Stanza.” (Of course, Tennyson did not invent the form—it appears in earlier works such as Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle”—but he did produce an enduring and memorable example of it.) With the ABBA rhyme scheme, the poem resolves itself in each quatrain; it cannot propel itself forward: each stanza seems complete, closed. Thus to move from one stanza to the next is a motion that does not come automatically to us by virtue of the rhyme scheme; rather, we must will it ourselves; this force of will symbolizes the poet’s difficulty in moving on after the loss of his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam. - Commentary: Tennyson wrote “In Memoriam” after he learned that his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a fever at the age of 22. Hallam was not only the poet’s closest friend and confidante, but also the fiance of his sister. After learning of Hallam’s death, Tennyson was overwhelmed with doubts about the 45 meaning of life and the significance of man’s existence. He composed the short poems that comprise “In Memoriam” over the course of seventeen years (1833-1849) with no intention of weaving them together, though he ultimately published them as a single lengthy poem in 1850. - T.S. Eliot called this poem “the most unapproachable of all his [Tennyson’s] poems,” and indeed, the sheer length of this work encumbers one’s ability to read and study it. Moreover, the poem contains no single unifying theme, and its ideas do not unfold in any particular order. It is loosely organized around three Christmas sections (28, 78, and 104), each of which marks another year that the poet must endure after the loss of Hallam. The climax of the poem is generally considered to be Section 95, which is based on a mystical trance Tennyson had in which he communed with the dead spirit of Hallam late at night on the lawn at his home at Somersby. - “In Memoriam” was intended as an elegy, or a poem in memory and praise of one who has died. As such, it contains all of the elements of a traditional pastoral elegy such as Milton’s “Lycidas,” including ceremonial mourning for the dead, praise of his virtues, and consolation for his loss. Moreover, all statements by the speaker can be understood as personal statements by the poet himself. Like most elegies, the “In Memoriam” poem begins with expressions of sorrow and grief, followed by the poet’s recollection of a happy past spent with the individual he is now mourning. These fond recollections lead the poet to question the powers in the universe that could allow a good person to die, which gives way to more general reflections on the meaning of life. Eventually, the poet’s attitude shifts from grief to resignation. Finally, in the climax, he realizes that his friend is not lost forever but survives in another, higher form. The poem closes with a celebration of this transcendent survival. - “In Memoriam” ends with a an epithalamion, or wedding poem, celebrating the marriage of Tennyson’s sister Cecilia to Edmund Lushington in 1842. The poet suggests that their marriage will lead to the birth of a child who will serve as a closer link between Tennyson’s generation and the “crowning race.” This birth also represents new life after the death of Hallam, and hints at a greater, cosmic purpose, which Tennyson vaguely describes as “One far-off divine event / To which the whole creation moves.” - Not just an elegy and an epithalamion, the poem is also a deeply philosophical reflection on religion, science, and the promise of immortality. Tennyson was deeply troubled by the proliferation of scientific knowledge about the origins of life and human progress: while he was writing this poem, Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology, which undermined the biblical creation story, and Robert Chambers published his early evolutionary tract, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. In “In Memoriam,” Tennyson insisted that we hold fast to our faith in a higher power in spite of our inability to prove God’s existence: “Believing where we cannot prove.” He reflects early evolutionary theories in his faith that man, through a process lasting millions of years, is developing into something greater. In the end, Tennyson replaces the doctrine of the immortality of the soul with the immortality of mankind through evolution, thereby achieving a synthesis between his profound religious faith and the new scientific ideas of his day.  Idylls of the King - Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the most important poet of the Victorian period, and his works include some of the finest poetry in the English language. The Idylls of the King is one of his best-known compositions and has much of lasting value to offer the reader. 46 - The Idylls of the King deals with an exciting era in English history and with such fascinating and familiar characters as King Arthur, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, and the other Knights of the Round Table. The poem is difficult in parts, as many worthwhile books are, but reading it will be a rewarding and inspiring experience. - The tales about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, from which Tennyson drew the inspiration and substance of his Idylls, form an extensive body of medieval literature. The Arthurian legends have always had a firm hold on the English imagination, due to the heroic and evocative picture of the British past which they present. Tennyson was under great pressure to compose a long poem on an epic theme, and it was only natural for him to have selected as his subject the figure who would arouse strong sentiments of patriotism, pride, and admiration in the hearts of all Englishmen. - There is practically no historical evidence about the real King Arthur. It is considered probable, however, that he was a minor king or war-leader of the Celtic Britons who, sometime in the fifth or sixth century A.D., led his people in a stubborn and temporarily successful resistance against the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Despite Arthur's legendary twelve battles, culminating in the great victory at Mount Badon, the Anglo-Saxons were ultimately triumphant and drove the defeated Britons into the remote regions of Scotland and Wales. It was in these areas that the Arthurian legends first arose. - Whoever Arthur was, and whatever his real achievement, there is no question that he rapidly became the most important hero and the central figure of British legendary history. It is considered likely that many ancient Celtic myths and traditions became attached to his name. Furthermore, as time passed, various other legendary figures such as Gawain, Bedivere, Lancelot, and Tristram, who had once all been independent, became secondary to Arthur in the later versions of the sagas. Arthur's fame was widespread, and early legends about him are reported from such diverse areas as Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. By the end of the Middle Ages, he was the hero of romances composed even in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. - The earliest documentary account of Arthur is found in the Historia Britonum, composed by the Welsh Nennius (around 796). The first important extended description of Arthur's career is in the Historia Regium Britanniae written by Geoffrey of Monmouth about 1140, although it has been suggested that the author actually invented many of the incidents he reports. Additional personal and historical details are found in the Annales Cambriae (c. 954), the Norman-French version of Geoffrey's Historia, composed by Wace (1155), the Gesta Regum Anglorum, written by William of Malmesbury in 1125, the chronicle of Layamon (early 13th century), as well as a few other Welsh and English sources. - In addition to these pseudo-historical accounts, there were from the earliest times a large number of bardic songs and lays dealing with a host of characters and events from the now extensive Arthurian saga. - A great number of these derive from the Welsh tradition. These are thought to be among the most important sources since Arthur was supposed to have been the leader of the Celtic Britons, from whom the Welsh are descended. The most considerable collection of these Welsh legendary tales is known as the Mabinogion. The oldest poems in this collection have been attributed to the sixth century A.D. This date may be questionable, but the Mabinogion definitely contains many primitive elements and was certainly composed in a very early period. - Later in the Middle Ages, elaborate and cultivated forms of metrical and prose romances were developed, and Arthurian themes provided the most popular subject matter. The 47 - Furthermore, Tennyson's prosody has a rhythmic and metrical precision that has rarely been achieved or duplicated by other poets. As an artist, Tennyson was a perfectionist; he had a superb ear for delicate nuances of sound, a matchless smoothness and purity of diction. His work is outstanding for its technical and stylistic polish. Much of Tennyson's poetry is now considered dated and of little worth, and some of it was never of any real value, but he also composed a number of great poems which are cherished among the treasures of the English literary heritage. F. L. Lucas, in his final evaluation of Tennyson, states: - . . . after the laughter, there is room, still more, for silent wonder at this master, who, coming so late in our literature, yet made such music, never heard before, and now surely to be heard through the centuries, from the English country and the English tongue — "Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible earth, Lord of the senses five." 13) Robert Browning (1812-1889)  My Last Duchess - Summary: This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection. - Form: “My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they use enjambment—gthat is, sentences and other grammatical units do not necessarily conclude at the end of lines. Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure when they come, but rather remain a subtle driving force behind the Duke’s compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite a performer: he mimics others’ voices, creates hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his personality to make horrifying information seem merely colorful. Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the speaker is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem; and the revelation of the Duke’s character is the poem’s primary aim. - Commentary: But Browning has more in mind than simply creating a colorful character and placing him in a picturesque historical scene. Rather, the specific historical setting of the poem harbors much significance: the Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemporaries, for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in the place of, the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to again explore sex, violence, and aesthetics as all entangled, complicating and confusing each other: the lushness of the language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The Duke’s ravings suggest that most of the supposed transgressions took place only in his mind. Like some of 50 Browning’s fellow Victorians, the Duke sees sin lurking in every corner. The reason the speaker here gives for killing the Duchess ostensibly differs from that given by the speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover” for murder Porphyria; however, both women are nevertheless victims of a male desire to inscribe and fix female sexuality. The desperate need to do this mirrors the efforts of Victorian society to mold the behavior—gsexual and otherwise—gof individuals. For people confronted with an increasingly complex and anonymous modern world, this impulse comes naturally: to control would seem to be to conserve and stabilize. The Renaissance was a time when morally dissolute men like the Duke exercised absolute power, and as such it is a fascinating study for the Victorians: works like this imply that, surely, a time that produced magnificent art like the Duchess’s portrait couldn’t have been entirely evil in its allocation of societal control—geven though it put men like the Duke in power. - A poem like “My Last Duchess” calculatedly engages its readers on a psychological level. Because we hear only the Duke’s musings, we must piece the story together ourselves. Browning forces his reader to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, and this adds to the fun of reading his work. It also forces the reader to question his or her own response to the subject portrayed and the method of its portrayal. We are forced to consider, Which aspect of the poem dominates: the horror of the Duchess’s fate, or the beauty of the language and the powerful dramatic development? Thus by posing this question the poem firstly tests the Victorian reader’s response to the modern world—git asks, Has everyday life made you numb yet?—gand secondly asks a question that must be asked of all art—git queries, Does art have a moral component, or is it merely an aesthetic exercise? In these latter considerations Browning prefigures writers like Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde.  A Toccata of Galuppi's - Summary: Published in the 1855 volume Men and Women, “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” gives the reflections of a man who is either playing or listening to a piece by the 18th-century Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi. A toccata is a short, showy piece meant to allow a musician to show off his skill. The music inspires in the speaker visions of Venice: he sees these images in rich detail, even though he has not left England. He envisions a masked ball at which Galuppi performs, and he invents a conversation between two lovers at the ball, who speak of love and happiness in trivial terms. The sense of corruption and decay hangs heavy over the scene, though, and the speaker imagines Galuppi berating Venice for its soullessness and wild ways. The combined melancholy and gaiety produce a powerful effect on the speaker. - Form: This poem is famous for its form. It is one of the few poems in English to be written in octameter: sixteen-syllable, or eight-stress, lines. Moreover, the stresses display a trochaic pattern (stressed followed by unstressed syllables), which can be difficult to sustain in English. Just as a toccata is a kind of virtuoso performance, so this poem represents a kind of metrical bravado: Browning shows off his technical skills. He performs yet another flourish by writing in rhyming triplets, another difficult poetic task in English, which has a vocabulary short on rhymes compared to that of many European languages. The poem’s language therefore attains a kind of flamboyant, musical effect, which, although it can obscure the poem’s content at times, constitutes an accomplishment in itself. - Commentary: This poem’s air of ruined decadence can be seen as a logical continuation of earlier poems such as “My Last Duchess,” which celebrate high Renaissance glory. The 51 poem introduces science as an alternative to art: some critics theorize that the speaker of this poem is actually supposed to be a scientist himself (see stanza 13). However, whether we cling to science or art, ultimately neither has proven able to keep humanity from decay. (On the other hand, the power that Galuppi’s toccata possesses over the speaker seems to suggest that art and music may offer some residual immortality.) Galuppi’s music most interests the speaker is its persistent motifs of discord followed by resolution: the struggle within the music seems to echo the struggles of life. Indeed, the triplet form of the poem itself mirrors this: the third rhyming line dangles and is only resolved when the next stanza introduces a new rhyme. Discord can find only temporary resolution, though—for each following stanza, like each following generation, contains its own, new conflicts. Melancholy figures prominently in Victorian literature, and the speaker’s attitude at the end of “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” evokes a decidedly melancholy mood. This poem suggests that the kind of art that evokes melancholy may best reflect the reality of life.  Fra Lippo Lippi - Summary: “Fra Lippo Lippi,” another of Browning’s dramatic monologues, appeared in the 1855 collection Men and Women. Fra (Brother) Lippo Lippi was an actual Florentine monk who lived in the fifteenth century. He was a painter of some renown, and Browning most probably gained familiarity with his works during the time he spent in Italy. “Fra Lippo Lippi” introduces us to the monk as he is being interrogated by some Medici watchmen, who have caught him out at night. Because Lippo’s patron is Cosimo de Medici, he has little to fear from the guards, but he has been out partying and is clearly in a mood to talk. He shares with the men the hardships of monastic life: he is forced to carry on his relationships with women in secret, and his superiors are always defeating his good spirits. But Lippo’s most important statements concern the basis of art: should art be realistic and true-to-life, or should it be idealistic and didactic? Should Lippo’s paintings of saints look like the Prior’s mistress and the men of the neighborhood, or should they evoke an otherworldly surreality? Which kind of art best serves religious purposes? Should art even serve religion at all? Lippo’s rambling speech touches on all of these issues. - Form: “Fra Lippo Lippi” takes the form of blank verse—unrhymed lines, most of which fall roughly into iambic pentameter. As in much of his other poetry, Browning seeks to capture colloquial speech, and in many parts of the poem he succeeds admirably: Lippo includes outbursts, bits of songs, and other odds and ends in his rant. In his way Browning brilliantly captures the feel of a late-night, drunken encounter. - Commentary: The poem centers thematically around the discussion of art that takes place around line 180. Lippo has painted a group of figures that are the spitting image of people in the community: the Prior’s mistress, neighborhood men, etc. Everyone is amazed at his talent, and his great show of talent gains him his place at the monastery. However, his talent for depicting reality comes into conflict with the stated religious goals of the Church. The Church leadership believes that their parishioners will be distracted by the sight of people they know within the painting: as the Prior and his cohorts say, “ ‘Your business is not to catch men with show, / With homage to the perishable clay.../ Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh. / Your business is to paint the souls of men.’ ” In part the Church authorities’ objections stem not from any real religious concern, but from a concern for their own reputation: Lippo has gotten a little too close to the truth with his depictions of actual persons as historical figures—the Prior’s “niece” (actually his mistress) has been portrayed as the seductive Salome. However, the conflict between Lippo and the Church elders also cuts to the very heart of questions about art: is the primary purpose of 52 - Regularly interjecting his own wonder into the telling, the speaker continues the scholar- gipsy's story. Every once in a while, people would claim to have seen him in the Berkshire moors. The speaker imagines him as a shadowy figure who is waiting for the "spark from heaven," just like everyone else on Earth is. The speaker even claims to have seen the scholar-gipsy himself once, even though it has been over two hundred years since his story first resonated through the halls of Oxford. - Despite that length of time, the speaker does not believe the scholar-gipsy could have died, since he had renounced the life of mortal man, including those things that wear men out to death: "repeated shocks, again, again/exhaust the energy of strongest souls." Having chosen to repudiate this style of life, the scholar-gipsy does not suffer from such "shocks," but instead is "free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt." He has escaped the perils of modern life, which are slowly creeping up and destroying men like a "strange disease." - The speaker finishes by imploring that the scholar-gipsy avoid everyone who suffers from this "disease," lest he become infected as well. - Analysis: Though this poem explores one of Arnold's signature themes - the depressing monotony and toil of modern life - it is unique in that it works through a narrative. There are in fact two levels of storytelling at work in the poem: that of the scholar-gipsy, and that of the speaker who is grappling with the ideas poised by that singular figure. - Both levels of story relay the same message: the scholar-gipsy has transcended life by escaping modern life. As he usually does, Arnold here criticizes modern life as wearing down even the strongest of men. His choice of the word "disease" is telling, since it implies that this lifestyle is contagious. Even those who try to avoid modern life will eventually become infected. - In this way, the poem makes a comment on the perils of conformity, as other poems in this collection do. What make the scholar-gipsy so powerful is not only that he wishes to avoid modern life - many wish to do that. More importantly, he is willing to entirely repudiate normal society for the sake of his transcendence. There is a slightly pessimistic worldview implicit in that idea, since it is clearly not possible to revel in true individuality and still be a part of society. The scholar-gipsy has had to turn his back entirely on Oxford, which represents learning and modernity here, in order to become this great figure. And yet the poem overall is much more optimistic than many of Arnold's works, precisely because it suggests that we can transcend if we are willing to pay that cost. This makes it different from a poem like "A Summer Night," which explores the same theme but laments the cost of separation that individuality requires. - For all his admiration, the speaker clearly has not yet mustered the strength to repudiate the world. The setting helps establish his contradictory feelings. The poem begins with images of peaceful, serene rural life, a place where men act as they always have. They have been untouched by the perils of modernity. Pastoral imagery has always been associated in poetry with a type of innocence and purity, unfiltered humanity in touch with nature. The speaker is out in the field contemplating this type of life, the possibility of acting as the scholar-gipsy did. - And yet he is also studying the towers of Oxford, which (as mentioned above) represents the rapidly changing, strictly structured world that the scholar-gipsy renounced. Arnold deftly expresses the speaker's split priorities through this juxtaposition. At the same time that he admires the scholar-gipsy, he cannot fully turn his back on the modern world. It is the same contradiction that plagues the speaker of "A Summer Night." Thus, the poem overall represents Arnold's inner conflict, his desire to live a transcendent life but inability to totally eschew society. At this point in his life, Arnold felt pulled in different directions by 55 the world's demands. He was trying to resist the infection of modernization, but it was creeping up on him nevertheless, and the pressure to conform was negatively affecting his poetry. Undoubtedly, Arnold wished he could escape in the way the scholar-gipsy did; however, he was too tied down by responsibilities to ever dream of doing so.  Dover Beach - ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold was published in 1867 in the volume entitled New Poems. This piece is made up of four stanzas containing a variable number of lines. They range in length from fourteen to six lines in length. There is no consistent rhyme scheme but there are a number of random end rhymes such as “-and” and “-ay” throughout the poem and it is written in irregular iambic pentameter. - “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold is a dramatic monologue lamenting the loss of true Christian faith in England during the mid 1800s as science captured the minds of the public. The poet’s speaker, considered to be Matthew Arnold himself, begins by describing a calm and quiet sea out in the English Channel. He stands on the Dover coast and looks across to France where a small light can be seen briefly, and then vanishes. This light represents the diminishing faith of the English people, and those the world around. Throughout this poem the speaker/Arnold crafts an image of the sea receding and returning to land with the faith of the world as it changes throughout time. At this point in time though, the sea is not returning. It is receding farther out into the strait. - Faith used to encompass the whole world, holding the populous tight in its embrace. Now though, it is losing ground to the sciences, particularly those related to evolution (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859). The poem concludes pessimistically as the speaker makes clear to the reader that all the beauty and happiness that one may believe they are experiencing is not in fact real. The world is actually without peace, joy, or help for those in need and the human race is too distracted by its own ignorance to see where true assistance is needed anymore.  From The Function of Criticism at the Present Time - Introduction: The essay The Function of Criticism at the Present Time was published by Matthew Arnold in his first collection of critical writing ‘Essays in Criticism’ in 1865. The essay deals with Arnold’s interpretation of criticism and his critique of writers who write politically or religiously biased literature thus narrowing its scope. - Idea vs. Reality: Arnold starts his essay by saying, “Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now, many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is.” and adds, “false and malicious criticism had better never been made.” Here Arnold explains the basic task of any critic. According to him, a critic must perceive any object (work) as it is, without thinking about the other conditions. Thus for him, the text should be the whole and a critic should never take the help of any other text for its explanation. In the next line, he condemns the false criticism (which is not original and is biased). Arnold believes that the creator of a text is greater than its critic because “creative activity is the true function of man”, however, it is the critic who draws the true meaning of that particular work of literature. According to Arnold, for a production of a great literary work, “the power of man” and “the power of moment” i.e. climate of great ideas must concur. If anyone of them is absent then a great work of literature will never be produced. To explain this, Arnold takes the example of two poets- Goethe and Byron. Both Goethe and Byron had great productive power yet the work of 56 Goethe is more productive than that of Byron because the former had a rich cultural background which the latter lacked. Similarly, Shakespeare was not a deep reader. His fame and glory were only because his age had a climate of great ideas. Next, he says that the French Revolution, with its writers like Rousseau and Voltaire, was more powerful than the English Revolution of Charles (of great ideas of Renaissance). However the English Revolution is though practically less successful than the French Revolution yet it is better than the letter as it “appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain permanent”. French Revolution quitted the intellectual sphere and rushed into the political sphere, thus losing its universal application. French Revolution was followed by “Epoch of Concentration” (period of single-mindedness) which could not live long and was followed by “Epoch of Expansion” (period of creative ideas). The works written on the French Revolution (like that of Burke) are though great and well appreciated yet they are biased as they combine politics with thought. - Use of Disinterestedness: Having explained this Arnold moves towards the nature of critic, his thinking, and his work. According to him, a critic must maintain a position of “disinterestedness,” i.e. keeping aloof from “the practical view of things“ in order to “know the best that is known and thought in the world, and in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.” Here in these lines, he explains the task of a critic in a 3-fold way: First, a critic must know about life and the world before writing anything and see the things as they are. Second, he should promote his ideas to others and make the best ideas prevail in society. Third, he must create an atmosphere for the creation of the genius of the future by promoting these noble. honest and true ideas. Arnold criticises the literature produced during the Victorian age. According to him, there is a failure of criticism due to the division of society and intellectuals into small political and religious groups that makes them incapable of seeing things in their true states. He cites the example of various works of literature which were written to promote the writers’ own political agendas. e.g. the Edinburgh Review represents views of the Whigs; the Quarterly Review represents views of Tories; the British Quarterly Review represents the views of political Dissenters, and the Times represents the views of the “rich Englishman.” On the other hand, he also criticises the “constructive” suggestions for living presented by Bishop Colenso and Miss Cobbe.For him, they have religious influence in their writings which is again against the spirit of true criticism. He also tells that the common man lacks creativity. - Duty of Criticism: Arnold says that criticism must maintain its independence from the practical spirit and its aims. It must express dissatisfaction even with well-meant efforts of the practical spirit if in the sphere of the ideal they seem lacking. It must be patient and not hurry on to the goal because of its practical importance, know how to wait, and know how to attach itself as well as withdraw from things. - Conclusion: Arnold talks about a person who regrets the loss of zeal which once existed but is no longer present in contemporary society due to the influence of politics and religion on ideas. Thus he gives voice to commoners views to enhance the glory of the past. He advises the critics to adopt disinterested behaviour towards criticism. They should take into consideration foreign thought as well. Their judgments should be from their own mind without any biases and should communicate fresh knowledge to their readers. The criticism is capable of making progress in Europe taking it towards perfection. In the end, he defends his views on criticism and says that he won’t change his opinion for any person who deviates from his theory of criticism  From The Study of Poetry 57 - Connotations: The first two stanzas contain an ABAB rhyme scheme. The last stanza is different-ABCB-because the emotions associated with death are confusing and disheartening, something not well reflected through consistent end rhyme. In the beginning of "She Sat & Sang", words such as "sang", "green", "leap and play", and "glad sunbeam" all denote a happy, warm time. The shift that occurs after the first stanza is blatantly obvious because the speaker changes subject from "She" to "I" and changes mood from "sang" to "wept". The imagery of "the moon's most shadowy beam" is indicative of grieving and the "blossoms of May", which represent Spring, "weep leaves into the stream"; the good developments of Spring are fading in this darker "time" that we the reader depict as mourning. The last two lines suggest that both the memory of the female that "sat and sang" and the speaker's pain associated with her loss were both eventually forgotten; "tears were swallowed by the sea" and "songs died in the air". - Attitude: The first stanza of "She Sat & Sang" has a tone of reminiscence because it was positive and told by the speaker about someone else in the past tense. After the first stanza, there is a shift to grief made clear by the speaker's subject change from another female in her life to herself and instead of singing, there was weeping. The speaker was obviously devastated by the loss of her friend/family member (we aren't really sure?) but the last two lines suggest that the loss was dealt with in time and eventually pretty much forgotten. Based on the text and the observations made in Connotations, I believe that if the speaker were reading this poem aloud to us, the first stanza would be read with a smile, the second stanza would be read with a pain-stricken look (potentially some tears), and the last two lines wouldn't be read until the speaker recollected him/herself and took a nice deep breath of relief. - Shifts: In the beginning of "She Sat & Sang", words such as "sang", "green", "leap and play", and "glad sunbeam" all denote a happy, warm time. The shift that occurs after the first stanza is blatantly obvious because the speaker changes subject from "She" to "I" and changes mood from "sang" to "wept". The first stanza of "She Sat & Sang" has a tone of reminiscence because it was positive and told by the speaker about someone else in the past tense. After the first stanza, there is a shift to grief made clear by the speaker's subject change from another female in her life to herself and instead of singing, there was weeping. - Theme: Death and mourning are hard to conquer, but time heals all. Painful memories are not necessarily forgotten, but the can reside peacefully in one's mind. - POV: This poem is told in first person from a male or female about a female that was a friend or family member; we aren't sure, but we do know it was someone that speaker cared for enough to mourn extensively. Christina Rossetti was a sickly person and it is possible that this poem was written by her about one of her family members or friends mourning-odd as it may sound-herself. It is also possible that this poem was written in honor of someone she loved. Before she became ill, Rossetti had a bustling social life, so it is possible that this poem was about one of her many "friends" that she mourned for a brief period and then essentially "forgot" about.  A Triad - In this poem, a sonnet, Christina Rosetti explores the dilemma of Victorian women — she cites three examples — who struggled to find happiness and fulfilment in a restrictive society, with its rigid expectations of what women should be and should aspire to. A woman was required to be submissive and sweet, not to exercise independence of thought or spirit, and to be obedient to the wishes and opinions of her husband. A higher death 60 rate amongst male children, plus the requirement of many men to live and work in the colonies reduced the number of marriageable partners. Unmarried women were considered social failures and lived stunted, unfulfilled lives. The worst fate was for women whose poverty or misfortune led them to work as prostitutes. - Rossetti’s “Triad” comprised a “fallen” woman, a young woman who sought love but was treated as a trophy wife to display, and a wife who was lonely within a loveless marriage. All three were naturally unhappy. The poet was deeply aware of the stultifying nature of Victorian society’s expectations, hence her final comment “yet all short of life”. - Structure: The sonnet template suits the solemn theme. Rossetti chose the Italian or Petrarchan form. For fuller explanation see below. There is a typical rhyming pattern, ABAB BCBC DEF DFE. There is no identiable volta or “turn” that signifies a change of perspective. The metrical rhythm is broadly iambic pentameter, that is five metrical feet or iambs per line, where a iamb is made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable. Rossetti deviates from this at several points, notably at the beginning of lines two and three. - Language and Imagery: The voice is that of a third person narrator, we can assume the poet, who describes the three women. The mood is restrained and understated, and therefore all the more effective in its depiction of sadness. - The three women are allegories representing the three life situations that trapped them. - Rossetti uses vivid, sensual description to portray the women, using colours — crimson and yellow for example — and sounds — the harpstring — and texture — “smooth as snow” — to represent them. - More About Sonnets: A sonnet is a poem that expresses a thought or idea and develops it, often cleverly and wittily. It is made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the following schemes: - Italian, where eight lines consisting of two quatrains make up the first section of the sonnet, called an octave. This will open the the poem with a question or an idea. It is followed by the next section of six lines called a sestet, that forms the ‘answer’ or a counter-view. This style of sonnet is also sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet, after the Italian poet of that name. - English which comprises three quatrains, making twelve lines, followed by a rhyming couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. Edmund Spenser’s sonnets are a variant. - At the break in the sonnet — in Italian after the first eight lines, in English after twelve lines — there is a ‘turn’ or volta, after which there will be a change or new perspective on the preceding idea. - Language: The metre is is usually iambic pentameter, solemn and rhythmic, that conveys an impression of dignity and seriousness. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this rhythm.  A Life’s Parallels - In “A Life’s Parallels”, one of Christina Rossetti’s shorter sonnets, Rossetti utilizes her poetry of renunciation in a very peculiar way. Instead of drawing a fine line where the “no” becomes an emblem of uncertainty or absolute rejection, the “no” becomes a medium for both. For instance, the third and last stanza of the poem seems to suggest that the poet is refusing to look back upon his or her life while at the same time being pursued by his or her fading memories. - We can see in the first two lines of the stanza, the poet is ardently refusing to reminisce, “ah never!” will he or she look back into the past and despair or regret. Just when one would normally assume that the renunciation ends here, the poet continues to say that 61 while it is faint, he or she is still being chased by his or her memories. Just as much as the title of the poem suggests, the uncertainty and definiteness of Rossetti’s renunciation runs in parallel with each other. While the poet absolutely refuses to “rue” or “despair”, the memories he or she sought to avoid would nevertheless linger in his or her life, “faintly” vexing him or her. This effect is further propelled by the way how Rossetti plays around with the words “Never” and “Ever”. The natural propinquity and antagonistic nature of these words seems to suggest that the uncertainty the poet experiences and his or her refusal would continue to perpetuate, forming an ever-never ending circle.  Cardinal Newman - Rossetti wrote a sonnet about Newman following his death in 1890. She remembers him as a ‘weary Champion of the Cross' who ‘Chose love not in the shallows but the deep' (Cardinal Newman, lines 1, 6). Bearing in mind that she continued to honour him as a ‘Champion' in spite of his conversion to Roman Catholicism, suggests that she considered him, like herself, a pilgrim in search of the true church. 18) Walter Pater (1839-1894)  Studies in the History of the Renaissance - This book is a collected, edited sequence of essays by Walter Pater (1839–1894), a Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Oscar Wilde first read it in 1874, as a student at Trinity College Dublin. - What is it about? ‘The Renaissance’ is a term that refers to flowering of human culture brought about by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman civilisation; chiefly in 15th century Italy, though Pater argues that this definition can be expanded. The essays in this book tend to work by flamboyantly imagining their way into works of art; at one point, Pater suggests of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa ‘She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times. - The book became a kind of manual for aestheticism; a movement which, in Pater’s definition, aimed, to distinguish, to analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. - For many, the historical period Pater covered – and the way, in treating it, he insisted on the importance of artistic style over moral content – was a by-word for un–Christian vice. The Bishop of Oxford specifically preached against the book’s ‘neo-pagan’ character. Fearing ‘it might possibly mislead some of the young men into whose hands it might fall’, Pater removed the most controversial section, the Conclusion, in time for the 1877 edition. - How did it affect Oscar Wilde? Arguably, Wilde was one of these ‘young men.’ Studying at Oxford in 1877, he sent Pater a review of some paintings in which his writing shows the distinct influence of The Renaissance; they met, and Pater praised Wilde’s ‘quite exceptionally cultivated tastes’. Later, Wilde would be disappointed with the sense that, in his more timid, careful lifestyle, Pater ‘lived to disprove everything that he has written'. - The Renaissance animated not just every aspect of Wilde’s work, but his desire to make his life into a work of art; ‘to burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy is success in life’, as the Conclusion urges. Looking back over his own life from the isolation of prison in De Profundis (1897), he remembered it as ‘the golden book of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty’; ‘that book which has had such a strange influence over my life’. 62 - Form: 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 are 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. - Commentary: This poem follows the pattern of so many of Hopkins’s sonnets, in that a sensuous experience or description leads to a set of moral reflections. Part of the beauty of the poem lies in the way Hopkins integrates his masterful description of a bird’s physical feat with an account of his own heart’s response at the end of the first stanza. However, the sestet has puzzled many readers because it seems to diverge so widely from the material introduced in the octave. At line nine, the poem shifts into the present tense, away from the recollection of the bird. The horse-and-rider metaphor with which Hopkins depicted the windhover’s motion now give way to the phrase “my chevalier”—a traditional Medieval image of Christ as a knight on horseback, to which the poem’s subtitle (or dedication) gives the reader a clue. The transition between octave and sestet comes with the statement in lines 9-11 that the natural (“brute”) beauty of the bird in flight is but a spark in comparison with the glory of Christ, whose grandeur and spiritual power are “a billion times told lovelier, more dangerous.” - The first sentence of the sestet can read as either descriptive or imperative, or both. The idea is that something glorious happens when a being’s physical body, will, and action are all brought into accordance with God’s will, culminating in the perfect self-expression. Hopkins, realizing that his own heart was “in hiding,” or not fully committed to its own purpose, draws inspiration from the bird’s perfectly self-contained, self-reflecting action. Just as the hovering is the action most distinctive and self-defining for the windhover, so spiritual striving is man’s most essential aspect. At moments when humans arrive at the fullness of their moral nature, they achieve something great. But that greatness necessarily pales in comparison with the ultimate act of self-sacrifice performed by Christ, which nevertheless serves as our model and standard for our own behavior. - The final tercet within the sestet declares that this phenomenon is not a “wonder,” but rather an everyday occurrence—part of what it means to be human. This striving, far from exhausting the individual, serves to bring out his or her inner glow—much as the daily use of a metal plow, instead of wearing it down, actually polishes it—causing it to sparkle and shine. The suggestion is that there is a glittering, luminous core to every individual, which a concerted religious life can expose. The subsequent image is of embers breaking open to reveal a smoldering interior. Hopkins words this image so as to relate the concept back to the Crucifixion: The verb “gash” (which doubles for “gush”) suggests the wounding of Christ’s body and the shedding of his “gold-vermilion” blood. 65  Pied Beauty - Summary: The poem opens with an offering: “Glory be to God for dappled things.” In the next five lines, Hopkins elaborates with examples of what things he means to include under this rubric of “dappled.” He includes the mottled white and blue colors of the sky, the “brinded” (brindled or streaked) hide of a cow, and the patches of contrasting color on a trout. The chestnuts offer a slightly more complex image: When they fall they open to reveal the meaty interior normally concealed by the hard shell; they are compared to the coals in a fire, black on the outside and glowing within. The wings of finches are multicolored, as is a patchwork of farmland in which sections look different according to whether they are planted and green, fallow, or freshly plowed. The final example is of the “trades” and activities of man, with their rich diversity of materials and equipment. In the final five lines, Hopkins goes on to consider more closely the characteristics of these examples he has given, attaching moral qualities now to the concept of variety and diversity that he has elaborated thus far mostly in terms of physical characteristics. The poem becomes an apology for these unconventional or “strange” things, things that might not normally be valued or thought beautiful. They are all, he avers, creations of God, which, in their multiplicity, point always to the unity and permanence of His power and inspire us to “Praise Him.” - Form: This is one of Hopkins’s “curtal” (or curtailed) sonnets, in which he miniaturizes the traditional sonnet form by reducing the eight lines of the octave to six (here two tercets rhyming ABC ABC) and shortening the six lines of the sestet to four and a half. This alteration of the sonnet form is quite fitting for a poem advocating originality and contrariness. The strikingly musical repetition of sounds throughout the poem (“dappled,” “stipple,” “tackle,” “fickle,” “freckled,” “adazzle,” for example) enacts the creative act the poem glorifies: the weaving together of diverse things into a pleasing and coherent whole. - Commentary: This poem is a miniature or set-piece, and a kind of ritual observance. It begins and ends with variations on the mottoes of the Jesuit order (“to the greater glory of God” and “praise to God always”), which give it a traditional flavor, tempering the unorthodoxy of its appreciations. The parallelism of the beginning and end correspond to a larger symmetry within the poem: the first part (the shortened octave) begins with God and then moves to praise his creations. The last four-and-a-half lines reverse this movement, beginning with the characteristics of things in the world and then tracing them back to a final affirmation of God. The delay of the verb in this extended sentence makes this return all the more satisfying when it comes; the long and list-like predicate, which captures the multiplicity of the created world, at last yields in the penultimate line to a striking verb of creation (fathers-forth) and then leads us to acknowledge an absolute subject, God the Creator. The poem is thus a hymn of creation, praising God by praising the created world. It expresses the theological position that the great variety in the natural world is a testimony to the perfect unity of God and the infinitude of His creative power. In the context of a Victorian age that valued uniformity, efficiency, and standardization, this theological notion takes on a tone of protest. Why does Hopkins choose to commend “dappled things” in particular? The first stanza would lead the reader to believe that their significance is an aesthetic one: In showing how contrasts and juxtapositions increase the richness of our surroundings, Hopkins describes variations in color and texture—of the sensory. The mention of the “fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” in the fourth line, however, introduces a moral tenor to the list. Though the description is still physical, the idea of a nugget of goodness imprisoned within a hard exterior invites a consideration of essential value in a way that the speckles on a cow, for example, do not. The image transcends the 66 physical, implying how the physical links to the spiritual and meditating on the relationship between body and soul. Lines five and six then serve to connect these musings to human life and activity. Hopkins first introduces a landscape whose characteristics derive from man’s alteration (the fields), and then includes “trades,” “gear,” “tackle,” and “trim” as diverse items that are man-made. But he then goes on to include these things, along with the preceding list, as part of God’s work. Hopkins does not refer explicitly to human beings themselves, or to the variations that exist among them, in his catalogue of the dappled and diverse. But the next section opens with a list of qualities (“counter, original, spare, strange”) which, though they doggedly refer to “things” rather than people, cannot but be considered in moral terms as well; Hopkins’s own life, and particularly his poetry, had at the time been described in those very terms. With “fickle” and “freckled” in the eighth line, Hopkins introduces a moral and an aesthetic quality, each of which would conventionally convey a negative judgment, in order to fold even the base and the ugly back into his worshipful inventory of God’s gloriously “pied” creation.  From Journal - 4 letters on the book. 20) Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)  Symphony in Yellow - "Symphony in Yellow," written in 1889, was a manifestation of Oscar Wilde's interest in the decadent and aesthetic movement. Wilde was greatly influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who emphasized the importance of art in life. In fact, Wilde is associated with the phrase, "art for art's sake", although it appears nowhere in his works, indicating the influence he had on the culture of his time. As much as Wilde was acclaimed for his work, he was equally disparaged for being homosexual, resulting in him becoming a somewhat enigmatic and notorious public figure. "Symphony in Yellow", is a poem of no action. Instead, it is a descriptive work that allows the reader to feel as though he or she is viewing a painting instead of a poem. Phases such as, "Crawls like a yellow butterfly" and "Lies like a rod of rippled jade" is reminiscent of the decadent and aesthetic notion that life should be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty. Wilde's ability to allow the reader to be so intimately involved with the details of the poem that he or she morphs from the reader into a viewer, resulted in him being an iconographical figure in the Aesthetic movement. Many historians even claim that the Aesthetic movement's demise came about with the end of Wilde's career. - ABBA is a much more static rimescheme. It closes the quatrain at the end, and encourages the reader to stop at the end of each verse and ponder for a moment over what has just been said. At the time Symphony in Yellow was written the ABBA rimescheme was especially well known as the form Alfred Tennyson used for his poem In Memoriam - remembering his dead friend Arthur Hallam. - Wilde increases the static quality of the rimescheme by composing each quatrain of his poem of two distinct sentences; so that each stanza is a haiku-like independent image. The Symphony is not one progressive poem but three distinct pairs of images: you could read each stanza as a minipoem on its own. - Wilde's poem does not tell a story, it invites you to share a single moment with the poet (the moment as Wilde walks along the Embankment, and notices that the whole world is yellow). So a static rimescheme is what is needed for a very static poem (and the chance to c0ck a quiet snook at In Memoriam is just a delightful bonus). 67