The country- house poem developed into a literary genre in the early decades of the seventeenth- century. Aemilia Lanyer's, `The description of Cooke- ham', and Ben Jonson's, `To Penshurst' namely represent the small genre which flourished so briefly. These poems are much more than domestic architecture and are more than simple exercises in praising and pleasing a wealthy patron and the readership at large. In country- house poetry, poets use the conjunction of the ideal family (the patron's) and the ideal site (the estate and surrounding areas in which the patron and his/her family live) as a means of reflecting on social values, the nature of the good life, and the ways in which other households fall short of the mark. The country- house poem, in other words, can be a vehicle of social criticism as well as of praise. Lanyer and Jonson celebrate great places and the happiness that they enjoyed their; finding an Eden is truly rare, but the households survive in literature as paradises in their own right.
Jonson was well documented as having aspirations to rise from lower rank to higher; to be part of and have influence on the court circle; to claim friendship with those of high birth and chronicle their virtues and above all to gain from his patrons' the authority to speak for his culture. This information can be paralled in what we know about Lanyer, they are almost exact contemporaries, intricately linked in literary study of the genre. Lanyer was one of the very few published women poets of the Renaissance. Her single volume of poems `Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum' was published in 1611 and contained a series of dedicatory poems to patronesses, praising them as a community of contemporary good women. The final poem of ten, `The d...
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... were almost touching. Yet their poems were strikingly different.
According to Ann Coiro, Penshurst became a fantasy redress of Jonson's own social unease, while Lanyer's description of Cooke-ham is a desolate place, a county- house poem of loss. It is clear from my analysis of these two wonderfully complex and thoroughly entertaining poems that while they contain various similarities they also exhibit a wide range of dissimilarities. I have discussed reasons such as gender and class position that contributed to the poets' conception of the county- house poem. From their original creation in iambic pentameter, to their installation of a woman as a key figure to their very different visions of the estate towards the end. `The description of Cooke- ham' and `To Penshurst' are excellent examples of the country- house poem and continue to be compared and contrasted.
Literature of the English Restoration offers the example of a number of writers who wrote for a courtly audience: literary production, particularly in learned imitation of classical models, was part of the court culture of King Charles II. The fact of a shared model explains the remarkable similarities between “The Imperfect Enjoyment” by the Earl of Rochester and “The Disappointment” by Aphra Behn—remarkable only because readers are surprised to read one poem about male sexual impotence from the late seventeenth century, let alone two examples of this genre by well-known courtly writers. In fact, Richard Quaintance presents ten more examples by lesser-known poets as he defines the literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem,” written in imitation of Roman poems on the same subject, which is shared by Rochester and Behn (Quaintance 190). Since Rochester and Behn are working along such closely similar lines in terms of the artistic models that their own poems aim to imitate, it is therefore fair to ask the question: what are the main differences in their compositional technique within this tightly-defined literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem”? By examining features of each poem in turn—including form (including this sub-genre they share), but also narrative voice and tone—with some examination of the secondary critical literature on both Rochester and Behn, I hope to demonstrate that there are distinct differences in compositional technique which involve the difference in sex between these two writers. But my conclusion will attempt to problematize the very notion of an authorial sex difference by raising the concept of gender, and in particular the aspect of “performativity”—...
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
Throughout the poem Crichton Smith successfully creates a haunting portrayal of his guilt-laden grief over his mother's final years and the role he played in her neglect. This neglect is evident in the vivid image of his mother's home combined with her frailty. Crichton Smith adds to this his own role in failing to rescue her and subsequently emphasises the extent to which he is plagued by regret.
The Story begins with a description of the house. The house in itself is a symbol of isolation women faced in the nineteenth-century. The protagonist describes the house as isolated and miles away from the village, but also described as “the most beautiful place” (Gilman 217). During the nineteenth-century, women were in a sense isolated from society, just like the house. The role of the women was to stay home and tend to the
Jane Austen's novels at first glance tell a story of romance set primarily within the landowning society amidst country estates, and their cultivation of tea parties, social outings, and extravagant balls; ladies sashaying in flowing gowns through precisely decorated rooms, and men deliberating over their game of whist. The storybook romance usually unfolds in these familiar settings, and inevitably involves the conflict of two lovers separated by differences in social class, and the resulting influence of the diverse societies they revolve in. Although these superficial aspects of Austen's stories are protruding at the seams, underneath the skin of these well-clothed dramas lie serious moral issues afflicting the culture of England during Austen's life.
Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
When one travels, it is easy to observe differences in social norms from country to country. One may also observe differences within a country, for example, the social norms of a small town or village versus those of a large metropolis. Differences in social norms can also be observed in literature. This essay will focus on two dramatic monologues, which were written by poets who lived in England during the same period. Robert Browning published My last Duchess in 1842, the same year that Alfred Tennyson published Ulysses. Both poets lived in England during the Victorian era. However, by examining characters from their poetry, namely Alfonso in My Last Duchess and Odysseus in Ulysses, we can see that they express opposite norms concerning controlling power, change, form and death.
1 Modern Poetry. Third Edition. Norton. I am a naysayer. 2003. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the Williams, William.
113- The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. of the book. Vol.
Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Reidhead, Julia, ed., pp. 113-117. Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 7, 2nd ed.
Goldsmith’s speaker begins nostalgically for the “loveliest village of the plain,” (1) by listing the town’s virtues which include “The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church [.]” (11-12) Goldsmith uses this imagery to contrast the current state of the village, he goes on to say that “These were thy charms—But all these charms are fled.” (34) Here, the speaker urges readers to admonish the loss of the village’s charms by destroying the imagery created by the first 33 lines. He continues the description of the land as “forlorn” (76), but while the villagers were forced to abandon the area, the speaker’s nostalgia implies that he chose to leave. This nostalgia implies that the speaker’s depiction of the village could be highly romanticized. The speaker likens the loss of the village with a much greater problem, “The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.” (302) He suggests that this is not an isolated problem, but an epidemic that is happening all over the country. The village is lost to make room for a garden and a grave; the first belongs to the nobility and the later to the peasant. His portrayal of the New World supports th...
Rundle, Thomas J. Collins & Vivenne J. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry ad Poetic Theory. Concise. Toronto: Broadview Press Limited, 2005.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Christ Carol T., Catherine Robson, and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
The rural elite of Austen’s novels are members of the upper middle-class. They are not the aristocracy (although Mr Darcy belongs to the aristocracy), but their connections and education give them the right to mix with high society, as well as to marry with people of h...
His poem recognizes the ordinary and turns it into a spectacular recollection, whose ordinary characteristics are his principal models for Nature. As Geoffrey H. Hartman notes in his “Wordsworth’s poetry 1787-1814”, “Anything in nature stirs [Wordsworth] and renews in turn his sense of nature” (Hartman 29). “The Poetry of William Wordsworth” recalls a quote from the Prelude to Wordsworth’s 1802 edition of Lyrical ballads where they said “[he] believed his fellow poets should "choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them.in a selection of language really used by men” (Poetry). In the shallowest sense, Wordsworth is using his view of the Tintern Abbey as a platform or recollection, however, this ordinary act of recollection stirs within him a deeper understanding.