POET Literary Period or Movement

FORM THEMES/LINKS

PEERS

Henry Howard1517 - 1547

Renaissance Sonnet

Robert Southwell1561 - 1595

Renaissance Ballad

William Shakespeare1564 - 1616

Renaissance(Elizabethan/Jacobean)

Sonnet

John Donne1572 - 1631

RenaissanceMetaphysical

Sonnet

Robert Herrick1591 – 1674

Renaissance (Jacobean)Cavalier

Lyric Poem “Carpe Diem”

John Milton1608 - 1674

Renaissance (Jacobean)

Sonnet

Anne Bradstreet1612 – 1672

Colonial/Puritan (US)

Epistle

Andrew Marvell1621 – 1678

Metaphysical Quatrains/couplets

Jonathan Swift1667 – 1745

Neoclassical Elegy

William Blake1757 – 1827

Romantic Ballad – couplets

William Wordsworth1770 – 1850

Romantic Quatrains/couplets

Samuel Coleridge1772 – 1834

Romantic Iambic Tetrameter

Thomas Love Peacock

1785 – 1866

Romantic Ballad

Lord Byron1788 – 1824

Romantic Lyric Poem

Percy Shelley1792 – 1822

Romantic Sonnet

John Clare1793 – 1864

Romantic

John Keats1795 – 1821

Romantic Iambic Pentameter

Elizabeth B Browning

1806 – 1861

Victorian Rhyming Stanzas

Alfred Lord Tennyson

1809 – 1892

Victorian Lyric Poem

Emily Bronte1818 – 1848

Victorian

Arthur Hugh Clough

1819 – 1861

Victorian Quatrains

Emily Dickinson1830 – 1886

Modernism (US)

Christina Rossetti1830 – 1894

Pre-Raphaelite

Thomas Hardy1840 – 1928

Victorian

Gerald Manley Hopkins

1844 - 1889

Victorian Sprung rhythm

WJEC AS Language and Literature Anthology 2012 SummaryRenaissance

Tudor/Elizabethan/Jacobean Sonnet brought to this country by Wyatt and Surrey [octet/sestet/volta] Life revolved around the court of Henry VIII and later Elizabeth. Called the Renaissance – characterised by a rebirth of interest in the Classics

Sonnet Form fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter Two kinds of sonnets have been most common in English poetry – PETRACHAN and SHAKESPEARIAN

Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two main parts, called the octave and the sestet. The octave and the sestet are usually contrasted in some key way: for example, the octave may ask a question to which the sestet offers an answer.

Petrachan octet typically follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, or ABBACDDC and the sestet (the remaining six lines) typically follow a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD, or CDECDE.

Shakespearean sonnet is divided into four parts The first three parts are each four lines long, and are known as quatrains, rhymed ABAB; the fourth part is called the couplet, and is rhymed CC.

The Shakespearean sonnet is often used to develop a sequence of metaphors or ideas, one in each quatrain, while the couplet offers either a summary or a new take on the preceding images.

1. “Love that doth Reign and Live Within My Thought” - Henry Howard, Earl of SurreyContext – Son of Duke of Norfolk, career cut short – executed for treason aged 30yrs, Content – Deals with themes -of love, death, confusion of love. It examines how love chooses you, you can’t choose it. He talks about being in love with a woman who does not return his feelings. Shows that LOVE and PAIN go together, it is 'sweet' to die for love.Audience - Tudor/ Elizabethan, court, those unrequited in lovePurpose - to show his cleverness in translating the sonnet from Italian and to complain about unrequited love.Form - Shakespearean sonnet (14 lines, 10 syllable in each), Iambic pentameter,abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme. Clear use of enjambementLexis/imagery –

abstract nouns show juxtaposition (love/pain), Latinate words and lexis of battle [arms, captive coward], personification {Love}, image of dress as in putting on armour for a fight, archaisms [eke, taketh,] paradox ‘Sweet is the death’ –pun on ‘death’.

Grammar - 4 declarative sentences. Discourse markers show logic and, but, and, for, yet. Older forms of verbs - doth, taketh.Phonology – alliteration [look for t, b, c, p]

2. “New Prince, New Pomp” – Robert Southwell Context - Catholic martyrContent - The poem is about the birth of Jesus and how one should worship him even though he is just a normal baby born in a stable and does not appear powerful. (Use of rhyme suggests it may be a carol)

Audience - It would be written to spread the Biblical story through song. They would also have been Christian as this was the predominant religion of the times. Purpose - To praise Jesus, to entertain, to educate others about the stories of the BibleForm - ballad – actually a carol still sung at Christmas. Instruction[uses imperatives to tell us what to do until we approach the baby in the last verse.Lexis/imagery –

archaisms[seely, wight], juxtaposes humble imagery of poverty with images of riches [pearl, court], Biblical imagery and references,

Grammar - imperative voice giving instruction, exclamatory at times for emphasis, Each verse is a complete sentence and a complete thought. Phonology - uses rhyme abcb – uses plosives [p] in v. 5 for emphasis and in last verse open vowels of assonance for acceptance.

3. "Sonnet CXXX – ShakespeareContext – Part of a series of sonnets dedicated to “The Dark Lady”. This goes against traditional ideas of Courtly Love prevalent at the time and instead describes the woman in question in terms of what she isn’t. Shakespeare rejects the usual exaggerations of love poetry (false compare) in order to describe her in a more truthful and modest description.Content – Shakespeare opens with a bold statement that the eyes of his beloved lady are not like the sun and continues in this way to understate her attractions or present them honestly. Having acknowledged all of her imperfections or limitations, the poet swears that his beloved is, nonetheless, as special as any woman "belied" (misrepresented) by "false compare" (untrue or lying comparisons). Audience – An audience interested in Literature, Elizabethan court, middle classes who would have been able to read.Purpose - To entertain, to engage audience to think about love and the honesty of relationships compared to the falsity of courtly descriptions. Form – Shakespearean sonnet – 3 quatrains plus a rhyming couplet to end.Lexis/imagery: Poem uses metaphors of winter and the twilight, archaic language evident (doth, thou), lexical sets of fire (glowing, ashes, fire) and death (sunset, cold,ashes, expire).Personification of death. Grammar: three declarative sentences – complex as he points out his insight. Discourse markers show the argument [That, When, upon. As ]etc. Use of list as in L.2 for emphasis.Phonology: use of alliteration

4. Sonnet “Batter My Heart” – John Donne Context – one of the most famous metaphysical poets, a group of writers who wrote in the early 17th Century and whose work was characterised in style as being highly intellectual and philosophical with intensive use of ingenious conceits and turns of wit. Their poetry was concerned with abstract thoughts and subjects such as existence, truth and the role of God.Content –‘Batter My Heart’ was written after Donne was asked to be an Anglican priest, the poem expresses his inner desperation and mental turmoil, Donne wants to let God into his life yet feels he is too weak, he is asking God to push himself in and the poem contains many violent images. The poem was shocking for its time and still has the power to shock as the four stanzas chart the struggle Donne undergoes.Audience – Plausible that he could have read them to an audience of friends hence the shocking quality, not likely to have been read in a sermon due to controversial nature of ideas.

Purpose – This poem is an appeal to God, pleading with Him not for mercy or clemency or benevolent aid but for a violent, almost brutal overmastering.Form – This simple sonnet follows an ABBAABBACDDCEE rhyme scheme and is written in a loose iambic pentameter. In its structural division, it is a Petrarchan sonnet rather than a Shakespearean one, with an octet followed by a sestet. Lexis/imagery – A lexical set of violence is prevalent throughout the poem. The poem’s metaphors (the speaker’s heart as a captured town, the speaker as a maiden betrothed to God’s enemy) work with its extraordinary series of violent and powerful verbs (batter, o’erthrow, bend, break, blow, burn, divorce, untie, break, take, imprison, enthrall, ravish) create the image of God as an overwhelming, violent conqueror. The bizarre nature of the speaker’s plea reaches a climax in the paradoxical final couplet, in which the speaker claims that only if God takes him prisoner can he be free, and only if God ravishes him can he be chaste.Grammar – Imperative voice used to order God to punish him, the use of the first person possessive pronoun ‘my’ centres the poem on Donne making it a personal appeal and a personal struggle with the issue of his faith, the enjambement used makes the opening sentence complex which is indicative of the complex nature of the argument. Syndetic and asyndetic listing show the strength of his feelings, here he is referring to god as a carpenter as he entreats him to ‘mend’ him.Phonology – the alliterative plosives and tripling used in ‘breake, blowe, burn’ show the harshness of Donne’s feelings.

Cavalier Poets Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of English poets of the 17th

century, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. Much of their poetry is light in style, and generally secular in subject.

Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet.

The Cavaliers preferred more straightforward expression than the Metaphysical Poets. They valued elegance, and were part of a refined, courtly culture, but their poetry is often frankly erotic. Their strength was the short lyric poem, and a favourite theme was carpe diem, "seize the day."

5. “To Virgins to Make Much of Time” - Robert HerrickContext – The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC) popularized the term carpe diem, it gained widespread currency as a term for categorizing any literary work whose primary purpose was to persuade readers to make the most of the here and now. Herrick’s poem was published in 1648. Herrick is generally considered the greatest of the Cavalier poets. He was ordained into the church sometime before 1627.Content – a lyric poem ( a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings) that promotes carpe diem, the idea of living life to the fullestAudience – educated middle classes – clearly aimed at a female audience trying to encourage them to make the most of their lives. Purpose – urges young unmarried woman to hurry up and get married before they become old hags.Form – Lyric poem - and most of the line are in iambic tetrameter and in iambic trimeter, four stanzas, ABAB rhyme scheme.Lexis/imagery – personifies the sun, time and flowers, uses metaphors such as calling the sun a lamp, lexis of religion, lexical set of nature to reflect fragility of life and the passing of time. Grammar – imperative voice to start – ordering women to gather rosebuds, direct address “ye” talking to his readers. Phonology – masculine and feminine rhymes, alliteration,

Epic Poetry and the mock heroic John MILTON’s (1608 – 1674) Paradise Lost is considered an epic poem and is

influenced by writing in the Bible as well as Greek writers such as Homer. As a younger poet

Anne BRADSTREET (1612 – 1672) wrote five quaternions,epic poems of four parts each which explore the diverse yet complementary natures of their subject.

Andrew MARVELL (1621 – 1678) Mower against Gardens, first appeared in the Miscellaneous Poems of Marvell, which were published posthumously. .

6. “Sonnet XIX: On His Blindness” - John MiltonContext – son of a prosperous Puritan family, involved in many of the religious and political controversies of his day, most known for “Paradise Lost” which set out to “justify the ways of God to man.”Content –a deeply personal poem, which gently guides himself and the reader from an intense loss through to understanding and gain. The main themes of this poem are Milton's exploration of his feeling, fears and doubts regarding his failed sight, his rationalisation of this fear by seeking solutions in his faith.Audience - This was written at a time when the Church was very influential and everyone had to attend Church services. The society at the time was God-fearing. The audience of Milton’s epic is therefore almost universal - it appeals to all humanity to understand and learn from the mistakes of the first man and woman.Purpose - Milton believed that God had singled him out for the task of writing Paradise Lost (his epic poem) and spreading the word of God was his motivation.Form – a Petrarchan sonnet (see notes above), with iambic pentameter Lexis/imagery - contrasting darkness and light, `my light is spent' and spending half of his life `in this dark world and wide', using alliteration and contrast to give understanding to his affliction, a biblical reference to the parable of the `Talents', personifies Patience to give guidance and encouragement.Grammar – paste tense to reflect his contemplation, pre-modifiers to emphasise his turmoil, compound sentences to show complexity of his argument, lots of enjambment to reflect continuing thoughts. Phonology – alliteration to create a sense of emphasis on certain phrases “Patience to prevent”, best Bear”, “day-labour, light denied”

7. To My Dear And Loving Husband - Anne BradstreetContext - Anne Bradstreet was a devoted wife and mother (She had eight children!). In 1647, Anne Bradstreet's brother- in- law, took some of her poetry to England where he had it published (possibly without her knowledge/permission). She is considered a great poet because readers enjoy her subjects and how they are treated. Another reason why she is considered a great poet is because women poets in the 1600's are rare. Her poems are written primarily for herself, her family, and her friends, many of whom were very well educated. Content – one of two Bradstreet poems on this subject, she addresses her husband by a series of metaphors, the main one being the sun.Audience – Women, the general public, her brother in lawPurpose – to explore the strength of her feelings for her husband, to show how love works in a close, loving relationship.Form – She must have been familiar with the classical epistle, or verse letter, which English poets had begun imitating in the sixteenth century. Uses rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter throughout. Lexis/imagery – series of metaphors, use of paradox – “if ever two were one then surely we.” Similes and hyperbole is also used – “all the riches the East could hold”. The archaic verb "persever" imports the idea of abiding continuity transcending death. In addition it repeats the key term "ever," used in each of the poem's thee opening lines as well as the concluding line. Lexical set of religion. Grammar – declarative mood, first person narrative voice talking directly to her husband, caesuras in the lines to allow for consideration of the ideas. Phonology – some alliteration and assonance.

8. The Mower Against Gardens - Andrew MarvellContent - "The Mower Against Gardens" is the first of the "Mower" sequence, an attack on the sophistications of human invention and a praise of Nature. The poem's disgust with the freaks produced by science is balanced with the praise of Nature's "wild and fragrant innocence". A supporter of Cromwell. "The Mower Against Gardens" is one of several poems that Marvell wrote using the persona of Damon the Mower, a rural type even more rustic than the conventional shepherds of the pastoral mode.  The mower is one with nature; he doesn't use fertilizers or plows, he doesn't graft plants to make hybrids, he doesn't use the arts of horticulture or agricultural husbandry. Instead, he's like the gatherer half of a hunter/gatherer tribe: he mows, with his scythe, the green grasses which nature provides; he makes his living taking what Nature in its pure form has to offer.  Here, he describes other ways of life in very disapproving terms. Audience - General public at the time but was written as an attack on science. Follows traditional style of the metaphysical period.Purpose – To make audience aware of the power and beauty of nature and wary of changing things through science.Structure - The poem is written in rhyming couplets where the first line sets up a statement and the second undercuts or extends the thought. Uses discourse markers [and yet, that, but]Lexis/imagery - Lexis of nature/plants (fields, plants, roses, tulip, onion). Pre-modifiers (Luxurious, luscious) to mock mankind for not appreciating Earth's natural beauty. Classical and exotic imagery. Sexual imagery [seraglio[harem] eunuch, sex] Personification of Nature.Grammar - Complex declaratives. Use of iconic Proper nouns [Marvel of Peru] . syntax = ‘Man the sovereign thing and proud’ for emphasis and rhyme.Elision ‘tis for rhthm and naturalness.Phonology - fricatives {f} ‘and from the fields the flowers’

The Augustans and the Age of Reason So-called because it was said to mirror the reign of Augustus in ancient times. As

a writing form it is centred mostly around London and urban life but drawing upon classical Literature as inspiration and model.

9. A Satirical Elegy On The Death Of A Late Famous General - Jonathan SwiftContext –wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work ‘Gulliver's Travels’, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirising familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Content – written in 1722 upon the death of the English general John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. The poem was first published formally in 1765. Churchill, the duke disparaged in the poem, had a checkered diplomatic and military career. Thus, he became the object of an unsympathetic satirical elegy by Swift, who was one of his leading political enemies.Audience - The poem is written as a satirical verse. This suggests it is aimed at

higherclasses as satires are often politically based, sarcastic and contain disguised humour.Newspaper ‘The Tatler’ published it – read in coffee houses.Purpose - One of the purposes of this poem is to entertain. Satire is a form of

humourbut this humour is often disguised and highlighting a bigger issue. Therefore anotherpurpose of satires is to provoke change.Form – Satire. Rhyming couplets throughout to add to feeling of mockery – masculine rhyme. Iambic tetrameter – rigid structure. Lexis/imagery – Lexical set of religion – “the last trump” Use of metaphor to compare candle to his life – burnt out and extinguished. Grammar – Use of exclamatives to show the tone – sarcastic! Uses caesuras to emphasis the disbelief and lack of emotion “well, since he’s gone…” Connectives “and” to show how terrible his actions were. Rhetorical questions to indicate surprise and to make the reader consider how much the General has done. Phonology – iambic tetrameter and rhyme.

AGE OF ROMANTICISMFrom Blake – Keats.

Romanticism was a movement in the nineteenth century characterised by; An interest in emotions particularly love Interest in form particularly traditional ones such as ballads Love of nature particularly wild scenes Political radicalism Interest in dream, nightmare, gothic, ruins Concern with transience

Language of RomanticismRomantics wanted to ‘bring poetry back to the language of ordinary men’ as Wordsworth said. However, they are also keen to be as descriptive and sensual as possible especially when expressing emotion or developing gothic landscapes. Romantic art is:

Rich in vocabulary using archaisms, coinages, compound words, much pre-modification

Rich in figures of speech – similes, metaphor, personification etc

Thought is complex and expressed through language of argument and logic as well as expressing extremes of emotion through symbolism, pathetic fallacy, and natural imagery.

10. The Tyger –William Blake (1757 – 1827)Context - Blake did not attend school as a young child. He was allowed to wander freely in the city and the surrounding countryside. As a child, he began to have the visions that he would later use in his illustrations. His parents discouraged him from speaking about his visions of angels in trees or God's face at the window, believing he was lying. In his lifetime, Blake was primarily known as an artist rather than as a poet. His illuminated texts were self-published and only had a very limited range of readership.Content - Blake was a forerunner of Romanticism, an engraver and painter. This poem comes from his book ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. This is from ‘Experience’ the parallel poem is ‘The Lamb’ Tigers were exotic creatures for the time and the tiger is a polysemic image. Audience - intellectuals, middle classes, children, followers of his work.Purpose - to entertain but mainly to inform people (especially his supporters) of his views against the establishment which he believes corrupts people.Form - ballad written in rhyming couplets. First and last verses almost the same – key words changed to show development of the poem.Lexis/imagery - Tiger as a symbol of God's power in creation. The tiger as seen by Blake's poetic imagination: "fearful symmetry"; "burning …bright...fire" contrasted with "hammer, chain. .furnace...anvil". Repeated (rhetorical) questions; contrast with meekness of The Lamb; Tyger is addressed directly; lexical set of fire and industrial process. semantic field of the forge, artist/god as maker/creator. Use of archaisms ‘thee’ and ‘thy’. symbolism of tiger, extended metaphor of the forge, use of fire image, darkness/light binary opposition.Grammar – use of interrogatives, premodifiers ‘burning’ use of exclamation and questions. Questions rhetorical to express wonder and to include the reader in thinking. Interrogative style challenges the reader to think. Use of capitals shows links with God .Use of adjectives to show frightening nature of the tiger ‘dread’, ‘deadly’ etc. elision ‘water’d’ in order to fit rhythm.Phonology - Alliteration (burning bright, frame thy fearful, distant deeps). Uses 'Lamb' as a symbol of God/innocence.

11.I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud - William WordsworthContext – Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with nature. In the early 1790s William lived for a time in France, then in the grip of the violent Revolution; Wordsworth’s philosophical sympathies lay with the revolutionaries, but his loyalties lay with England. Wordsworth’s poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism.Content – This simple poem revisits the familiar subjects of nature and memory, with a particularly (simple) spare, musical eloquence. The plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet’s wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils by a lake, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely, bored, or restless.Audience – anyone who wanted to read his works. He set out to welcome all forms of readership and chose to write in very plain English.  His writing was a movement away from those of his peers, who wrote specifically for educated aristocrats and

the intellectual elites who were, at this time, the major consumers of poetry.  Instead he wrote for the average Englishman. Purpose – perfectly  actualises the emotional virtue of Romantic poetry itself - implies an inherent unity between man and nature, making it one of Wordsworth’s most basic and effective methods for instilling in the reader the feeling the poet so often describes himself as experiencing.Form – The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.Lexis/imagery – metaphorically compares the speaker to a cloud and personifies the daffodils as graceful dancers, Grammar – declarative sentences to share the details that he sees, Phonology – sibilance used throughout to create a sense of peace – doesn’t jar when read aloud.

12. Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor ColeridgeContext – Coleridge was a friend of Wordsworth’s. Kubla Khan remained unfinished because of the man from Porlock – a visitor who interrupted the moment of inspiration. Coleridge is associated with drug taking, specifically opium but he had a great mind influenced by German philosophy.Content – The title is exotic, mysterious, designed to create a feeling of unknown, the poet tries to create a mythical landscape of the imaginationAudience – Coleridge’s poetry is more complicated and complex than Wordsworth’s although he was published in the same book “Lyrical Ballads” so they would have had a similar readership. Purpose - In a way it’s a metaphor for the way that Man tries to control Nature. A man-made paradise is annihilated and replaced with a “true” form of Nature in the form of a “pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”Form - Narrative prose using iambic tetrameter with staggered irregular rhyming couplets – perhaps representing the way that Nature itself is irregular and ever-changing. When read aloud there’s a chant-like rhythm with complex grammar and fluent trains of thought enhanced with a complex rhyme scheme of abaab. etc. a sensuous evocation of a mythical, dreamlike place. A description.Grammar - use of prepositions for location. Complex sentences packed with description and pre-modification and qualification. Use of colon and semicolon in order to make sentences. Use of exclamation. Inversion of syntax e.g. ‘ceaseless turmoil seething’Lexis/imagery - : use of compound words. Dark/light binaries, archaisms e.g. athwart. Elision - ‘mid, natural imagery. Paradox as in last line. Gothic imagery e.g. ‘demon-lover’ alliteration ‘meandering with mazy motions. Mazy sounds like a coinage. Personification suggested by simile ‘as if…breathing.’Phonology – alliteration to emphasise enormity of Nature – “measureless to man” and “sunless sea.”

13. The War Song of Dinas Vawr – Thomas Love Peacock (1785 – 1866)Context - Poem appears within the comic novel 'The Misfortune of Elphin'. Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was a friend of Shelley the poet. Married a welsh woman who Shelley called ‘the milk-white antelope of Snowden’.Content –The title with anglicised spelling of a fortress of bogus history invented by the poet in the comic novel The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829). A poem within the novel, ‘The War-Song of Dinas Vawr’, portrays the delight of Welshmen in stealing sheep; later set to music it has almost the status of a folksong. Although Peacock does not posit a Welsh original, it should be dinas fawr (mawr) [big fort].Audience - Welsh community[on Nationalist web-site], male audience as it is a war chant.

Purpose - It is a Welsh Gothic war chant about stealing cattle and land – meant to entertain – not a serious poem.Form - Written in ballad form with abab rhyme schemeLexis/imagery - violent lexis (quell'd, kill'd, fierce, struggle, conquer] Feudal landscape. Welsh iconography.Grammar - Welsh place name 'Dyfed' (proper noun) used, superlative 'richest'Phonology – pounding rhythm like a chant

14.SHE Walks in Beauty – Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)Context - Written in 1814, when Byron was twenty-six years old, was inspired by his young cousin by marriage, Anne Wilmot. ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. This lyrical poem captures a portrait of purityContent - description of a lady who is shown as being of central importance by capitalizing the pronoun ‘SHE’. The poem deals with duality and aims to explore both sides of her character. Being a Romantic description it is also a profound and realistic one.Audience – typical of Romantic era, audiences at the time would like the dualism. Still enjoyed by audiences today as it provides an account of love.Purpose – to entertain, to show the qualities of women and duality of human nature. Lexis/imagery - Uses dualism to enrich the poem (dark\bright, mellow’d/innocent, mind/heart ) gives us the idea that the lady is a mixture of qualities such as light and darkness, good and evil. This is not an archetypical description that gives only a positive and idealized point of view. The poet describes a beauty of “shade” and “ray”, giving us again the impression that she is not only positive. Lexical sets – Physical description (face, cheek, brow, smiles, eyes) and internal description: (thought, grace, tender, peace, love, calm) This shows the contrast between two realities, mind and heart, experience and innocence, the physical and the psychological worlds. Themes = passing time (transience) and aquisition of experience. Form - Serious tone shown through strict structure : 8 syllables, ababab rhyme scheme of lyrical poem.Grammar – Declarative mood, complex sentences using enjambment to create the description of his “love”.Phonology – alliteration occurs frequently to enhance the appeal of the poem to the ear. The most obvious examples of this figure of speech include the line “cloudless climes; starry skies”.

15.Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe ShelleyContext - Shelley.born into aristocracy but rejected title. Husband of Mary – author of “Frankenstein” and friend of Lord Byron.Content – the title is another name for Ramses 11, who is mentioned in Exodus, Exotic name. The poem is a traveller’s tale re-told by Shelley which shows man’s need to leave a mark – it is the artist not the king who does so but eternity sweeps all before it.Audience – Probably the most famous of Shelley’s poems and therefore widely read and studied.Purpose - Ozymandias is first and foremost a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of political power, and in that sense the poem is Shelley’s most outstanding political sonnet,Form - sonnet. Petrarchan. Form of a story about a journey with a message from the past ending the poem.Grammar - personal address. Inverted syntax ‘’sculptor well those passions read’ Use of speech marks to denote inscription. Exclamation used or words of the

pedestal. Imperative coming from beyond the grave. Three sentences, the first extremely complex followed by a simple dramatic, ‘Nothing beside remains’ and ending with a much pre-modified sentence.Lexis/imagery - Latinate ‘trunkless.’ antique,’ pedestal’ rather abstract vocabulary. Pre-modification piles up details e.g. lone and level, half-sunk, shattered. Sands of time image, imagery of ruins and wild places. Contrast between anonymous artist and sneering king Phonology – alliteration – “cold command” to highlight the emotions of the king.

16.First Love - John ClareContext – Clare is ranked with the foremost English nature poets. While some commentators define Clare's importance with reference to the tradition of eighteenth-century descriptive verse, others emphasize the Romantic qualities of his poetry. His mental health was unstable and he spent the last years of his life in an asylum. Content – Explores the experience of “first love” which Clare describes as changing the way he saw the world.Audience – Had some publishing success during his lifetime. Purpose – To try and explore how it feels to be in love and to capture the experience. Form – Quatrains and rhyming couplets throughoutLexis/imagery – Lexical set of Nature to show how love is a natural experience. Narrative poem with enjambed lines to create a sense of sharing details. Possessive pronouns used to show that it is a personal experience. Grammar - First person narrative voice. Juxtaposes ideas to show how contradictory love can be. Phonology – Sibilant sounds to create a lyrical, gentle sound.

17. To Autumn - John KeatsContext - Keats wrote some of the most beautiful and enduring poems in the English language. Among his greatest achievements is his sequence of six lyric odes, written between March and September 1819—astonishingly, when Keats was only twenty-four years old. Keats’s poetic achievement is made all the more miraculous by the age at which it ended: He died barely a year after finishing the ode “To Autumn,” in February 1821.Keats wrote a series of Odes. He died young.Content - Title: the season is used as symbolic of time passing to show transience. It is part of a series of poems in which Keats philosophised about life and explored the senses. ‘O for a life of sensation rather than of thought.’Audience – Purpose – To explore the different aspects of the season. 1st Verse deals with the plentiful harvest. 2nd Verse gives vivid iconic pictures of autumn and the 3rd verse, sees autumn as a threshold time between seasons and symbolic of the coming of death.Form – Ode - a three-stanza structure with a variable rhyme scheme. Each stanza is eleven lines long and each is metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter.Grammar - Starts with exclamation. Second sentence complex using semi-colons to build detail. Uses rhetorical questions to involve the audience. Use of elision. Much qualification, pre and post-modification as details are piled on details. Piling of verbs in v1. Adjectives in all verses.Lexis - semantic field of nature and harvest, assonance of v1. onomatopoeia of v.3. Circumlocution of full-grown lambs for sheep. Compound words. use of puns e.g. maturing [adjective/verb] symbols e.g. swallows\twitter, indexical signs of autumn.Phonology -

VictoriansVictorian poetry Often deals with mythology and narrative as a retreat from industrialisation Challenged in the latter years by Darwinism Growth of atheism Rise of women writers

18. A Musical Instrument – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Context - An invalid through her childhood who turned to books and eloped with the poet Robert Browning. Extremely popular – nearly became Poet laureate [no woman has before or since until Duffy] but Tennyson given the role. Content - Her poem deals with the business of being a poet. Pan stands for the ‘id’ – creative urges bringing chaos and order in equal measure. She uses the story of Pan to show the dual nature of art. She shows that while art is beautiful it also is destructive. Audience – Wide audience. Showing the male establishment that a woman can write a learned and intricate verse. Female role model. First published in ‘The Cornhill Magazine’.Purpose – to examine the power and sometimes destructiveness of art and the artist. The power of the ‘id’ – the instinctive part of us in which creativity is born.Form - This poem is made up of five stanzas, with six lines each. The first line of each stanza has nine syllables and ends with the word "pan". The second and last line of each stanza ends with the word "river". The third line of each stanza ends with a word that rhymes with "pan". The fourth and fifth lines rhyme with each other, but the rhymes are different in each stanzaLexis/imagery -classical imagery using Pan making a reed pipe as symbolic of art.Browning uses lexical set of water “deep” and “cool” to emphasize that the place the reed was coming from was safe and calm. In line nine Browning uses an oxymoron “the limpid waters turbidly” to reinforce that the art has a beautiful part and a destructive part, which are also contradictory. Active verbs like “hacked” and “hewed” to emphasize the destruction. Grammar - Syntax of lines changed to make them end with river and Pan. The repetition in the poem puts emphasis on "the great god pan" and on "the river", creating an image that builds through the poem. Uses declarative mood with interrogatives.Phonology - alliteration, rhyme, use of sound effects.

19.Break,Break, Break - Alfred Lord TennysonContext – many critics consider Tennyson to be the greatest poet of the Victorian Age; and he stands as one of the major innovators of lyric and metrical form. In 1884, the Royals granted Tennyson a baronetcy; he was now known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Content – a lyric poem that was believed to have been completed in 1834. It centres on Tennyson's grief over the death of his best friend, Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet.Audience – Purpose – To explore the depths of grief and to commemorate the loss of a friend. Form – Lyrical poetry presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a story or presents a witty observation. A lyric poem often has a pleasing musical quality. The word lyric derives from the Greek word for lyre, a stringed instrument in use since ancient times.  Lexis/imagery - Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam, was only 22 when he died. The shock of Hallam's death impressed upon Tennyson how priceless youth is. To underscore this idea, and to express the agony he suffers at the loss of young Hallam, Tennyson presents images of youthful joy: the fisherman's son playing with his sister and the "sailor lad" singing in the bay. Personification and metaphor also occur in Lines 1 and 2, for the poet regards the sea as a human being. Paradox used in the “touch of a vanished hand” and “sound of a voice that is still” to emphasise the sense of loss. Grammar - Phonology - Alliteration (Line 8): boat on the bay

20.Spellbound - Emily BrontëContext – Livied most of her brief life in the morally circumspect atmosphere of her father’s parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire. Wrote “Wuthering Heights” and created a world rife with tempestuous, passionate, vengeful characters. Although she has generally been depicted as a recluse, she was, in fact, exposed to a cross-section of society through her father’s congregation and their very diverse life experiences.Content – The setting of Emily Bronte's poem “Spellbound” is the Yorkshire Moors in England, the same setting as for her novel “Wuthering Heights.” The speaker is there on a cold winter's night, and the atmosphere is very bleak. Emily Bronte wrote the poem in 1837, at the age of nineteen. She and her sisters, Charlotte and Ann, had imagined a world that they called Gondal. In Gondal, the heroes and heroines they wrote about found themselves in romantic and sometimes tragic circumstances. Purpose – To explore a feeling of entrapment. Possibly linked to her feelings about being trapped in her life and not being able to escape. Form – 3 stanzas with rhyming couplets. Parallel last lines which change slightly throughout.Lexis/imagery – Lexical sets of Nature and the power of Nature to destroy or bend you to it’s shape – is she weighed down like the trees?? Is it metaphorical? Binary oppositions of heaven and hell “clouds above…wastes below…” – cannot make up her mind what she thinks and believes. Lots of negative pre-modification which creates a negative and trapped feel. Grammar – Modal verb – will not – shows the change in her decision making – she has decided at the end – it is her choice. Lots of repetition and parallelism to show the monotony of the life. Phonology – Alliteration – bare boughs – assonance – coldly blows – “o” sounds to represent the wind?

21. There Is No God, The Wicked Sayeth - Arthur Hugh CloughContext - He shows the religious crisis experienced by many people living in England in the mid-Victorian period. epitomized in his life and poetry the religious crisis experienced by many Englishmen of the mid-Victorian period. Often humorous, light verse. "And almost everyone when age, disease, or sorrows strike him, inclines to think there is a God, or something very like him."Content - This poem is about the fact that many Englishmen of his time were going through a religious crisis, even Clough had trouble keeping his beliefs. Audience - General public at the time (those who were literate!). Strong message to the establishment that they were lving in uncertain times. Gives a list of those who still believe in religion in a scornful manner.Purpose - He seems to be showing us the crisis on religion for the people of England in his era, also showing his hidden doubts on his views on religion. Ironic and superior tone.Form - Composed of eight quatrains and is quite formal. Overall the tone of the poem is melancholic as the poem is shadowed with doubt. Alternate rhyme.Lexis/imagery- Archaic lexis (saith, t'were). 'There is no God' is repeated to emphasise and clarify his point. Sound and rhythmn adds to the mocking tone. Lists sections of the community (youngster, baby, tradesman, rich man, country folks, parson) to show that the message is for everyone – everyone is affected.Grammar - use of speech marks, declarative voice, discourse markers. Ellipsis ‘‘twere’ still uses capital for Him.Phonology - Alliterations is used (mean-man, mostly-married, sorrows-strike perhaps to show his verhment opinion.

22.Dying – Emily Dickinson

Context - Wrote at a time when women often disguised their gender to be taken seriously e.g. Bronte’s’ and sometimes refers to herself as a boy. Restricted world of 19th Century Puritan America was her world however, she is wider read than most women because of her father’s role and influence. Content - Talks about death (referencing flies as a symbol of death. One of Dickinson's most famous poems - had no title only a number.Describes the mental distraction posed by irrelevant details at even the most crucial moments--even at the moment of death. Audience - Formal language, probably for more educated; those with a perception of their own mortality? Never published in lifetime.Purpose - Show her perception of death, allows reader to question the event – how could she hear the fly if she is dead?Form - all the rhymes before the final stanza are half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room, be/Fly), while only the rhyme in the final stanza is a full rhyme (me/see).Lexis/imagery - Image of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. Central image is the fly. It makes a literal appearance in three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying. The speaker's tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual. The window image = death?. ‘I could not see to see’ like a riddle. Oxymoron in “last onset” - the end of the beginning – Christians believe that your life begins in Heaven.Grammar - each verse a complete complex declarative.Phonology - onomatopoeia of ‘buzz’, half-rhymes

23. Song – Christina Rossetti Context - ’the high priestess of Pre-Raphaelitism’ Song is a poem in two verses about not wanting to be mourned and the uncertainty of death and memory.Content – A person’s message to their lover for when they die, saying how they want their partner to live/act once they have died. Unusual as she reverses the traditional; male message to a female lover.Audience – Her lover who she will be leaving, anyone who has suffered a loss. Purpose – To possibly advise others of how to act in such times, support them and express feelings.Form – Poem splits into two halves – the first half imploring her lover not to mourn her loss however the second half goes even further against traditional views as she shows that actually the female is distanced anyway from her lover. Lexis/imagery - images of nature, imagery of grave yards.Grammar - gives instructions, syntax ‘Plant thou no roses’.Phonology - Parallelism, called a song because written in a lyrical style.

24. Nature’s Questioning – Thomas Hardy Context - started as a novelist. A pessimist and agnostic. His poem traces his thoughts about a godless universe.Content – Hardy questions why we are here. What is the meaning of life? He asks in the light of Darwinism. He comes up with various philosophical theories – made by an uncaring deity, part of a dying godhead etc. Philosophical poem reflecting challenges to religion at the end of the Victorian era. Audience - thinking people of the end of the Victorian era.Purpose – to explore the situation the zeitgeist[spirit of the age]Form - ballad – liked this old form - traditionalGrammar - syntax reversals for emphasis, Declaratives with interrogatives.Lexis/imagery - natural and cosmic, educational lexis, personification, philosophical lexis. ‘lippings’ = words colloquial Dorset.Phonology - alliteration, rhyme

25.God’s Grandeur Gerard Manley HopkinsContext – one of the greatest 19th-century poets of religion, of nature, and of inner anguish. In his view of nature, the world is like a book written by God. Hopkins therefore sees the environmental crisis of the Victorian period as vitally linked to that era’s spiritual crisis, and many of his poems bemoan man’s indifference to the destruction of sacred natural and religious order.Content –The poem begins with the surprising metaphor of God’s grandeur as an electric force. The figure suggests an undercurrent that is not always seen, but which builds up a tension or pressure that occasionally flashes out in ways that can be both brilliant and dangerousAudience – Aimed at the Victorian audience feeling the crisis in their faith to restore their beliefs. Purpose – To restore faith and to highlight the power of God to a doubting nation. Form – Petrachan sonnet – divided into an octave and a sestet with the volta showing the change in the argument. Lexis/imagery – extended metaphor to show God’s power. Lexical set of destruction to show how man has damaged God’s earth. Simple similes with a complex image within them. Grammar – rhetorical questions to engage interest. Complex sentences. Phonology - The meter here is not the “sprung rhythm” for which Hopkins is so famous, but it does vary somewhat from the iambic pentameter lines of the conventional sonnet. For example, Hopkins follows stressed syllable with stressed syllable in the fourth line of the poem, bolstering the urgency of his question: “Why do men then now not reck his rod?” Similarly, in the next line, the heavy, falling rhythm of “have trod, have trod, have trod,” coming after the quick lilt of “generations,” recreates the sound of plodding footsteps in striking onomatopoeia