First World War Poetry Analysis, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica First World War Poetry Analysis e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! ARGOMENTI • ww1 (war of attrition, suffragettes, life in trenches) • The war poets: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen Glory of Women by Sassoon • The Modern Age • J.Joyce-→ Dubliners Eveline • Eliot: The Waste Land The Burial of the Dead THE SOLDIER by Rupert Brooke "The Soldier" is a poem by Rupert Brooke written during the first year of the First World War (1914). It is a deeply patriotic and idealistic poem that expresses a soldier's love for his homeland— in this case England, which is portrayed as a kind of nurturing paradise. In Brooke’s poem everything is idealized, even war, for the layout we have two parts 14 lines. It’s a sonet,the rhyme scheme is a mixture, Brooke joins the 2 traditions so the first part is a Shakespearean sonet while the second part petrarcan sonet. The Shakespearean sonet have 3 quarantines and final couplets. The meter: is a iambic pentameter with 5 stressed syllables. In this sonet he repeated the words English and England which represents in this poem a Mother, England gave birth to Brooke, he was son of England and he became a man aware of himself. In England the poet became became a ma, a matured man he became aware that he has this task to carry out which is to defend his country, it’s like a duty he felt, going to war to defend his mother country. He images that he died, he became a corpse, he infect uses the world field because he know his going to die in war. He will die in a foreign place and his corpse will be buried, the tomb will became a new home as was England. He called the earth rich after the soldier is buried because they were English and they felt superior with this task to carry out. Fine prima parte, until here he has only described England , the rhythm changed. In the second part he sad that all his sins, evil are washed away because he died for his country. He died in Greece but everything goes back to England, all his happy dreams, thought. From everywhere they return to England. He’s remembering all the happy times he had, everything comes back to England even if his body his in Greece. DULCE ET DECORUM EST by Owen The poet wants to arouse pity in the reader not like Brooke who wants to arouse admiration, war has nothing poetic. The poem is based on the poet’s experience of the horrors of war in the trenches and it’s an attempt to communicate the pity of War to future generations. The Latin title Dulce et Decorum Est means sweet and honourable. It’s a sonet of 28 lines, we don’t here that there’s the rhyme because the poet uses a lot of enjambements. “Dulce et decorum est” is divided in four irregular stanzas. Each stanza deals with a precise point, 1) in fact we can notice that in the first stanza which is made up of 8 lines describes some men who are marching away from the front, as we can understand by reading in line 4: ”towards our distant rest”, and in line 8: ”that dropped behind” which are jambic verses conveying tiredness. There is also represented a frontal attack on the enemy’s tranches. We can say that it isn’t an heroic scene because the soldiers are given grothesque traits such as: ”like old beggars”(1) and “coughing like haugs”(2). • Owen uses strong and powerful images to show the physical and mental suffering the soldiers endure. 2) in the second stanza he describes the gas attack (The poem reaches a dramatic moment when the soldiers are attacked by a gas attack. Owen portrays a horrifying and chaotic scene as one soldier fails to put on his gas mask in time. The speaker of the poem witnesses this tragic event, and Owen's use of vivid details to engage the reader's emotions and) 3) then in the third we can find the description of poet’s dream-nightmare • He uses strong words like "blood-shod," "writhing," and "guttering" to highlight the physical suffering and agony of the soldiers. Through his descriptions, Owen exposes the devastating impact of war on the human body and mind. 4) The poem concludes with a direct message to the reader, challenging the notion that it is honorable and glorious to die for one's country. Owen writes, "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori," which means "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country." By placing these words at the end of the poem, Owen reveals the bitter irony and falsehood in this statement. So to summarise "Dulce et Decorum Est" strongly criticizes war's glorification and the false ideas that promote it. Owen's powerful descriptions, irony, and personal experiences make readers feel deeply and question the romanticized views of heroism and sacrifice. The poem reminds us of the terrible sufferings of soldiers and the importance of facing the harsh realities of war GLORY OF WOMEN by Sassoon • Childhood → the narrator is like a child so the story is told from the point of view of a child, while for all the others he uses a third person narrator, that is an omniscient, his omniscient is limited to one only narrator the protagonist. • Adolescence • Maturity • Public life Another theme that put everything together is the theme of paralysis which can be a physical paralysis or moral. Joyce wanted to write a chapter of the moral history of his country and he chose Dublin for the scene because Dublin represents the center of paralysis. Dublin became a simbol of any town in the world where people live severely, they are spiritually weak they can’t react to this moral paralysis which doesn’t allowed them to be happy and free. So Dublin is populated by ordinary people who live ordinary life, doing ordinary things. And people in Dublin are spiritually weak.(Eveline, is a short story that describes the life of a 19- years old girl who has opportunity to change her routine life but is unable to leave her familiar community in Dublin) Another important thing is that his poems are realistic, he gave us a realistic description full of details, many of this details are symbol of something for example the word dust in Eveline is the symbol of death, monotony (which is also in her job), repetition. She continued cleaning the object in the livingroom but dust keeps collecting. Repetition and monotony are also in her job, she doesn’t like her boss he treats her badly so she doesn’t like to go and work the repetition of her work day after day. Then we have the images of sea and water which are obstacles, barriers symbols of the unknown, Eveline rejects the unknown and freedom she’ afraid to change her life and to start over. (comfort zone). In Joyce we have another important feature/theme which are the stream of consciousness and the free indirect speech and we can see both of this in his book Eveline. Eveline is written in third person narrator. So the narrator is outside the story as was Dickens; but in Joyce the prospective is from one of the characters so we have the felling of being outside and inside of the main character. Joyce manage to do this because the story is told from the prospective of one character, using the free indirect speech. An example of free indirect speech is at line 97 when we read the word “escape” this word is more enphatic we fell like we are inside Eveline’s head Eveline wants to star over going to Argentina with her boyfriend but she’s stuck and paralysed in her old life, with her abusive father who was an alcoholic. Her going to Buenes Aires is an opportunity to escape. Like other characters in Joyce's short story collection, Dubliners,from which this story comes, she is a Dubliner trapped in Ireland and unable to escape. Moving to South-America can be for her an opportunity to start a new and better life. But this escape comes at too high a price, apparently. Dubliners features characters that don't get out of Ireland, even when they have a chance. In Eveline's case leaving would probably present her with a better existence, but would leave her family uncared for. She freezes when it is time to go--she is literally, and figuratively, frozen. She has no good choice. She desperately wants to escape, but cannot bring herself to do so. Eveline does not cheerily stay and idealistically look forward to being the rock of her family or whatever.This story presents no moral lesson. The fiction realistically depicts a woman trapped in a modern situation with no way out.It is dark and honest. VERY REALISTIC. ULYSSES by Joyce Joyce talks about one single day of mister blu The day is important for the first date of his wife. Blum what he expounded ELIOT ELIOT Eliot was born in a Victorian age, but he wasn’t a Victorian writer. He experienced the two wars. He was born in America but he never felt American after his Harvard study he moved to Europe here he was fascinated by our culture, he felt like his country didn’t has such as rich culture as ours. He was fascinated by Dante he wanted to study Italian so he could read the divine comedy. She admired Dante and John Dan and the metaphysical poet as well. Until Eliot metaphysical poet was considered not worth to read. He particularly admired the capacity of Dante to compress the language. THE WASTE LAND: The waste land is a collection of poems, this collection rejected any order or unity, infect the style is fragmentary because people after war was fragmented the idea of fragmentation is giving is giving by Eliot by using quotation from different literature, languages. The style is fragmented as a cubist painting. The Waste Land is divided in 5 section the first one is the Burial of the dead. For Eliot past and present coexist(for example in the burial of the dead he identify a person he already know, he met him in war but events are fragmented and thing can happened in different space and time). THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD This extract is from the first section of The Waste Land and it started with the message of death. After each lines there are enjambements the first quotation is “April is the cruelest month” so unlike Chaucer who had a positive view of April for Eliot is a negative month, April grows liliac and it mixed the desire with the memory, we know that Eliot has experienced war, the desire is to go back to the period before the war for example in the winter we tend to stay inside, stay safe under our blankets and we don’t want to think about our pains, we desire everything before winter. Can the soldier return to live the same way they did before war? No, it’s not possible they’re different person from what they used to be , they are obliged to think the time of the war can come back. April is cruel because obliged us to face a new reality from which we cannot escape and we have to go on. We are similar to sleepy roots and we want to go in spleeping and we don’t want to face reality. The poet says that the fault is of the rain which wakes us up, which wakes the roots up, and the roots are dried because they haven’t received enough water but know they are receiving some rain so we are obliged to wake up and received this little life. (Nutrire le radici secche con un po’ d’acqua, di vita) Little it means also miserable life but we still remember the time we living during the winter when snowed covers everything, and the snow has this power to make us forget about our problems, pains so we can lie there nice and cozy without thinking of anything which disturbs us. We forget what’s under the snow which are dirty Winter has a different meaning, it can be war that is a difficult time for us but also a period when we don’t have enough energy to react and face reality Forgetful snow —> because the snow let us forget that we have to face reality L’inverno ci ha tenuti al caldo non ci ha spinto a farci domande fastidiose, eravamo sotto alla neve ossimoro (5) Unreal city for Eliot is London while for Baudelaire is Paris We are in London and it’s a winter dawn This people are going to work, they start working at 9 o clock and on the way of the office they see the sun rising and there’s a brown fog. When we have a bridge there’s water that flows under the bridge but here there’s a crowd flowing over the bridge so this crowd was so consisted of so many people that was similar to a river (flowing over the bridge) Line 11:quotations from Dante : ignavi : those people who didn’t want to take a decision at the beginning of the hell, and Dante says that there are some people who leave their life in this way without living their life fully. Modern people didn’t live fully, they flew like water over the bridge. Line 12: other quotation from Dante : limbo A person who sighs shortly, it gives us a imagine of a depressed person Each person lives his own, unpassionate life they can’t communicate, they are sad people: Incapacity to communicate Then he specifed time and space then the time changed he identify a person he already know he met him in the war for Eliot past and present coexist events are fragmented and thing can happened in different space and time.