An Analysis Of Robert Frost's Acquainted With The Night

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Written by Robert Frost in 1928, “Acquainted with the Night” uses symbolic imagery, metaphors, and the terza rima rhyme scheme to pay homage to Dante. It refers to the style of the “Divine Comedy” and the conflict of religious politics in Italy during that time period.
“Although he avoids traditional verse forms and only uses rhyme erratically, Frost is not an innovator and his technique is never experimental” (Poetry Foundation). This implies that this poem is an unusual work of Frost since it uses the terza rima rhyme scheme. “Invented by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the late thirteenth century to structure his three-part epic poem, The Divine Comedy, terza rima is composed of tercets woven into a rhyme scheme that requires the end-word of the second line in one tercet to supply …show more content…

It can be inferred that the purpose of this poem is to pay homage to Dante. Used most famously in “The Divine Comedy” the terza rima is an allusion to the Holy Trinity. Stanzas are written in tercets where the last word of the second line rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza. The use of the terza rima in both “Acquainted with the Night” and “The Divine Comedy” symbolises the inner conflict of the infinite spirit overtaking the rest of the body. “I have outwalked the furthest city light” can be understood literally as Dante being exiled from Florence. However, upon deeper inspection it can be inferred that he is not just leaving the city limits. Dante is moving away from the beliefs of the Guelfs and the power of the papacy. However, “Dante readily accepted the Aristotelian assumption that man is a social (political) being.

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