Choose three sonnets, which have made a strong impression on you and explain they have achieved this impression?

English Coursework Choose three sonnets, which have made a strong impression on you and explain they have achieved this impression? The three sonnets I have chosen to use are, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" by William Shakespeare "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Since brass, nor stone, nor boundless sea" also by William Shakespeare. I have chosen these three sonnets because I think they all convey undying, untouchable love and yet they are all described in such different ways but somehow have the same effect. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Shakespeare starts this sonnet with a question and all through the sonnet seems to linger on the answer instead of answering strait away. He starts the sonnet by asking himself a rhetorical question in which he compares her beauty with the most beautiful natural thing such as summer before he goes on to answer his rhetorical question as if saying why or why not. However throughout the first two quatrains he seems to explain that she is,

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Comparing the attitudes of men to women in 4 pre-1900 poems

"Compare and contrast the attitudes of men towards women in at least 4 poems you have read. Pay particular attention to content, form and language used" The four pre-1900 poems I have studied are: 'The Beggar Woman' by William King, To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell 'First Love" by John Clare and 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning. All these poems have strong themes of love and lust and each depicts the attitude of a man to a woman, although these differ significantly in each poem. In 'The Beggar Woman' by William King a gentleman rides away from his hunting friends to find a woman to sleep with, he finds a beggar woman who is surprisingly clean and attractive and asks if they "should retire a little way into the wood?" She follows whilst he is on horseback. He frequently asks her to "expose" but she tells him of an "unfrequented place" that sounds idyllic, on the pretence that she is worried for him that his riding company might show up should they be in too open a place. When they arrive there she tells him she is worried about the baby being injured if she is on her back, prompting him to ask if the baby could be tied to his back because he is becoming so impatient. When the baby is firmly tied to his back, she runs away, leaving him stuck with it. The man in this poem is shown as being very confident and sure of himself, "Then thinks the squire, I have the

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Using Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' as your core poem, show clearly, by close textual analysis of at least three poems in total, how this section deals with the concept of Love and as seen through different eyes

Using Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' as your core poem, show clearly, by close textual analysis of at least three poems in total, how this section deals with the concept of Love and as seen through different eyes. Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' is related to the constraints of time and how it will affect the relationship with his partner, in particular love and physical passion. In contrast Lovelace's 'To Althea, From Prison' shows a different kind of love, he is talking about many types of love: the love he has for his wife, the love he has for his fellow royalists, the love he has for his king and ultimately the love he has for his God. Lovelace's poem is about a love without a sexual and physical driving force. Finally, Herrick's 'To the Virgins' is similar in theme to Marvell's 'Coy Mistress' as it too deal with issues of time and how it affects the pace if courtship and marriage. Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' is made up of three stanza's each with its own purpose. From the poem it seems that Marvell is trying to court a wealthy girl, but she seems to be procrastinating. The purpose of the poem is to convince her to fall in love with him so the can marry and have a physical relationship. The structure of the poem plays a major part in this. The first stanza begins with 'Had' or in other words 'If' meaning this is a hypothesis, which automatically gives the

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Compare the presentation of relationships in "My Last Duchess", "Porphyria's Lover" and "The Laboratory".

Compare the presentation of relationships in "My Last Duchess", "Porphyria's Lover" and "The Laboratory". "My Last Duchess", "Porphyria's Lover" and "The Laboratory" are all dramatic monologues, a fictional speech presented as the musings of a speaker who is separate from the poet, normally to a silent audience. These three dramatic monologues are all written by Robert Browning, famous for his poetry mainly associated with hatred, distrust and deceit, the darker side of human nature. These three poems also focus on relationships, not only relationships between characters in the poem, but also relationships between Browning and the characters, the listener and the speaker, the audience and Browning and lastly what the speaker says and what actually happened in the reality (of the poem). "My Last Duchess" first appeared in Dramatic Lyrics in 1842, the poem presents the reader with an unnamed duke who keeps a portrait of his Last Duchess behind a curtain, which only he can control who to reveal to. The Duke then goes on to tell the tale of the life of his late Duchess, how she displeased him because of her lack of dignity. This triggered his anger and irritation and eventually he chose to have her killed. Although the Duke mainly speaks of his late Duchess, he unintentionally reveals more about the personal qualities of himself. The reader knows that as a Duke, he possesses

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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By comparing 'The Collar' and 'Holy Sonnet', discuss how the poets show the difficulties in their relationships with God. Do you think they reach solutions to these difficulties?

By comparing 'The Collar' and 'Holy Sonnet', discuss how the poets show the difficulties in their relationships with God. Do you think they reach solutions to these difficulties? In both 'The Collar' and 'Holy Sonnet', the poets discuss problems they have with God. In 'The Collar'. George Herbert appears to resolve this problem. In 'Holy Sonnet', however, no solution seems to be reached within Donne, and to solve his problem he needs God's help. In the very title of his poem Herbert puts forward his problem with God; the poem is called 'The Collar', suggesting restraint and a lack of freedom. This title could also be interpreted as 'choler', which means anger. Anger defines the mood of Herbert's poem up until the last few lines. It is unclear, however, whether the majority of Herbert's frustration is directed at himself or at God, as throughout the poem he is addressing himself. Donne, on the other hand, is addressing God and asking God for help. This suggests that whilst Donne's problems are causing him to plead with God and ask for help. Herbert is turning away form God and trying to help himself, although ultimately he does find his solution in his love for God. Contextually this is significant because while Donne rose to great heights with the church and was very successful Herbert remained a country vicar all his life. This would suggest that Donne's passion and

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Ancient Mariner

How important was Imagination to the Romantic Poets? Refer to 'Ancient Mariner', 'The Nightingale' and 'Tintern Abbey'. To the Romantics, the imagination was a quality and that it belongs to everyone, not to a certain people. They believed that imagination is what made life interesting or beautiful, as it shaped our destiny and especially our personality. This is seen in three poems the 'Ancient Mariner', 'The Nightingale' and 'Tintern Abbey'. These three poems use imagination, in different ways to appeal to the reader. Furthermore, these poems use imagination, to connect to other themes of the poems together such as truth, nature and the divine pathway. Wordsworth uses 'Tintern Abbey', to show that the natural scenes of beauty implant themselves in the human memory and they feed the imagination, they are keeping it healthy: "These forms of beauty have not been to me/As is a landscape to a blind man's eye". They provide "sensations sweet". The memories of the scenes pass into his "purer mind/With tranquil restoration". He makes this sound like an "unremembered pleasure", as it is the value and benefit of seeing nature, beautiful scenes working subconsciously on the mind and some, passively cultivating the imaginative powers available in our human minds. Wordsworth explain that the natural scenes stored in his mind have given him 'another gift/ of aspect more sublime' It

  • Word count: 768
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Blake and Wordsworth

Compare haw the poets present the city of London in Blake's 'London' and Wordsworth's 'Composed on Westminster Bridge' William Wordsworth was born April 17th 1770, and died April 23rd 1850. William Blake was born on November the 28th in 1757 and died August 12th 1827. He believed everything should be free. Blake designed his own mythology, which was based mainly upon the Bible and on Greek mythology. Blake commented that he had to "create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's." Blake published 'London' in 1794, within 'Songs of Experience.' It is the only poem in the book which does not have a corresponding poem in 'songs of innocence.' The poem was published just after the French Revolution, and Blake felt that the state was abandoning those in need. The poem reflects the unpleasant truth he saw in London. Wordsworth's 'Westminster Bridge' was published in 1802. The poem is a 'beautiful and calm still life scene' showing what Wordsworth thought of life in Westminster. In 'London,' Blake walks through London, commenting on all the negative aspects of the city, which create negative imagery. He talks about all the unnatural ugliness within the city, which he implies is caused by laws and boundaries, whereas in Wordsworth's 'Westminster Bridge,' the feelings and atmosphere seem to be opposite. Wordsworth is describing the true beauty of the city, the buildings, the

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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the beggar women and the seduction

Both the beggar woman and the seduction deal with attitudes towards women and love, and the relationship between the sexes. In this essay I am going to explore these ideas and look at the similarities of the two poems although they were written over 100 years apart. The beggar woman was written in the 17th century by William king, and Eileen McAuley wrote the seduction in the 1980's. The beggar woman is a poem about a man who goes hunting and comes across a beggar woman who he finds attractive, he then asks the beggar woman into the woods with him, she agrees but instead of having sex with him she leaves him with her baby to look after to teach him a lesson. The seduction is about a girl who goes to a party and falls in love with a boy, he takes her down to the docks where he gets her drunk to have sex with her, as a result of this she gets pregnant. The two poems are similar as they both portray women as the sex although, in the beggar woman, the woman turns the tables and becomes the stronger character. I did not expect the poems to be as similar as they are because of the time gap in between their creation; both the poems deal with the themes of attitudes towards women, love and the relationship of the sexes making them very similar. The mood of both the poems is uncomfortable from the start. Both the poems have an unpleasant atmosphere. The moods of the poems are

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Compare and contrast the theme of love and/or loss in a range of pre-1914 poetry.

Comparing Sonnets Compare and contrast the theme of love and/or loss in a range of pre-1914 poetry. A sonnet is a 14 line poem with a strict, but changeable, rhyme scheme and they mostly have themes about love and/or loss. The sonnet form has always had a place in English poetry since the sixteenth century. The greatest day for sonnets was the Elizabethan period as thousands of sonnets were written in this era. In this period many poets, such as Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard and William Shakespeare bought innovative ideas about writing sonnets. I will be looking at three poets in this essay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Georgina Rossetti and William Shakespeare. I will be analysing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, "Sonnet 1", Christina Georgina Rossetti's sonnet, "Remember" and William Shakespeare's sonnet "Sonnet 71". There are two types of sonnets; the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet and Christina Georgina Rossetti's sonnet are both Italian sonnets. Whilst William Shakespeare's is an English sonnet which can be identified by the fact that the last two lines rhyme. I will start by writing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She had 11 siblings and was the eldest child of Edward Moulton Barrett; he was a very wealthy man because he made

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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In my essay Im going to compare two poems, which are To His Coy Mistress and My Last Duchess.

To his Coy Mistress vs. My Last Duchess In my essay I'm going to compare two poems, which are 'To His Coy Mistress' and 'My Last Duchess'. I am going to show their similarities and differences, but also the ways they are written and what makes them so powerful. For the first, both poems have something to do with women, in the poem: 'To His Coy Mistress' the narrator (the main speaker) is trying to get the women he is speaking to, to have sex with him, unlike in poem: 'My Last Duchess ' where the main speaker is trying to say that his wife was a cheat and didn't really love him. The Duke is an insecure character - "she smiled, no doubt, whene'ver I passed her; but who passed without much the same smile?" This quote shows that the Duke wants her to just smile for him. Because he felt insecure he "gave commands, then all smiles stopped together". This could mean that she stopped loving him, or that he had her killed for her behaviour. Secondly, when the reader reads these poems, he/she might get a feeling that these poems are not treating women fairly. In poem: 'To His Coy Mistress' the main speaker is trying to get a women he's speaking to, to have sex with him- this fact and arguments he uses "now therefore while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew". This is the speaker saying she is going to grow old and they should have sex together while she is still

  • Word count: 857
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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