The Waste Land opens with a reference to Chaucers Canterbury Tales. In this case, though, April is not the happy month of pilgrimages and storytelling. It is instead the time when the land should be regenerating after a long winter.
The Waste Land opens with a reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In this case, though, April is not the happy month of pilgrimages and storytelling. It is instead the time when the land should be regenerating after a long winter. Regeneration, though, is painful, for it brings back reminders of a more fertile and happier past. In the modern world, winter, the time of forgetfulness and numbness, is indeed preferable. Marie's childhood recollections are also painful: the simple world of cousins, sledding, and coffee in the park has been replaced by a complex set of emotional and political consequences resulting from the war. The topic of memory, particularly when it involves remembering the dead, is of critical importance in The Waste Land. Memory creates a confrontation of the past with the present, a juxtaposition that points out just how badly things have decayed. Marie reads for most of the night: ostracized by politics, she is unable to do much else. To read is also to remember a better past, which could produce a coherent literary culture. The second episode contains a troubled religious proposition. The speaker describes a true wasteland of "stony rubbish"; in it, he says, man can recognize only "[a] heap of broken images." Yet the scene seems to offer salvation: shade and a vision of something new and different. The vision consists only of nothingness-a handful of
(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
Analysis of 'The Windhover' poem by Gerard Hopkins
Please write a 1,500 word essay commenting closely on one of the following two texts. Your Answer should pay detailed attention to the text’s form, content and style. Text 1a: The Windhover "The Windhover" by Gerard Hopkins stands as one of his most influential poems to date. Though Hopkins wrote the poem around the year 1877, it was published in 1918 after his death. Before analysing this poem, it is important to understand the social and cultural backdrop of the time in which it was written, and in particular the poet's reasons for writing it. Hopkins himself stated that the poem “was not based on real incident,” yet it seems apparent that his “Roman Catholic identity in the Anglican culture that he chose to reject” undeniably had a detrimental impact to him, both as an individual, and a writer of the Victorian era. So much so, that family and friends disregarded him while even “university posts and positions in the clergy were closed to him.” As a celibate priest torn between the incompatibility between his literary and religious duties, it is no surprise as to why religion resonates so heavily in Hopkins' poem. It is evident from works of the epoch by poets such as Rossetti and Aguilar that Victorian society was clerical. The critic Bristow J. (2000)[1] holds that indeed there was an "intrinsic connection between poetic and religious concerns," and this
How does Plath convey her alienation and increasing paranoia in the bee poems, focusing on "The Arrival of the Bee Box"?
How does Plath convey her alienation and increasing paranoia in the bee poems, focusing on "The Arrival of the Bee Box"? "The Arrival of the Bee Box", "Stings" and "The Bee Meeting" all convey Plath's increasing paranoia, and alienation through the use of literature terms, structure of the poem and tone of the poem. The time in which she wrote these poems her and her husband Ted Hughes had recently separated leaving her and her two children, in Devon surrounded by the countryside, isolated form family, and friends. The "Bee Box" personifies Plath's afflictions of women, with her voice being fundamentally feministic. Plath herself has suffered as a mother and as a wife that has been confined to the house being her "box" of alienation. Plath however is conscious of her imprisonment and expresses her optimism that this is only a "temporary" phase that will pass she will wins her emancipation from not only her stereotypical role as a wife and mother given to her by Ted Hughes, but society as a whole. This feminist voice is continued in "Stings", as Plath's embodies a "bee" and conveys that although she may have been a drudge before, she will not be one any more. She refuses to submit to the hard working drudge of a society, and believes she is more than that, perhaps even a "queen" as she is independent and resentful towards her adulterous husband Ted Hughes, as he is "the
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
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
Tulips (Sylvia Plath)
"Tulips" Electroshock treatment, recovery from a suicide attempt and miscarriage are only a few of the times Sylvia Plath was hospitalized. Plath's doctors diagnosed her with a combination of severe depression, acute insomnia and bipolar disorder (Griffin). The time she spent in the hospital and her mental illness are reflected in her poetry. The poem "Tulips" portrays the psychological impacts the narrator experiences after either a surgical procedure or a sickness. Against the patient's will, family, love, and human empathy cause her to return from a complete loss of self and resignation from the living world. Plath uses personification and vivid imagery to describe the patient's detachment from her identity, her loss of desire to live and psychological instability. In the first five stanzas of the poem the patient is slipping away, giving up her identity and spiraling closer to death. She is lying in a hospital, evident from the mentions of the nurses, the anesthetist and the surgeons. She no longer wants to live, for her the narcotic, near-death state she is in is peaceful, pure and an escape: "how free it is, you have no idea how free-". She compares her head to an eye that will not shut. This "eye" has to "take everything in"; which is metaphorical for the overwhelming effect life has on the patient. She pronounces, "I am sick of baggage", revealing she no longer
How is context shown in T.S. Eliot's Preludes
How is context displayed in the T.S. Eliot's Preludes? Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Modernist literary figure, part of a cultural movement which involved innovation and experimentation with art and literature as a reaction against industrialisation, war and the formality and optimism of the Victorian period. Eliot's Preludes was written in England early in his poetic career - sometime around 1911. It encompasses many of the techniques and styles of modernist poetry by concerning the degradation of society, spirit (religion) and quality of life due to the thirst for status and urban expansion caused by the industrial revolution. Eliot's Preludes conveys the mundane and repetitive nature of our lives in the modern, urban world. It uses a variety of poetic techniques including imagery, sound patterning, form of the poem and the use of personae, to render these themes. The poem itself 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. The first prelude describes the evening - 'evening settles down.' The Prelude depicts a rainy, windswept evening that seems to have that dreary feel of the day's end, especially with the imagery of strewn newspapers as leftover, unwanted rubbish. The monotonous rain beating down works together with the rhymes 'passageways - days', 'wraps - scraps'
An Analysis of "The Heart of Woman" by W.B. Yeats
An Analysis of �The Heart of the Woman� by W.B. Yeats O what to me the little room / That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; / He bade me out into the gloom, / And my breast lies upon his breast. ��������The line �O what to me the little room� could possibly allude to the woman�s heart and how it accepts love inwardly in order to fill the spaces of her �room.� Similar to how a room is filled, one can interpret that love can also abstractly fill the �little room.� Also, the line �That was brimmed up with prayer and rest� could express her passiveness when receiving love, similar to how prayers and rest are passive. In prayer, one expects a deity to impart everything without relying on any work while rest excludes a person from exerting any effort. So it can be inferred that in the first two lines of the poem, the woman is still na�ve about the experiences of love and lacks the sense of maturity for her to understand what love is. The third line �He bade me out into the gloom,� in a sense can mean that there is an attempt to accomplish something. Literally bid means to make a proposal and in the context of the poem, �bade a person out into the gloom� can mean that there is an effort to complete a certain
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;