The Desolate Housewife
In the Elegy “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways”, William Wordsworth tells the audience about a woman named Lucy who lived in isolation and died a lonely death. This poem is one of a series of five by Wordsworth all centered on what is assumed to be a fictional character by the name of Lucy. In all 5 however he writes about this character as if her death caused him serious anguish. In the poem Wordsworth uses figurative language, various vowel frequencies, and the unique speaking apparatus of humans to produce different moods and tones throughout the poem.
Wordsworth starts off the three stanza poem by describing where an unnamed woman lives in the first two lines. “She dwelt among the untrodden ways/ Beside the springs of Dove”, in these two lines Wordsworth tells the audience that the woman lived where no one went by the springs of dove, which was a river in England. Next Wordsworth tells us that she was never praised and very few people loved her “A Maid whom there were none to praise/ And very few to love:”, obviously besides himself. In the next line he u...
What risk factors and symptoms did Jessica present with prior to the physical examination that suggested a pulmonary disorder?
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
Written on the banks of the Lye, this beautiful lyric has been said by critic Robert Chinchilla to “pose the question of friendship in a way more central, more profound, than any other poem of Wordsworth’s since ‘The Aeolian Harp’ of 1799” (245). Wordsworth is writing the poem to his sister Rebecca as a way of healing their former estrangement.
The speaker of “Lines Composed of a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” is Wordsworth himself. He represents Romanticism’s spiritual view of nature. His poetry is written
Five different situations are suggested in "Lines" each divided into separate sections. The first section details the landscape around the abbey, as Wordsworth remembers it from five years ago. The second section describes the five-year lapse between visits to the abbey, during which he has thought often of his experience there. The third section specifies Wordsworth's attempt to use nature to see inside his inner self. The fourth section shows Wordsworth exerting his efforts from the preceding stanza to the landscape, discovering and remembering the refined state of mind the abbey provided him with. In the final section, Wordsworth searches for a means by which he can carry the experiences with him and maintain himself and his love for nature. .
‘It is often suggested that the source for many of William Wordsworth’s poems lies in the pages of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal. Quite frequently, Dorothy describes an incident in her journal, and William writes a poem about the same incident, often around two years later.’ It is a common observation that whilst Dorothy is a recorder – ‘her face was excessively brown’ – William is a transformer – ‘Her skin was of Egyptian brown’ . The intertextuality between The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals and ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’ allows both Dorothy and William to write about the same event, being equally as descriptive, but in very differing ways. Dorothy writes in a realist ‘log-book’ like style, whereas William writes in a romantic ballad style. This can be very misleading, as it gives William’s work more emotional attachment even though his work is drawn upon Dorothy’s diary, which in its turn is very detached, including little personal revelation. When read in conjunction with William’s poetry, Dorothy’s journal seems to be a set of notes written especially for him by her. In fact, from the very beginning of the journals Dorothy has made it quite clear that she was writing them for William’s ‘pleasure’ . This ties in with many of the diary entries in which she has described taking care of William in a physical sense. In a way this depicts the manner in which William uses his sister’s journal to acquire the subject of his poetry, which makes it seem as though Dorothy is his inspiration.
Several things, major and minor, about this poem may strike the reader as atypical of Wordsworth's work. The very first stanza of the poem gives us only the general setting: "'Tis eight o'clock, -- a clear March night, / The moon is up -- the sky is blue [...]" (ll. 1-2). Wordsworth's poems frequently begin on a more general scale, and narrow in for a few stanzas on a very specific location. Here we are given a sketchy background and left at that.
Gwendolyn Brook’s “Ballad of Pearl May Lee” came from her book called Street in Bronzeville. This book exemplifies Brook’s “dual place in American literature” (Smith, 2). It is associated with Modernist poetry, as well as the Harlem Renaissance. This book is known for its theme of victimizing the poor, black woman. “Ballad of Pearl May Lee” is a poem that uses tone to represent the complex mood of the ballad. While tone and mood are often used interchangeably, there are differences even though they often work together in a poem. A poem’s mood refers to the atmosphere or state of mind that the poem takes on. This is often conveyed through the tone, which is the style or manner of expression through writing. In this poem, Brooks uses tone to enhance the mood. This paper will shed light on the idea that the mood of the poem is affected by the tone in several ways in order to make the mood inconsistent. Some of the ways that tone does this is by several episodic shifts in the scene of the poem, the repetition of stanzas at the end of the poem, the use of diction, and the change in the speaker’s stance throughout the poem. These poetic techniques enhance the speaker’s current feeling of self-pity and revengeful satisfaction by her mixed emotions associated with this reflection.
Elegy in a Country Courtyard, by Thomas Gray, can be looked at through two different methods. First the Dialogical Approach, which covers the ability of the language of the text to address someone without the consciousness that the exchange of language between the speaker and addressee occurs. (HCAL, 349) The second method is the Formalistic Approach, which allows the reader to look at a literary piece, and critique it according to its form, point of view, style, imagery, atmosphere, theme, and word choice. The formalistic views on form, allow us to look at the essential structure of the poem.
The Young Housewife by William Carlos William is a short poem that portraits the sexism towards women. The poem gives the reader a lot of details how married women in society are viewed. It also shows the reader what women are expected to do once married. The Young Housewife poem has hidden views about women that are particularly sexist. Through the eyes of William Carlos William it portraits what society thinks of women. Their thoughts and/or his thoughts are not necessarily something a woman would want society to regard them as.
The first, and most conventional interpretation of “A Slumber,” identify the pronoun ‘She’ in the third line as “Lucy,” who is the subject of the four other poems in the collection. The male speaker (the speaker of a poem must be separate from the poet, in this case Wordsworth) describes how this woman whoever she may be: mother, lover, sister, or friend; has died. The word “slumber” is a euphemism to suggest an easy passing on to the afterlife. The final two lines of the first quatrain point to the tranquility of her death, and the narrator’s consolation that she is beyond the grasp of human mortality.
Although there had been a 'long absence'; from the abbey, the memories of his hurried time in the Wye had consoled him ' 'mid the din of towns and cities'; (lines 26-27). 'With tranquil restoration'; Wordsworth has changed from the state of observing to the state of recalling his 'unremembered pleasures[s]'; (31). He had many times returned in spirit to the Wye, to escape the 'fever of the world'; (53). These memories have produced emotions beyond his understanding; enlightening him and relieving his frustrations. It is the abbey, 'in which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened'; and makes him become a 'living soul';. (40-49) Wordsworth was claiming th...
In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...
The sonnet, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802,” shows Wordsworth’s appreciating the beauty of London and demonstrating it as “emotion recollected in tranquility.” It’s characteristic of his love for solitude that it is set in the early morning when there is no bustle and noise.