Beowulf is an epic poem in which was written during the 8th century. Many scholars believe that the poem had been written in original non-Christian form and then later being translated adding Christian morals. There are a couple of theories in which scholars believe the Christians morals were introduced into the poem. One theory in which has the more popular vote is that the poem was already in poetic form and the authors own beliefs were added later. Secondly, the third theory is that the poem was written by a Christian who heard the story and added some of his own beliefs when he wrote it. In either case, God is portrayed throughout the entire play with comparisons to Beowulf with God and Grendel to Satan. While many pagan influences appear in the poem, the story is dominated by Christian overtones. In the poem Beowulf, Grendel, the monster, can be portrayed in comparison to Satan (the Devil). The story mentions that Grendel is a descendent from Cain, who was the very first person to commit murder. Like Cain, Grendel was banished by God. Living in what the poem calls the underwater it is described almost similar as to what hell might be described: "They live in secret places, windy cliffs, wolf dens where water pours from rocks, then runs underground, where mist steams like black clouds, and the groves of trees growing out over the lake are all covered with frozen spray and wind down snakelike roots that reach as far as the water and keep it dark. At night, that lake burns like a torch. No one knows its bottom; no wisdom reaches such depth (Beowulf, II. 1358). Kroll-2 The place that he calls home is set far apart from the world in which he tortures. Although Grendel seems to be so far...
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added: 12/24/2011
Gwen Harwood was a very dynamic poet. In her poetry, the differences in a person's perspective and attitudes towards circumstances are brought on by external influences normally in the form of a person. I have enjoyed reading Harwood's poetry very much but everyone's perspective of poetry is different. Someone may love one poem, but the next person may hate it. It is all up to personal preference. Gwen seemed to write two sonnets 'The Suburban Sonnet' and 'In The Park' partly by personal experience. In a Gwen Harwood biography it reads, "Gwen aspired to become a famous musician, but decided she would never be a good enough pianist". Which must have inspired her to write 'Suburban Sonnet', about a woman whose dream to become a famous pianist ceased when she had children. The biography also reads "Most children do not see their parents troubles, and instead increase them". Much like in the poem 'In the Park', about a woman who resents her children as she seems to have lost her social life as her time and independence is consumed by obligations to her children. A very different poem is 'Barn Owl' from the Father and Child series. The learning processes of the children are represented in Barn Owl where a child's experimentation with her father's gun leads to an important discovery in life; death is real. The tones, themes and the mood have similar aspects in all three poems. All poems are bleak and there is a deep sense of bitterness and regret towards all parties. I prefer not to analyse poems, but rather to appreciate them. Gwen Harwood wrote poetry in the 1950s, that was fifty years ago and times have changed dramatically since then. Most people seem to be more open-minded now. In the park; a sonnet by Harwood is...
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added: 12/28/2011
Answer the following questions on the poem 'Education for Leisure' by Carol Anne Duffy in the form of an essay: Why do you thin Duffy uses language in the way she does? What effects do you think she wants to achieve, and how does she use language to achieve it? How successful do you find the poem? In the poem 'Education for Leisure' Carol Anne Duffy used language in order do draw the reader into the mind of someone who seems to be a bit psychotic and allows the reader to explore someone else's mind. To begin with, the title, 'Education for Leisure,' implies that the poem is going to be based around the idea of maybe extra curricular activities. However this is contradicted by the picture of a knife beside the poem which suggests that there will be a more sinister direction to the poem. This is because knives often represent murder. In the opening Stanza the use of short sentences by Duffy makes the poem seem more menacing and it also contributes to the reader feeling as though the are directly experiencing the thoughts of the narrator as they are going through his/her mind, 'Today I'm going to kill something. Anything.' Duffy then uses pathetic fallacy in order to express the emotions of the reader, 'It is an ordinary day, a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.' I think she does this in order to create an atmosphere for the reader to enter as they are drawn into the mind of the narrator. Duffy places the reader directly into the mind of this potential killer, in the second stanza, as 'I squash a fly against the window' as 'We did at school.' The effect of this is that the reader begins to create a personal connection to the narrator and their...
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added: 12/28/2011
Love has many different meanings to different people. For a five-year old, girl, love is marrying her daddy when she grows up. For a ten-year old child love may represent those feelings he or she has for their best friend. However, a teenager passing by their crush in the hallways and having sudden butterflies in their stomach, could also be a description of love. It doesn?t matter how you look at it, love is truly undefined and kindles different emotions in every human being. But the question is, "What is sex without love?" Can one participate in such an emotional journey without loving their partner? This statement holds true, and is represented in Sharon Olds poem titled "Sex Without Love." First and foremost, the poem quite passionately reveals Olds disgust for casual sex. She captures the shameful act of lustful sex and seemingly animates it with her language structure. Her use of imagery not only creates a picture in the readers mind, but also grabs the audiences? attention. The author also makes comparisons through the use of similes. The subject of the poem is sex without love, and how people who have sex without love treat their bodies as separate from "truth." It seems that Olds is capturing a lustful scene betweentwo people who lack emotional and spiritual connections, thus conveying to the reader a lesson about love. The poem, "Sex Without Love," expresses the poet?s attitude toward loveless sex as a cold and damaging act. Sharon Olds accomplishes this through her use of various poetic techniques which stimulate vivid images in the reader. Her opening words, "How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?", displays a negative tone as if the speaker was in disgust. However, Olds throws us off by referring to the two as "beautiful...
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added: 12/29/2011
Critical Analysis of "The Tyger" by William Blake Tyger Tyger, burning bright, An epic beginning to an incredible poem. The capitalization of the second Tyger indicates strength and simply a bite that I think has to be maintained in reciting. The alliteration of the hard consonant sounds also capture attention - rarely has this common poetic device worked so well. The Tyger is burning bright - a first reference to fire that is a constant recurring theme in the poem. Blake had been working on a Narrative of Surinam by Stedman in his working life which described the tyger's eyes as emitting flashes like lightning. In the forests of the night; Some interesting considerations for this line. Why use the plural forests? Forest of the night would have been sufficient for most poets? Perhaps Blake's own visionary experiences play a part here as well as the commonly accepted 18th century view of Heaven and Hell being different lands - Blake used themes of Heaven in Hell and Hell in Heaven several times. A simpler explanantion might just be that he preferred the assonance of the plural form, just as Byron later preferred the singular in his poem The Destruction of Sennacherib: 'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold', rather than the more likely plural Assyrians. In his biography of Blake, Ackroyd opines that there is also an interpretation regarding the literal literary creation: 'From the forests of the night is derived the dark charcoal that is used to forge the iron for Blake's copper plates'. This seems unduly superficial to me and while Ackroyd urges readers to recall Blake's subscription to Swedenborg's theories on the one hand, he also seems to sweep the likely connection to one side on the other. I am inclined to the view...
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added: 12/30/2011
>George Herbert's brilliant ingenuity lies in the simplicity and sincerity >of his poems. What makes Herbert a unique poet in the history of English >litersture is his intimate love for god. God, in the poems of Herbert is >the loving father , and Herbert;s tone of intimacy startles readers. As a >poet , h is quiter than donne. Douglas bush says (of Herbert) " he does not >electrify the the nerves so often , so startlingly as donne, but he is >truly religious". Herbert excels in the description of the serenity that >comes after the storm, the spiritual crisis. ' > > >METAPHYSICAL POETRY, in the full sense of the term, is a poetry which, like >that of the Divina Commedia, the De Natura Rerum, perhaps Goethe's Faust, >has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and the >rôle assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence. >The term was originally intended to be derogatory. DRYDEN was the first to >apply the term when he criticized Donne: Samuel Johnson later used the >term "metaphysical poetry" to describe the specific poetic method used by >poets like Donne. ;. Dr johnson remarked that in the work of these >metaphysical poets "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence >together".] Metaphysical poets were in rebellion against the highly >conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. In addition to challenging >the conventions of rhythm, the metaphysical poets also challenged >conventional imagery. Their tool for doing this was the metaphysical >conceit.. Herbert along with donne, marvell, and Vaughan belonged to this >genre of poetry. > >The quietness of tone and the serene acceptance of god's grace are seen at >their best in the poem "love". Love used as a conceit, is the love of god, >and in this poem love welcomes the poet, but his soul draws back."guilty of >his dust and sinne" but "quick eyed love" observes his hesitation, and >draws nearer to him, questioning and reassuring him. When the poet persona >expresses his fear that he is not worthy to be there, love assures him that >he shall be the...
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added: 01/02/2012
The Going This poem by Thomas Hardy is a monologue that is written to his first wife Emma reproaching her for having left so suddenly. Even though this poem is written for his wife if a few specifications are removed it would seem that the poem could be written about anybody who had died. This poem goes through the whole process of mourning from realising that she is gone forever (stanza 1), denial like the references to haunting (stanza 2), regret for not having spent more time together (Stanza 3) to finally acceptance (stanza 5). From the quickly changing emotional tones between stanzas we can guess that Hardy wrote this poem a considerable time after her death so that he could have experienced all these stages. The structure of this poem is a somewhat even one. The poem is composed of six stanzas each containing seven lines. The 5th and the 6th line are the always the smallest lines in the stanza and these are used to stress these ideas. In these two lines there is also a separate rhyme that is different to ones used in the rest of the stanza and there is usually alliteration or some sound emphasis. This makes them very important lines. Overall the author tries to convey through these lines seem to lead to a climax that is concluded in the last line. The overall tone of the poem is a changing one. The tone of the poem changes as the author focuses on a new stage after his wife dies. The first two stanzas describe his incredulity over her death. The tone here is disbelief and maybe even a little bit of anger. He uses words such as 'indifferent' to imply that she was unfeeling to have gone and left him. His anger is shown in...
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added: 01/05/2012
William Empson begins his critical essay on John Donne's "A Valediction: of Weeping" with this statement. Empson here plays the provocateur for the critic who wishes to disagree with the notion that Donne's intentions were perhaps less base than the sincere valediction of a weeping man. Indeed, "A Valediction" concerns a parting; Donne is going to sea and is leaving his nameless, loved other in England, and the "Valediction" is his emotive poesy describing the moment. There is little argument as to what Donne is feeling at surface level: he is sorrowful and grieving because he must be apart from his loved one, who has become his world (a metaphor which is carried out in the second stanza). Empson is indeed correct when he says that the poem is not unambiguous. There is a large range of interpretations that can be made based upon the language in the poem, and these are focused around the source of Donne's grief. It is easy for one to picture a grieving sailor leaving his lover, but what makes this man grieve? It is the innate love between two people who are intensely focused upon each other which must be put on hold? Is it some additive emotion that consists of two people who are about to suffer separation and loss of a lover? Or is it, as Empson proposes, the subliminal desire within man to possess a woman both physically and emotionally (i.e. fear that she will be unfaithful), and he will lose something more than a lover? In this scenario, Empson's Donne weeps not for his lover, but for the loss of manhood that comes about from being cheated on. It is rational reductionism, then, to say that Donne weeps for his inability to possess the woman, while still feeling possessed by her, so...
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added: 01/05/2012
In the poem, "Ode to a Nightingale," written by John Keats, the speaker attempts to use a nightingale as a means of escaping the realities of human life. Throughout the poem Keats gradually discovers the concepts of creative expression and the morality of human life. The speaker is in search of the freedom that the nightingale so elegantly sings about. The nightingale's song of freedom is an expression of pure joy, which is oblivious to anguish and suffering. It appears in the poem that Keats is tempted into the nightingale's world of beauty and perfection. He is also longing to sooth his soul from his troubles and open up to a world that promises eternal enjoyment. The answer to the poet's problems may lie in living a life similar to that of a nightingale's life. As the poem progresses the speaker explores multiple ways to join the nightingale. However, he eventually realizes that he must face the reality that fleeing from the human world is not possible. Keats not only writes this poem gracefully, but it reads fluently while using a discrete rhyme scheme. Allusions are the main idea of this poem. The poet uses allusions involving alcohol and other drugs as a main idea throughout the poem. "Ode to a Nightingale" is written in eight ten-line stanzas and is metrically variable. The eighth line of each stanza is written in iambic trimester, while the first seven lines and last two are written in iambic pentameter. Iambic trimester occurs when there are only three accents in a line of poetry. This poem displays a complex form of end rhyme scheme unique to the poem. Each verse of "Ode to a Nightingale" has a rhyme scheme ABABCDECDE. This rhyme scheme is used throughout the entire poem; however, there are a few instances...
pages: 7 (words: 1672)
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added: 01/11/2012
In his poem, "Fern Hill," Dylan Thomas shows us how the enjoyment of life becomes a memory as time goes on. The theme of the story has taken two colors green and gold, green being when a person is young and gold being when a person is old. However, most people would just read half of the paper and say that the poem was about childhood and the people who read the poem thoroughly would argue that it was also about dying. The author in this poem uses assorted colors to describe the way he felt. Being a child there is no reason but to feel, "happy as the grass is green" (2). By being young, a child has no worries and that is what the author is telling us. A young one that lived on a farm had no worries and when the family rode into town there had to be someone to look after the horses and pass time till the parents came back, so being "prince of the apple towns," was one way to pass the time (6). Green can mean a lot of things such as, young, no worries, inexperienced, unproven in life, and a lot of things to look forward to. For a person to relax one might go out in "the hay Fields as high as the house," and imagine the shapes that the clouds made or what ever came to mind first (19/20). By being golden the speaker is trying to tell us many different things. Golden can mean a lot of things such as, old, sacred, good old days, and maybe even golden memories that will never be forgotten. Time in this poem plays a big role. It is almost like the speaker is telling us to enjoy life while we can, because "In the...
pages: 3 (words: 681)
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added: 01/20/2012