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The role of nature in modern literature
Theme of nature in literature
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The relationship between a Chinese painting and a Chinese poem is often very strong. Sometimes the poem is a response to the painting or the painting is a response to the poem. By relating one artistic representation of a theme with another representation, a deeper understanding of the artistic whole can be obtained. Shen Zhou created an artistic pairing of a painting and a poem titled “Poet on a Mountain Top.” Only with a study of both Shen Zhou’s painting and poetry can a complete understanding of the poet’s struggle with his conflicting desires for freedom in nature and attachment to humanity be gained.
By switching the focus of the poem from natural concepts to the longing the poet feels for humanity, Zhou uses the poem to express the conflict in the poet over his desire for freedom. The beginning of the poem only describes settings and objects from nature such as “white clouds”, “mountains,” and “stone ledge”. As the poem develops a sign of humanity, the “narrow road”, is introduced but only as part of the natural world. This introduces the conflict between nature, or freedom, and humanity, or captivity. Once the conflict is established, the poet is introduced as “alone”, he belongs to neither nature or civilization. In a parallel to the beginning of the poem, the last stanza ties the poet with some form of humanity, the “sound of your flute,” to establish the conflict between the poet and civilization. These parallels and conflicts force the reader to consider the relationship between being completely independent and completely attached to humanity.
The poet himself struggles with resolving his desires for the humanity in the flute player and freedom in nature. Even though the poet wishes he “could take the sounding strea...
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...o draw focus to certain elements of the poem, Zhou places specific and concrete image words such as “white”, “stone”, and “bramble” to modify the elements of both nature and humanity. Since a painting can be considered as a whole, the pairing with the poem forces the viewer to consider the individual elements described by these words more closely; showing they have individual meaning to the themes of the artistic whole.
The struggle between freedom and attachment is not resolved by the specific pairing of the painting and the poem but expressed as a constant attempt to balance these two ideas. Studying the poem and the painting as a pairing adds dimension and significant amounts of understanding to how Shen Zhou considers the relationship between freedom and attachment. This exploration of the themes creates a very strong binding between the poem and the painting.
Imagery uses five senses such as visual, sound, olfactory, taste and tactile to create a sense of picture in the readers’ mind. In this poem, the speaker uses visual imagination when he wrote, “I took my time in old darkness,” making the reader visualize the past memory of the speaker in “old darkness.” The speaker tries to show the time period he chose to write the poem. The speaker is trying to illustrate one of the imagery tools, which can be used to write a poem and tries to suggest one time period which can be used to write a poem. Imagery becomes important for the reader to imagine the same picture the speaker is trying to convey. Imagery should be speculated too when writing a poem to express the big
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
The elements in the poem work very well together to help set the theme of this poem. The tone set the overall mood of the poem, so show that it was rushed but not in a chaotic way. The imagery helps to show us little details of the setting, which are very helpful. And finally, the figures of speech, help the reader to compare the scene to things they have experienced in their lifetime to fully understand the poem.
"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" by Adrienne Rich tells of the repressed Aunt Jennifer who produces scenes representing freedom and fearlessness, but in reality is trapped and powerless. Only through her artistic expression is she able to find a temporary release from her entrapment. In "Trifles", Minnie Wright allows herself to be subjugated for thirty years before she frees her whole self, through drastic means that leads to a more permanent solution, murdering her husband. From a feminist perspective, these two works give very different examples of how a woman is the cast as the "nonsignificant other" (Bressler 144), but discovers a way out of her continual oppression by rejecting their insignificance.
Hung Liu is successful in creating a juxtaposing image that tells a story about the many aspects of her Chinese origins. According to the painting, not all life in China is surrounded by beauty and elegance, like many believe it to be based on the traditional historical customs. Liu makes her point using a brilliant yet subtle progression, moving from the ideal to reality. Making use of the various principles and elements of art in her work creates a careful visual composition that benefit and support the painting’s achievements as a whole. This oil painting, being approximately 13 years old now, will hold a special place in Chinese history for the rest of its existence. The ideas Hung Liu portrays in Interregnum may help reform a social movement in the country by making her viewers socially aware of the cruel conditions the Chinese are facing under Communist rule, and this is all made possible through the assimilation of the principles and
In the poems “The Wanderer”, “The Wife’s Lament”, and “Cuchilainn's Boyhood Deeds” there are journeys that each of the characters go through in the poems. In The Wanderer and “The Wife's Lament” the characters are dealing with the lose of a what they called life. In “Cuchilainn's Boyhood Deeds” the young man in the poem is seeking glory and honor. The poem dapple in both a physical journey and a mental or emotional dilemma. In “The Wanderer” the warrior is sent off in exile and he dreams of finding a new lord and a new hall to become apart of. In “The Wifes Lament”, the wife is also living in exile because he husband family has separated them; she images a life where she isnt so lonely anymore. “Cuchulainn's Boyhood Deeds” is about a boy who imagines himself doing heroic deed to gain favor, honor, and to become a legend. Each of the characters has a physical journey that are in the mist of, but while in the middle of those trial they are also faced with emotional pain and longing for a better life.
In the poem, the speaker, setting, and imagery depict the style of romanticism. First, the speaker of the poem is interpreted as a Romantic poet who is intelligent and lonely, but he is able to keep himself fulfilled by simple beauty. Wordsword accentuates this by writing in the first person. Next, the setting is richly presented to demonstrate the beauty of nature. Wordsword writes, “Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (Wordsword, 5-6). The setting is interpreted to be in the countryside with daylight. Through this use of words and setting, Wo...
It describes how the conservative farmer follows traditions blindly and the isolated life followed by him. It reflects how people overcome physical barriers and that later in life come to their social life too. Where a neighbor with a pine tree, believes that this separation is needed as it is essential for their privacy and personal life. The poem explores a paradox in human nature. The first few lines reflect demolition of the wall,?Something there is that doesn?t reflect love a wall?
Lisa Parker’s “Snapping Beans”, Regina Barreca’s “Nighttime Fires”, John Frederick Nims’ “Love Poem”, and John Donne’s “Song” all demonstrate excellent use of imagery in their writing. All of the authors did a very good job at illustrating how the use of imagery helps the reader understand what the author’s message is. However, some of the poems use different poetic devices and different tones. In Lisa Parker’s “Snapping Beans” and Regina Barreca’s “Nighttime Fires”, both poems display a good use of personification. However in John Donne’s “Song” and John Frederick Nims’ “Love Poem, they differ in the fact that the tone used in each poem contrasts from each other.
He seemed being more focus on the use of personal expressionism at that time. In line with an academic article written by Zhang Hongyuan, he mentioned that he could easily found the uses of Van Gogh's passionate style of personal expressionism, and a sense of rustic simplicity that always performed by Miller in Zhang’s painting “Cloud” . He also stated that Zhang’s style of passionate Expressionism has been changed into a rational and calm style at the use of "old photo" schema art collections, which is a significant transmutation of his painting style. Focusing on this painting, it gives people a kind of mysterious feeling, pure, sincere through its color performance. We can see the awakening of youths, their realization of dim and hazy future, the sexual desire and the reverie, which shown the monologue of Zhang’s heart and the life Hymn. Hang said that it is a “a force of soul." Zhang’s painting “Cloud” is formed by triangular composition. We can see three youngsters are lying on the ground with grass and they fill almost 80% of the picture, which form a strong sense of instability. Zhang used rough black lines to outline the large cloths. And this painting is mainly in brown, which bring a sense of unusual. Also, he used a strong dynamic coarsening to draw the sky and clouds in the background, therefore, the horse, the sheep and the horizontal black slopes created a calm sense and contained a
In his poem, “Notes from the City of the Sun”, Bei Dao utilizes obscure imagery consistent with the Misty Poets and veiled political references to illustrate the struggles in Chinese society during the Cultural Revolution. The poem is sectioned into fourteen short stanzas containing imagery that are symbolic of the cultural hegemony in China under the rule of Mao Zedong. Bei Dao, born Zhao Zhen-kai, is an anti-revolutionary poet and one of the founders of a group known as the Misty Poets. The Misty Poets wrote poems that protested the Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong. Therefore, a lot of Bei Dao’s poems speak out against the Cultural Revolution and the restrictions that it placed on any form of art. Bei Dao’s poetry is categorized as “misty” because of the ambiguity in its references to Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. An obscure imagery that occurs twice in “Notes” is the sun imagery. Another imagery that depicts the injustice of the Cultural Revolution is the description of freedom as scraps of paper. In the poem, Bei Dao also equates faith to sheep falling into a ditch; this is a depiction blind faith during the Cultural Revolution. The purpose of this essay is to analyze how Bei Dao’s use of the Misty Poet’s ambiguous imagery and implicit political context in the poem “Notes from the City of the Sun” to illustrate the cultural hegemony in China under Mao.
In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself, Douglass writes about his life in slavery. Douglass portrays how he overcame being separated from his mother, of witnessing a slave being whipped for the first time and enduring his servitude for multiple masters. However, his major triumphs in life were moving to Baltimore, overcoming illiteracy and gaining his freedom.
Throughout history art has presented itself in many different forms. Two forms of art are poetry and paintings. William C. Carlos’ poem “The Dance” paints a picture while Pieter Brueghel’s painting “Peasants’ Dance” tell a story. The odd thing is that both the poem and the painting have many similarities as well as many notable differences. Tone, image, and imagination show the many similarities and differences between William C. Williams’ poem “The Dance” and Pieter Brueghel’s painting “Peasants’ Dance.”
The theme is portrayed through very unique imagery with the extremely exhilarating word choice this poet carefully chose to make this whole poem flow like a brook in mid-summer with an unbelievable number of trout in the glistening blue water. When he introduces us to this Clod of Clay that is living a horrible, but in it all he finds a silver lining through it all. This little Clod of Clay lives under cattle’s feet and gets stomped on all the time and although he is getting trampled on ninety percent of his life he finds what the silver lining through it all is. He says, “
The natural yet chaotic process of destruction is vividly depicted with contrasting images of destruction and purity throughout the poem, beginning with Pan entering the river in a disorderly