- Join over 1.2 million students every month
- Accelerate your learning by 29%
- Unlimited access for just £4.99 per month
Critical Analysis of The Forge by Seamus Heaney
The first 200 words of this essay...
Critical Analysis of The Forge by Seamus Heaney
'The Forge' is a sonnet with a clear division into an octave (the first eight lines) and a sestet (the final six lines). While the octave, apart from its initial reference to the narrator, focuses solely on the inanimate objects and occurrences inside and outside the forge, the sestet describes the blacksmith himself, and what he does.
Interestingly, the transition from the octave to the sestet is a run-on or enjambment containing one of the key metaphors of the poem, the anvil as altar:
Set there immovable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
One effect of this is to enable us to experience the anvil or altar as a magical point of transition between the material and immovable world of objects and the fluid, musical world of human consciousness.
The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is: abba cddc efgfef, a departure from the standard Shakespearean (abab cdcd efef gg) or Petrarchan (abba abba cde cde) sonnet form. The unrhymed 11th line He leans out on the jam, recalls a clatter is perhaps the most striking feature of the rhyme
Found what you're looking for?
- Start learning 29% faster today
- Over 150,000 essays available
- Just £4.99 a month
Not the one? We have 100's more
Miscellaneous (view all)