Poetry analysis 'Morte D'Arthur'

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Poetry Essay

Although ‘Morte D’Arthur’ spirals through many stages, none is touched upon to the extent at which it exercises pathos. Throughout it draws upon the reader’s emotions heavily, and enforces a feeling of overwhelming pity until its last breath. ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, although similar in the aspect that it too bears the countenance of a distressing piece of literature, does differ in tone slightly, for it clearly relies more on the absolution of despair to deliver its message. It too contains pathos in liberal amounts but is not governed by it as the other. ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ pushes past the levels of sympathy and invokes an unwavering sense of hopelessness that traps the reader in misery as effectively as the stone prison he relates to us traps its prisoners. From a summary of the poems you would think that the gathered opinions should be the reversed for in ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ leaves its protagonist with his life while the other ends with the death of a great king and all he represents, yet the method in which both spin their tales make you feel more misery on behalf of the prisoner then for the dying king.

When fabricating their settings the authors often employ techniques akin to one another. Tennyson refers to the scenery as ‘place of tombs’ and ‘ruin’d shrine,” as he writes ‘Morte D’Arthur’. This shows that death is in the very countryside around him. The poem is about death and Tennyson puts that into every aspect of his world; everything mirrors the story that he tells. Byron does the same. ‘Dim in a dull imprisoned way,’ and ‘like a sunbeam which has lost its way,’ are lines from his poem that embody the idea of imprisonment, which are turn is the theme of his poem. When the authors use pathetic fallacy throughout, as they set the scene they don’t limit them to mere physical descriptions but illustrate the mood. Tennyson wants to show the aspects of the world that are dying with the king, that it isn’t simply the death of a man but the death of religion, the country and the past, which had been quite joyous. ‘A broken chancel with a broken cross,’ shows the death of religion in the simple marring of these artefacts Tennyson writes a world perfect to die in. Nature mirrors the mood and has already started mourning for its lost king as we see in lines like, ‘frozen hills’, ‘winter Sea’ and ‘whistled stiff and dry about the marge.” Byron uses a lot a phrasing that seems to just describe the appearance of the dungeon like; ‘dungeon deep and old’, ‘massy and grey,’ and ‘floor so damp’. Although these don’t have emotion, the descriptions make the image of a horrible place worse, it is more than uncomfortable to live.

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Both poems put a lot of emphasis on pathos. If the reader couldn’t connect with the characters by feeling sorry for them then the poems would have so much less effect. The most common angle that both poets use seem to be the loss of things. Byron’s character looses everything dear to him, which in end makes him lose even the will to live. Byron conjures a lot of pity by showing the things that the prisoner can no longer enjoy. ‘When day was beautiful to me,” implies that it no longer is, that during his encounter in the prison ...

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