Intro Paras Flashcards

1
Q

A Dialogue, between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure

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Resolved Sou​l​→ ​The soul is a pilgrim on Earth journeying (man’s time on earth) to God’s great kingdom, as pilgrim it is resolute in hits determination to reach this holy mecca.
Created Pleasure​→ ​Created pleasure refers to all the base sins that distract and deter the pilgrims for reaching enlightenment. Earth being God’s “created” realm. Its temptations are therefore known as created pleasures.

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2
Q

The Fair Singer

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Fair Singer​, is dominated by the division of a man’s body and mind, which in this case seems to encompass the soul. All of which is captivated by the Fair Singer’s voice. Naturally, the speaker once again assumes the posture of vanquished combatant, a common position for the helpless lover.

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3
Q

The Gallery

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Gallery,​ is dominated by ​The lover here pays tribute to the various moods and guises of his beloved mistress.The poet on his part makes skilful reference to the range of roles and personas any one “beloved” lady assumes – the cruel mistress, the unattainable mistress,the divine mistress…

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4
Q

The Unfortunate Lover

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Unfortunate Lover,​ depicts the misfortunes which befell a lover. The lover is unfortunate because he was the victim of a series of misfortunes, but he is at the same time fortune because it is only unhappy lovers who become famous while the happy ones are soon forgotten. Makes reference to Shakespeare’s ​Ages of Man. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven s​tages of a m​an’s life, sometimes referred to as the seven a​ ges of man:​ infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, Pantalone, and old ​age​, facing imminent death.

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5
Q

The Definition of Love

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Definition of Love​, i​ s about the nature of the poet’s love, which the poet regards as being unattainable. In the case of a love like this, Hope would prove to be utterly vain and futile because this love can never be achieved.

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6
Q

To His Coy Mistress

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Marvell’s poem, ​To His Coy Mistress,​ i​ s about the futile nature of being chaste as the Mistress is often praised for doing or which poets associated with virtue and therefore elevation. In this poem, Marvell mocks convention of Petrachan love poetry with its hyperbole and takes a realist stance on what to do in the face of mortality and imminent decay. It is a ​Momento Mori (remember you will die) ​→ Carpe Diem (seize the day)​ poem.
Metaphysical poetry ​→​ trying to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling​.

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7
Q

Eyes and Tears

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Marvell’s poem, ​Eyes and Tears,​ is one of Marvell’s religious poems, relying heavily upon religious imagery. In early modern England, religious sorrow was seen as a form of spiritual dialogue between the soul and God, expressing how divine grace operates at the level of human emotion. “Tear” poems or “the literature of tears, enjoyed a brief period of fashion, in the form of “a body of Counter-Reformation devotional works in both poetry and prose depicting Mary Magdalen’s remorse at her first meeting with Christ and at his tomb, and St Peter’s remorse after his betrayal.” While the poem presents the obviously paradoxical, superbly metaphysical argument that tears are superior to the eyes, which produce them, it is also a poem of balance. Each human joy is counterbalanced with an equal weight of sorrow.

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8
Q

The Coronet

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Coronet,​ is one of Marvell’s religious poems, focusing on the crucifixion of Christ and his attempt to correct this “wrong” by giving him a crown in the form of his poetry of praise. However he then realises that despite naming the intention of this poem as a dedication to the Lord, his real intentions are personal and selfish being more concerned with gaining praise and fame for his poetry and skill than actual servitude and devotion.

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9
Q

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

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Marvell’s poem, ​An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland​, is one of Marvell’s political poems, focusing on Oliver Cromwell, who was a parliamentarian playing a huge role in the usurpation of King Charles I, he was also a strong advocate for the King’s execution. He was Lord Protector of England (which included Wales at the time), Scotland, and Ireland. As a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Royalists returned to power along with King Charles II in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.
He is considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, but a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell, sponsored by military historian Richard Holmes, was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time. However, his measures against Catholics in Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal, and in Ireland his record is harshly criticised. The poem reflects the mixed feelings and attitudes towards Lord Cromwell.

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10
Q

The Picture of Little T.C in a Prospect of Flowers

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers​, is a Memento Mori Poem. The word “ Prospect” here refers not only to the meaning view but the “contemplation of potential”. The “Little T.C.” of the poem is assumed to be Theophila Cornewall, whom Marvell saw in a garden when she was between six and eight years old. Her father was Humphrey Cornewall, an English MP whose family were well known to Marvell and his father. Our Theophilia Cornewall, or Little T.C., was born in 1644 but had an older sister with the same name, who died when only a few days old.

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11
Q

Young Love

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Marvell’s poem, ​Young Love, i​s a poem that focuses on the innocence of youth , especially in contrast to the complications of love in later life such as the complexities of courtship, the interventions of external forces as well as social constructs the “cruel” mistress, the mistress “unattained”, that will prevent a successful love. Young love overcomes all these obstacles by making the mistress fall in love with the poet before all these obstacles develop.

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12
Q

The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn​, is a pastoral elegy (lament for the dead) with the themes of innocence and youth once again, especially when juxtaposed against the “cruel and ungentle” men whose love is “unconstant”, “counterfeit” and untamable.

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13
Q

Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough

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Marvell’s poem, ​Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough​, is one of Marvell’s political poems wherein he praises his employer Lord Fairfax (Marvell was a tutor for his daughter) who was a parliamentarian (revolutionist) alongside Cromwell and was instrumental to the cause but who voted against the beheading of Charles and gave up his position upon the success of the revolution. In this poem, Marvell uses his description of the estate to praise Lord Fairfax and his “moderate” qualities, knowing when to withdraw, especially in opposition to the Cromwell “elemental lightning” that is as much a symbol of power as it is of destruction, his intimate knowledge of the estate also flaunted his close relationship to Lord Fairfax.

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14
Q

The Garden

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Garden​, becomes a space of both pastoral innocence, a place to which we can retire from society, it argues that a live of contemplative thinking is better than a life of action and that this contemplation can only be achieved within the green space of the garden. A life of action on the other hand is “incessant” and provides no end to the countless conquests one has to embark on for glory in the various fields. In the garden, one is able to enjoy both the pleasures of the mind and sense.

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15
Q

On a Drop of Dew

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Marvell’s poem, ​On a Drop of Dew​, is one of Marvell’s spiritual poems and is riddled with geometric conceit and religious imagery. The poem details the nature of the soul as a droplet from the eternal fountain of Heaven and God through an association of the physical characteristics of the droplet and the spiritual qualities of the Soul. Note that spiritual and religious poems are not the same thing, a poem can be spiritual but not religious.

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16
Q

A Dialogue between the Soul and Body

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Marvell’s poem, ​A Dialogue between the Soul and Body​, is another of Marvell’s spiritual poems that focuses on the duality of men, as both part spirit and part animal. Here, the flesh and the spirit are portrayed in constant disharmony. It is also a Memento Mori poem which makes reference to the Great Chain of Being (the natural social hierarchy between all of God’s creations. Interestingly enough, the poem not only presents the body as the imprisoner of the soul but the soul as the tyrant of the body as well. The poem is built on a parallel construction with the Body and Soul each inveighing against the other, in closely balanced arguments and stanzas of equal length.Through the poem, the progression of metaphors is also linear, with each stanza beginning as an immediate response to the accusation that closes the previous stanza. In all these ways, the impression is created of a close debate or dialogue. Each stanza is a genuine response rather than being composed of set piece speeches, with the closely linked opponents scoring points off each other through the use of wit and metaphysical conceit.

17
Q

The Mower against Gardens

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Mower against Gardens​, is a poem on the great struggle between nature and artifice. The Mower is a persona for simplicity (hence, against artifice) and believes that the garden is the peak of man;s vice, being an artificial space of seduction. This is contrasted to the poem ,The Garden, where we see the garden as a natural space for creativity and enhancement. Here the Garden is a showcase of man’s intellect and creativity. It makes references to the rise of English and French gardens which represented man’s improvement upon nature (gardens with symmetrical styles and landscaping Maths, proportioning) compared to gardens of wilderness that truly captured nature’s beautiful and natural state (Eden?). The central question is: Patterns = beauty? Or Wilderness = Beauty? Does man improve or distort nature’s beauty?

18
Q

Damon the Mower

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Marvell’s poem, ​Damon the Mower​, is another poem belonging to the Mower series, a loosely connected series of pastoral poems. They are unlike most poems in the pastoral tradition, however, which involve innocent country figures, usually shepherds / shepherdesses. Most pastoral verses detail idealized accounts of shepherds and their loves living simple, virtuous lives in Arcadia, a mountainous region of Greece. Marvell is responding to and writing within an existing tradition but in a different manner. The attitudes usually associated with pastoral writing – the celebratory or worshipful, the idyllic and natural, the playful or even overtly sexual, conventions which are both embodied and simultaneously overturned by Andrew Marvell. A notable choice in “Damon the Mower” is its focus on the suffocating heat of the “dog days of summer” – rather than the benevolence of the natural world. As we have seen, pastoral poems more usually seem to focus on the promise of spring or at least on the bounty of autumn. The Mower is a very special character within the natural world. He is neither a part of the natural world like the shepherd, nor is he an actor of artifice such as the gardener who seeks to improve upon nature. In the poem, Damon explicitly points out he is not shepherd.. This is another focus of critical discourse Damon is not a shepherd, associated with innocence and – in Christian cultures – with guardianship and salvation, but a mower – associated with death

19
Q

The Mower to the Glowworms

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Mower to the Glowworms​, is a love poem done through pastoral imagery, it details the self-ruining fate of a lover, whose mind if only occupied by his love for his mistress, no longer able to sensibly judge for himself. The poem is a short tribute to the lovely lights of the glowworms. Honestly, there’s not a lot to say? About this poem I guess.

20
Q

The Mower’s Song

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Marvell’s poem, ​The Mower’s Song​, named the mower’s song in the title, is also the only one of the four to contain a refrain. It has been suggested that the two lines of the refrain imitate the swing of the scythe in the action of mowing. Rather than adding to the musicality of the poem, the lengthy lines is disruptive due to the presence of multiple monosyllabic words and the change in rhythm (an extra feet compared to the usual iambic pentameter (?) creating a sense that the poet is somewhat plodding through the motion, possibly imitating the disruptive effect Juliana has on his life. The Mower’s “Song” is basically a complaint of love. Underlyingly, the poem may hint at much deeper matters, most obviously the poem makes reference to the “fall” of the Mower, a reference to man’s loss of innocence. Before “Juliana came”, the Mower’s thoughts were “green” and now he has fallen into “common ruin”. An unusual and ‘anti-pastoral’ feature of the poem is the way Nature offers no consolation whatsoever: while poets in the pastoral tradition tended to find inspiration and refreshment in the idyllic retreat of Nature, Damon throughout the poem finds that “My mind” has to search for the solution itself.
Refrain​→ ​a verse, a line, a set, or a group of lines that appears at the end of stanza, or appears where a ​poem​ divides into different sections

21
Q

Bermudas

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Marvell’s poem, ​Bermudas, is basically a sailor’s song, specifically a celebration of the English colonists arriving in the Bermudas and establishing a new community during the mid-seventeenth century. The poem is filled with the exotic imagery associated with newfoundlands, religious allusion is also present as they thank God for the richness of the land. The poem may also allude to the fate of Puritans in contemporary England.
Puritans​→ a Protestant movement that emerged in 16th-century England with the goal of transforming it into a godly society by reforming or purifying the Church of England of all remaining Roman Catholic teachings and practices. Most Puritans who migrated to North America came in the decade 1630-1640 in what is known as the Great Migration.
Bermudas​→ A bunch of islands near America, Bermuda Triangle all. Basically, the Puritans were like really naggy and the Protestant rulers weren’t really listening to their requests, everyone just thought they were annoying but they were also pretty influential which led to the civil war within England. Everyone just wanted them to shut up and conform but no. The accepted wisdom is that the Puritans were forced to flee England and Europe because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, and that they arrived in the American Continent.