Compare and contrast how three poets (in four poems) explore love and
its consequences.
In this essay, I will be looking at the poems First Love (John Clare),
My Last Duchess (Robert Browning), Porphyria's Lover (Robert Browning)
and To His Coy Mistress (Andrew Marvell). I will refer to these poems
as FL, MLD, PL, and HCM respectively. I will first be looking at what
love can do to ones emotions, and then at what people can be capable
of doing.
Clare has managed to convey what love can do if it is not recognised
in his poem, FL. In the last stanza of this poem, he asks the
rhetorical questions of whether love's bed is "always snow" and if
flowers are "winters choice." By this I think he is questioning the
reader if that when such a perfect woman that can take "sight away"
and make "blood burn" round ones heart is found, the love for that
woman can destroy a man so that his heart leaves its "dwelling-place"
to "return no more."
In contrast to FL, Marvell's poem HCM depicts the jealousy of a man
whose wife is so beautiful that every man admires her. He manages to
depict this beauty using hyperboles and metaphors. For instance, in
the first stanza, Marvell describes the man's love for his mistress as
"Vaster than empires" which implies that it is great, but this is
exaggerated, or a hyperbole. He also uses the phrase "Times wingèd
chariot" to indicate death, or the process of ageing. He then goes on
in the last stanza to request to his mistress to "sport while we
may," or, in other words, to make love to him whilst they are both
young. In my opinion, Marvell is trying to show that jealousy can make
a person lust for things in a relationship before it is ready.
In an even greater contrast to both of...
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...n he "debated" whether or not
to kill her. He then states that he "found" a thing to do. This is
then written almost blatantly - that he used her hair and wound it
round her neck three times in one "long yellow string" and "strangled"
her. He then sickens the reader by saying that he was "quite" sure
that she didn't feel any thing, but it seems by this that he doesn't
even care. Now the reader can be disgusted by his next action, he
unties her, and her cheek blushed bright beneath his "burning kiss".
Thus he discloses to the reader the prospect that he is a
necrophiliac, and that he may only feel emotions toward dead people.
As an evaluation to all of the above, it becomes apparent that Clare
and Marvell both express what happens to peoples emotions due to love,
but Browning delves deeper than this to explore what crazed lovers can
do to their partners.
daughter’s last request was for him to forgive the offender who killed her which he does.
telling them of his plans. This resulted in them being filled with terror as they do not know if
of killing him he tried to find some way of saying that he was not guilty. He
to avenge the foul murder, but to leave his mother out of it as her guilt would
“He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up” (pg. 51)
is similar to the feelings in her heart. In the same way that there is
All the poems you have read are preoccupied with violence and/or death. Compare the ways in which the poets explore this preoccupation. What motivations or emotions do the poets suggest lie behind the preoccupation?
Compare and contrast the poems The Tyger and The Donkey and discuss which poet gives us the clearest depiction of humanity. William Blake is a wealthy, upper-class writer who separates himself from the rest of the wealthy community. Blake has a hate for the techniques used by many of the wealthy, company owners who gain and capitalise through cheap and expendable labour, supplied by the ever-growing poverty in the country. Blake makes a point to try and reveal this industrial savagery through his work. "The Tyger" is presented as a metaphorical approach to the struggle between the rich and the poor; good and evil.
Also, he was telling her what to do. He wanted her to sit around at home and not work and it was no conducive to her plans.
In his preface of the Kokinshū poet Ki no Tsurayaki wrote that poetry conveyed the “true heart” of people. And because poetry declares the true heart of people, poetry in the minds of the poets of the past believed that it also moved the hearts of the gods. It can be seen that in the ancient past that poetry had a great importance to the people of the time or at least to the poets of the past. In this paper I will describe two of some of the most important works in Japanese poetry the anthologies of the Man’yōshū and the Kokinshū. Both equally important as said by some scholars of Japanese literature, and both works contributing greatly to the culture of those who live in the land of the rising sun.
him to return the girl to her father so the plague will end. He agrees to return
A short story and poem, are two literary pieces where a rich story is embedded. Readers are drawn towards these scripts by means of rhythm, characterization, or a fictional setting in their respective narratives. The script would not make it entertaining enough to hold the reader’s attention. It would depend on the imagination of the readers as they are reading the story as to what they take from it. Every reader has their own way of visualizing the descriptions and symbolism used by the author. It is through imagination that the readers are able to interpret what the author is trying to depict within the symbolism and other descriptive languages. The beauty of stories and poems is that they are generated and created through the readers own imagination which consequently allows each individual reader to build their own personal connection with the literary piece. The two literary pieces “The Road Not Taken” (poem) and the short story “A Worn Path” are different in terms of actual writing styles, however they both share the same theme which is every person’s journey is greatly governed by their decisions and no matter how many paths there may be, it is still the choices that the person makes that determine the ending of his or her journey. Each one conveys a theme of life journeys and the challenges and struggles that go along with those journeys. In “The Road Not Taken” it is the journey one must make while trying to choose the right path in life. One path seemingly offers a more familiar road and perhaps the easier of the two. The other path is clearly been less traveled upon, yet yearns to be. In “A Worn Path” the journey that one woman takes on in order to care for her sick grandchild is unfolded. It is described to the reader ...
... explaining the cause of his alienation, which he hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much other than what he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral,
Romantic poetry is the creative manifestation of the views of poets who penned during the Enlightenment era. Romantic poets sought not only to entertain with their art, but often to make grand social and political statements. Poets like William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley used their medium to shed light on perspectives that would otherwise remain unwritten due to their controversial nature. Religion, love, and politics were often the prevailing themes of romantic poetry. Some poems were rebellious against establishment, some regarded lifelong battles with religion, and some simply recalled a drug-induced hallucination of a journey to Xanadu. Regardless of the topic, romantic poets provided a much
Among the five authors that I have chosen they all relate themselves to the material that they write. The authors that I have chosen are, the poets, Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers, the prose writers, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Willa Cather, and the dramatist, Eugene O’Neil. In all of their writings they have an autobiographical nature that tells the reader about the authors own life. Without the aspects of these authors’ lives their writing could differ.