Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen and Could You Not Write Otherwise? by Alan Paton.

INTRODUCTION Poems are one of the oldest forms of literature and it is one such form of literature that has evolved with the passage of time but has never been abundant. Poem is one of those forms of literature that surpasses the history of written texts (Horálek, 2019). It has been seen and discovered that poetry was employed by the people in the earlier generation as a way of oral history and genealogy as well as law. It is safe to say that writing poetry needs a strong understanding of the English language. However, the question that arises is what is the purpose of poetry? and what should a poet be writing about? This paper will try and answer these questions with the help of two poem namely, “Dulce et Decorum” and “Could you not write otherwise?” (Malaba, 2015). DISCUSSION The poem by Wilfred Owen titled “Dulce et Decorum” (1920) is a war poem and unlike many other war poems that came during the time when Owen was writing, this poem criticizes war and talks about the horror of war. The main purpose of writing a poem in the first place is to convey the innate feelings of the poet and this poem exactly does the same. Owen was a soldier himself which means he had first-hand experience of war and battlefield. The poem brings to light the struggle a soldier has to go through in their everyday life which is hardly talked about by any of the poets

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Daffodils by William Wordsworth

Daffodils by William Wordsworth When we think about nature, the first thing that may come to our mind will probably be some flowers. The same case is applicable while searching for wallpapers, because they do provide certain amount of beauty to the desktop, just like they do in the flower vase, in your living room! But flowers are quite common, and we usually avoid them, as we find nothing special about them and we go across lots of different flowers every day. But being a true nature lover and an inspired poet, Wordsworth has managed to produce a great work from this simple sight itself! William Wordsworth, one of the best English romantic poets ever, gave us this beautiful poem ''Daffodils''. Thanks to his Lyrical Ballads, we saw the the Romantic movement in literature. The Prelude is supposed to be the best work of this man, but this poem based on nature, happens to be one which we can't dare to avoid. I was forced to study this one more than once in my school days, which means that I still have every line going through my mind, especially while I am closer to the nature! Wordsworth was often called the poet of nature, thanks to his poems which gives new meaning to nature! He defines the time he spend with nature as ''the source of Joy of purest passion''. It is said that the visit to Glencoyne Park that gave Wordsworth the inspiration to write this poem. As he was

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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How do Blake and Wordsworth respond to nature and what other influences are there in their poetry?

HOW DO BLAKE AND WORDSWORTH RESPOND TO NATURE AND WHAT OTHER INFLUENCES ARE THERE IN THEIR POETRY? Poets, such as Blake and Wordsworth, had unique views on nature depending on the environmental influences; set upon them during the time they were composing their poems. This essay aims to expand on how Blake and Wordsworth responded to nature and what other factors had had an impact on their poetry. During the 1780's, came the 'Romantic Era,' in which poets, including Wordsworth and Blake, were seen as rebels against the work of their predecessors, the Augustans. Against a background of the tumultuous events shaping the modern world - the social, political, and economic upheaval initiated by the French and Industrial Revolutions - the Romantics attempted to form a new vision for mankind as their interests lay in the individual, the self, and the inner world of subjective experience. They wrote about the relationship between people and nature and between the individual and society and explored the creative powers of the imagination by looking into the darker recesses of human experience. While the Augustans, including Alexander Pope, wrote about aristocracy, as they believed that refined sophistication should be the aim of each individual, whereas the Romantics thought of aristocrats as artificially brought up individuals. The main intention of the Romantics was to rejoice

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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"Tintern Abbey" William Wordsworth

A preoccupation of the true Romantic authors was that of natural inspiration; a gathering of life experience, of knowledge and of wisdom through the untamed wilds of nature. In his poem "Tintern Abbey" William Wordsworth uses both physical and metaphysical wonderings to present a careful and yet sometimes confusing study of the cyclic nature of inspiration, knowledge and spirituality. Through the use of imagery, structure and juxtaposition, Wordsworth attempts and succeeds to teach a way to live through nature. The structure of the poem reveals one of the main themes: that inspiration, knowledge and nature are all cyclic. It is through this theme that his meaning becomes apparent. The poem begins with Wordsworth reflecting on the landscape before him. Repetitive use of terms such as "once again/ Do I behold," "The day is come when I repose again" and "once again I see" help place Wordsworth in the present and in a contemplative mood.1 Throughout the first stanza Wordsworth writes of the beauty of nature in an objective manner, describing the landscape exactly how he sees it. His metaphysical wanderings begin in this stanza too. When describing the land as being connected "with the quiet of the sky", we are led to see not only Wordsworth's belief of nature and spirituality being as one, we are also able to distinguish a link between the cycles of nature and the cycles

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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From Your Readings ofMid-Term Break, Diary of a Church Mouse and Prayer before Birth, what insights do you get about human behavior? What literary techniques are used to heighten the experience?

From Your Readings of"Mid-Term Break, "Diary of a Church Mouse" and "Prayer before Birth", what insights do you get about human behavior? What literary techniques are used to heighten the experience? By Emmanuel Sunil In all three poems, the poets give as insight into the various aspects of human behavior. MacNeice in "Prayer before Birth" emphasizes the negative aspects in which a person will be treated through out their life and focuses in on how people will enslave you, manipulate you etc. In "Mid- Term Break", Seamus Heaney comments on the nature of human behavior in public domain and how one reveals their true feelings in private. John Betjeman makes a satirical observation that people come to church for reasons other than spiritual satisfaction in "Diary of a Church Mouse". Each poet also uses different literary techniques to heighten the experience. "Prayer before Birth" is unique in that the speaker in an unborn child that has an awareness of what is going to happen in his life. Through the fetus, MacNeice tells us about all the negative ways in which others will treat you in all walks of life. One of the most important insights into human behavior is that people in power try to limit ones freedom (as in communist and fascist regimes) and MacNeice draws our attention to this in stanza 2, "I fear that the human race with tall walls wall me', where it suggests that

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A103 Introduction to the Humanities

A210 - Approaching Literature TMA 03 'The Birth-Day' by Mary Robinson Write an essay of not more than 1500 words in which you analyse the poem and comment on the poetic form and language used and the way they contribute to the meaning and effects of the poem. 'The Birth-Day' uses various techniques to convey Robinson's indignation at the vast social differences of her time. It incorporates great social commentary and as was often typical of Romantic poetry, is highly politically motivated. Robinson's use of form and language conveys her attempt at poetry being "a force which reforms and is even at variance with society" (Romantic Writings, p.80). She is representing Percy Shelley's ideal of the poet embodying truth, as she attempts to convey the sufferings of the lower-classes. As Shelley states that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (Romantic Writings: An Anthology, p.366), Robinson endorses that viewpoint, as she endeavours to highlight the discrepancies of the social world, as she sees it. The title of the poem alludes not only to the celebration of the royal birthday, but is utilized to draw attention to the conflicting reactions of the pomposity from the upper-classes on a day which is usually a cause for celebration, compared with the inescapable misery of the lower-classes. This narrative poem is similar to a ballad form, as it tells

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Death of Marilyn Monroe, by Sharon Olds, on the surface speaks about the events that occur after the death of Marilyn Monroe

Quadri Ayesha F. Quadri Professor Tulacro English1B 5 November 2012 Death of a Beauty Star In the world today, we, the public, spend so much time admiring stars and many of us want to be like them. Yet, there is so much pressure placed on them and sometimes this becomes all too much for them to cope with, and they end up taking away their lives. This is the unpleasant and tragic side of being famous as we are all made to believe that fame will make you happy. In this poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe”, by Sharon Olds, on the surface speaks about the events that occur after the death of Marilyn Monroe. The mood of the poem is very depressing as the diction is very heavy-hearted, with words and phrases like “cold”, “heavy as iron”, “closed”, “caught”, “flattened”, lend themselves to create a very apt depiction of death ( 1-7). The poem interestingly revolves around the men, the “ambulance men” (1) who carried Monroe’s body “down the steps” (10). The ambulance men tried and continued with their daily routine “as they always did” (12), but found themselves traumatized such that they could not even meet each others’ eyes because one had nightmares, the second one looked different at his wife/kids and the last one stood there in the doorway listening to a women breathing. The next stanza is double spaced before it is continued, giving

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Mortality and Immortality in Romantic Poetry

‘When old age shall this generation waste, / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe / Than ours, a friend to man’ (John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’). Discuss responses to mortality and/or immortality in the work of at least two writers of the Romantic period. Eternity and immortality are phrases to which it is impossible for us to annex any distinct ideas, and the more we attempt to explain them, the more we shall find ourselves involved in contradiction – Wiiliam Godwin, Political Injustice. The writers of the Romantic period found in immortality a topic which was not only of great political concern at the time, but would be of human interest indefinitely. The topic leads to suggestion of differences in each writer’s ideas about the role of the poet in relation to both his work and his contemporaries; a dispute as to the future state of poetry; and highlights opposing ideas about the human condition. This essay intends to explore these differences of opinion amongst a key few of the Romantic writers who expressed their beliefs both through their creative and their scholarly works, focusing particularly on the writings of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron. It intends to seek differences between the first and second generation of romantics, and see how changes in political viewpoints affected considerations towards life and death. During the 18th

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CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF NISSIM EZEKIEL BY ANALYZING A POEM OF DEDICATION AND AFTER READING A PREDICTION

CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF EZEKIEL BY ANALYZING ‘A POEM OF DEDICATION’ AND ‘AFTER READING A PREDICTION’ ________________ “The true business of living,” Nissim Ezekiel has written “is seeing touching, kissing, / The epic of walking in the street and loving on the bed.” These lines are from a poem entitled “Conclusion”, these lines serve aptly for the introduction of a man whose true business over the last half of the 20th has been the making of verse. A poet of the city, Ezekiel has stridden the streets of Bombay, and revelled in the sensuous and inimitable pleasures of the companionship of women. The contours of the city, the curves of the body, and the landscapes of the human mind: Ezekiel has transverse these terrains with equal facility, and for a very long time the English reading public has stood to benefit from Ezekiel’s numerous excursions into verse. Ezekiel’s first collection of verse “A Time to Change,” appeared in 1952, in the infancy of India’s emergence from the womb of British rule, and with it Indian poetry in English, which had long been pregnant with possibilities, finally found a voice that commanded attention. A language placed in a foreign environment takes time to root itself, and at first finds expression with greater ease in prose than in verse, as the appearance of Raja Rao’s “Kanthapura” (1938) and G.V. Desani’s

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Comparing Beowulf with the Green Knight

Matthew DeRosa Elias 9/26/12 Survey of English Literature Essay #1B When it comes to groundbreaking, classical literature, not many works can trump what Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight have done. Although similar through importance, readers would be hard pressed to discover any more similarities between the two. Beowulf is an epic poem from the Anglo-Saxon period, while Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a tale from the medieval period. The main characters of each novel, Beowulf and Sir Gawain, each endure personal struggles in the “problem of pride.” In completely separate fashions, both of them lust for domination (libido dominandi) throughout each of their respective stories. Beowulf, the earliest of epic heroes, was significantly known for his bravery. With his lack of fear for death, he without a doubt was known as the greatest warrior at the time. However with great skill and the constant appraisal from fellow warriors, Beowulf becomes very boastful in his continued desire for dominance. In fact, his first words of the tale were, “When I was younger, I had great triumphs. Then news of Grendel, hard to ignore, reached me at home.” Off the bat, he introduces himself as an accomplished warrior who felt it was his duty to slay the monster Grendel the minute he heard about his destruction. Beowulf revels in his decision to come over from Geatland to

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