Interpretation of Shadow, Silence and the Sea by A. C. Swinburne

Interpretation of Shadow, Silence and the Sea by A. C. Swinburne From what we know about Swinburne's creativity, his poetry is a colourful mixture of philosophical statements, artistically painted images and ubiquitous alliteration. His principal theme in lyric is nature, which is used both as a material for the whole poem and as a detail to introduce other themes and images. Analyzing Shadow, Silence and the Sea, we first see the description of landscape. Swinburne is known to have been fascinated with landscapes, especially water scenes. The poet himself confesses of "a pure delight in the sense of the sea" (letter to Edwin Harrison on February 5, 1890). The fact, that the poem was written nearly a quarter of a century later after the actual voyage to Loch Torridon, suggests that the impression was still vivid in Swinburne's mind and seemed to correspond to his way of thinking. In addition, his choice of theme makes him a follower of the Romantic tradition. Image of sea and the peculiar devotion to night were crucial to the Romantic poets. As a person associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne would highly value their creativity. The major artistic device used in the poem is alliteration. Swinburne builds it by repeating the sounds s and sh inside words which create an image of a spectacular yet peaceful starry night. It seems strange, as these sounds are usually

  • Word count: 959
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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In this essay, I shall analyse the work of Louis MacNeice, entitled, The sunlight on the garden. It is a modern verse that offers a self-reflexive commentary on life and its key elements.

In this essay, I shall analyse the work of Louis MacNeice, entitled, 'The sunlight on the garden.' It is a modern verse that offers a self-reflexive commentary on life and its key elements. In similarity to the traditional epic verse, the poem is an expression of the speaker's particular personalities and motives. I intend to explore these two subjects in greater detail in my essay. According to the Oxford English dictionary, a poetic analysis is the process, or 'detailed examination of studying a poem...to determine its nature, structure, or essential features.' This is a common practice used by both reader and critic in the reading of prose and poetry and I will adopt this technique in my essay. MacNeice's poem from the thirties transcribes the period of great hardship in the Western World, as well as the speaker's self-hardship of love and death. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 started a worldwide economic depression that lasted for much of the decade and industries such as steel, ship-building and coal mining suffered. Moreover, unemployment in Britain soared which left a hollowed and pessimistic outlook on life. This had a strong impact upon poetry of the time, this particular poem illuminating the confusions and irresolvable issues of the common man. There are many social and political events that influenced MacNeice's work, the First World War being

  • Word count: 1469
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Mending Wall

"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost In "Mending Wall," Robert Frost portrays the ideas of barriers between people, communication, friendship and the sense of security people gain from barriers. Frost conveys his perception by using poetic techniques such as the structure, imagery, tone, and revealing a metaphorical as well as a literal meaning throughout the poem. He uses the mending of a solid wall as a symbolic representation of the barriers that separate the neighbors in their friendship. The scene is set by the routine of two neighbors who are constantly mending the wall that separates their properties. The theme of the poem is about two neighbors who disagree over the purpose of the wall. Not only does the wall act as a divider in separating estates, it also as a barrier in the neighbors' friendship, separating them as well. The neighbor with the pine trees believes that the wall has great significance. He believes that the wall provides a sense of privacy and security. "Mending Wall" is an open form, long one-stanza poem that is written in blank verse and has a narrator. Frost uses the poetic technique of imagery to portray his ideas. Imagery is a device that uses certain words and meanings so that a mental picture is painted. Frost uses imagery to let the reader no what it happening within the poem. In the first part of the poem a description of the wall is

  • Word count: 908
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Emperors Ice Cream

Ice Cream Rules All The poem "Emperor Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens, takes place in the funeral of a women. However, you will not know this until the second stanza because it is portrayed as a happy celebration. The theme of the poem is death. The narrator implies that people always look for explanations beyond what something really is, like death. In other words, we don't let "be be" (line 7). One can gather that there is nothing more to life than humans seeking pleasure out of every opportunity. I will explain how Stevens uses formal elements like symbolism, imagery, rhyme and figurative language further reinforce the theme of the poem. In this poem the author uses symbolism to reinforce the theme by deglorifying death. The speaker says that the only "high mighty" or "emperor" of humans is our desires, like eating ice cream. Ice cream in the poem symbolizes something pleasurable and fun, usually associated with children. The author begins both stanzas with playful language and uses sexual riveting vocabulary until the last couplets. For instance, in the first stanza the poem uses words like "the muscular one," "concupiscent curds," and "wenches" which are all language that might distract a reader into sexual thoughts, from the serious theme of the poem: death(line 2-4). The speaker's choices of words symbolize how easy it is to place the reader into a pleasurable state

  • Word count: 856
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Modernism - T.S. Eliot's Preludes & Prufrock

Modernism was the cultural movement in which innovation and experimentation of art and literature was celebrated and explored as a reaction against the formality and optimism of the preceding Victorian period. Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Modernist literary figure who contributed significantly to the movement in the early to mid 1900s. In Eliot's "Preludes" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot reveals some of the major concerns of his context linked to happenings on the cultural and industrial fronts; that is, urban decay, social entrapment and the fragmentation of Victorian England. He examines the effects of these on the lives of human beings and laments the emptiness, futility, destructiveness and cynicism of life in the modern world. Eliot's Preludes conveys the mundane and repetitive nature of people's lives in 1911. The title itself is ironic in the sense that a prelude is and introductory piece which precedes something of higher importance, however in Eliot's Preludes, this is not the case. Thus, one interprets that the titles acts as an ironic allusion to society, questioning whether the repetitive, impersonal lives that people lead will get them anywhere. The poem consists of four descriptions of urban life at different times of the day. Within this day the monotony and futility of human existence is highlighted. Prelude I depicts a rainy

  • Word count: 1232
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Natural Cycle of Humanity and the Decay of Modern Society in The Wasteland

Anya Dyurgerova ENGL 3060 Van Gerven Paper 1 Re-write The Natural Cycle and the Decay of Modern Society in The Wasteland There is no romance, no passion, only a mundane circular sequence of events, "crowds of people, walking round in a ring" (56). In The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot, the society of the twentieth century is described as detached, dreary and monotonous. It is a collection of dysfunctional relationships and tedious tasks, saturated with an anxiety about death. There is a parallel between the atrophy of society and the land destroyed during the Second World War. To escape a routine and apathetic existence, humans strive for the unattainable, to overcome the limits of humanity. However any departure from the natural cycle of the human world leads to the emergence of the wasteland. Although death haunts the speakers in the poem, it is liberation in comparison to the horror of the wasteland. There is persistent angst and fear of death in the poem, yet death is everywhere. The many speakers in the poem wish for immortality and to overcome the confines of humanity. In "The Burial of the Dead" the woman, anxious about her fate, goes to see the fortune-teller, Madame Sosostris, who pulls out the "Hanged Man" tarot card and warns her to "fear death by water" (55). The fortune-teller's words reoccur later in "Death by Water", a description of the grotesque death of

  • Word count: 1461
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Pike by Amy Lowell

Victor Randolph Brent Russo English 28A February 17, 2009 I Love the Way You Move Amy Lowell's "The Pike" is a smooth, fast poem that mirrors its subject. Its form reflects it content. Its meter is irregular and the poem does not rhyme; but it contains within it a certain musical quality which is drawn from word choice and the occasional alliteration. This technique was emphasized by the early imagist poet, Ezra Pound, in his "Three Rules." 1 The poem, read aloud, produces a delightful cadence which serves to impress upon the reader a certain response to the pike's rhythm. As an imagist poet, Lowell's description of the sudden flicker of the pike's movement expounds sensations. The poem repeats phrases of color, action, light and refraction to produce very vivid bursts of natural imagery. Lowell juxtaposes brown and green, darkness and gleam as well as a pair of metallic elements: silver and copper. These juxtapositions serve to represent the fish through an objective lens. The descriptions are brief, yet seem to perfectly encapsulate a fleeting flash of transit in a tiny eco-system. Lowell's poem combines a fiercely eloquent id with a calm and graceful ego, but rejects the notion that "thinking" is of a higher order than "feeling." 2 It presents that "intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."3 The first stanza serves to frame the poem's primary action;

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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(a) Prelude speaks of spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal, tawdry modern city

Prompt: Explore the following statements about TS Eliot's poetry through a close reading of the text: "Prelude" speaks of spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal, tawdry modern city* This essay is mainly about the preludes by T.S. Eliot, which speaks about the spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal, tawdry modern city. Starting with information about T.S. Eliot, followed by a definition of modernism. Then exploration of the prelude is through close reading's skills, in three different stages; first; annotating the text, the second stage; understanding the text, the third stage, include the theme of the poem by discussing and analyzing the poem, including some outside information about historical and biographical facts. "T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis and most of his adult life was in London. He is a modernist poet as many of his contemporaries; in as young he suffered a religious crisis and a nervous breakdown before regaining his emotional equilibrium and Christian faith. One of his most significant works is the preludes, which deal with spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal, tawdry modern city."1 "Characteristics of Modernism, Open Form, Free verse, Discontinuous narrative, Juxtaposition, Classical allusions, Borrowings from other cultures and languages, Unconventional use of metaphor, Fragmentation, Multiple

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Compare and contrast 'The Great Horned Owl' by Simic, and @The Owl and the Pussy Cat' by Lear.

Compare and contrast 'The Great Horned Owl' by Simic and 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' by Lear. The most obvious point when comparing these two literary pieces is the stark difference between the serious, non-fictional poem in free verse by Simic; and the fictional, very light-hearted, jovial, childlike nonsense verse of Lear. Simic is a modern day poet and wrote The Great Horned Owl around 1960-1980. He often uses free verse and was poet laureate for the USA in 2007. Lear wrote in the 1800's and was famous for his limericks and nonsense verses. Simic being a poet using factual and reality based issues and objects finds appreciation in a more adult audience than does Lear; whom it is quite safe to say wrote for a far younger audience. Both poems have anthropomorphic traits attributed to their owls. Simic relates his owl to greatness, grandeur, wisdom and seniority; as opposed to Lear's comical attributes of an owl having the ability to sail a boat, and running away to marry etc. Lear uses a strong sense of repetition and rhyme using a very traditional and conventional form of poetry. He uses a very flowing metre and thus makes it easy to read in a very light-hearted fashion. Simic uses virtually no rhyme (although there is partial rhyme - e.g. seigneur/appear) and while there is a sense of rhythm present it is not as strong as Lear's. Simic also uses a flowing sense of

  • Word count: 733
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Discord in Childhood, by the British poet D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), is a poem at least as interesting for its sound effects as for its content.

“Discord in Childhood,” by the British poet D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), is a poem at least as interesting for its sound effects as for its content. It is a work that illustrates how a skillful writer can intensify meanings through sounds, imagery, diction, and structure. Even the title of the text is memorable in its sounds and rhythms: the words “Discord” and “Childhood” both feature strongly accented first syllables as well as heavy emphasis, through alliteration, on the consonant “d.” It is as if Lawrence wants to stress the similarities between the sheer sounds of the words in order to imply how strongly the concepts of discord and childhood are also associated in the speaker’s mind. When the poem begins, sound effects are again immediately emphasized. Thus the first three words (“Outside the house”) use assonance (or similar vowel sounds) to link two of the poem’s key terms. This is a poem, after all, that will begin by focusing on the “Outside” (the world of nature) and then move into the interior of a “house” (the world of human beings). Yet neither world, as it turns out, is especially appealing or attractive, and the poem can in fact be seen as anti-Romantic in realistically depicting an absence of beauty and a lack of love. In poems such as this, Lawrence and other twentieth-century “modernist” authors were reacting against the

  • Word count: 1045
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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