Remember

Question 1

Who wrote this poem?

Answer 1

Christina Rossetti

Question 2

What is the structure of the poem

Answer 2

Petrarchan sonnet and iambic pentameter

Question 3

What type of sonnet is this poem?

Answer 3

Petrarchan sonnet

Question 4

Give context of the writer of the poem

Answer 4

• One of the well-known poets of the 19th century
• Customs of mourning
• High mortality rates
• Rise in poems about mourning and death
• Enjoyed fame and popularity
• Romantic poetry
• References to death and dying

Question 5

What topics does the sonnet explore

Answer 5

• Relationship between two lovers
• Impending death
• Final message and request
• Intimate language
• Sense of sorrow
• End of their relationship

Question 6

What meaning does the title explore

Answer 6

• Alludes loss, remembrance, memory

Question 7

What themes are explored in the poem and give quotations and their meaning

Answer 7

• Love: push-pull forces of love, underlying fear and hesitancy. “Half turn to go yet turning stay”.
- Transformative power of love: narrator hopes they remain a permanent part of their lovers life.

• Memory and death: The speaker believes death to be a distant place where they are permanently separated. “Gone away/ gone far away” reinforces the distance and the boundary between life and death
- “darkness and corruption” signifies the grave or afterlife, physical decay, earthly remains, corruption of the body, could reference the beloveds emotional state of grief.

Question 8

What is the rhyme scheme of the poem

Answer 8

ABBAABBA CDD ECE

Question 9

Describe the Petrarchan sonnet and it’s use in the poem

Answer 9

• Octave (or octet), eight
• Volta
• Sestet
• Rossetti uses Petrarchan style to mirror the changing thoughts and feelings of the speaker
• Octave: pleads with her lover to remember her
Sestet: different rhyme scheme, selfless turn
Volta: portrays this shift in emotion or thought, speaker realisation. Skilfully inverts a command to remember which highlights the complicated connection between memory and grief

Question 10

Suggest why Rossetti writes in strict iambic language pentameter

Answer 10

• Strained feel
• A level of restraint
• Struggles to express their feelings

Question 11

Explain the significance of the rhyme scheme

Answer 11

ABBA: reflects the speakers measured and composed speech
Sestet: complicated rhyme scheme, complicated feelings
ABBAABBA: palindromic nature reflects feelings of hesitancy, reflects cyclical nature of life and remembrance

Question 12

How and why is direct address used in this poem

Answer 12

• Personal pronouns
• “you”, “us”, “me”
• Private farewell

Question 13

What figure of speech is used in the following sentences and what is its significance
• “Hold me by the hand”/“half turn”
• “Better by”

Answer 13

• Alliteration: tenderness, desperate, urgency- line 1
• Plosive alliteration: intensity, need to be remembered- line 2

Question 14

What figure of speech is used in the following sentence and state it’s significance
• “Silent land”

Answer 14

• Euphemism: describes the distance between the lovers, worlds of the dead and the living. Speakers love will only survive in memory

Question 15

What other figure of speech shows the distance between the living and the dead and in what line?

Answer 15

• Caesura
• Lines 7&8, semicolon between “me” and “you”

Question 16

What figure of speech is used in this sentence throughout the poem and what is its significance
• “remember me”

Answer 16

• repetition
• adds strength and weight to the speakers command
• Authoritative tone
• mirrors the speakers process of accepting their lover may forget them

Question 17

What are the similarities and differences between remember and La belle dame sans Merci

Answer 17

Similarities
• Common theme of death and weakness
• Similar context, Keats wrote poem after his brothers death from TB
• Ballad poem explores death and memory through a display of obsessive love

Differences
• Structure is different: the last line of each verse in Keats is the shortest creating a sense of unfulfillment and unease
• La belle contains themes of obsession and in infatuation which alters the speakers sense of reality. Remember is far more grounded and balanced voice

Question 18

What are the similarities and differences between remember and To his coy mistress

Answer 18

Similarities
• Religious imagery: “silent land”- remember, “I would love you ten years before the flood”, “the conversion of the Jews”
• Both pleading to their loved ones before death, “quaint honour to dust” and into “ashes” their lust
• Theme of death, “worms shall try thy long preserved virginity”, “marble vault”, “silent land”

Differences
• To his coy mistress: First flattery, threat, then urgency.
• Remember, a plea with 2 distinct verses

Question 19

How is remember and sonnet 126 similar and different

Answer 19

• Theme of enduring love
• Transcends and overcomes time and death
• Permanently changes people
• Personification of love
• alludes to death
• Sonnet 116- remains confident in loves power

Question 20

What is a genius interpretation of the poem

Answer 20

• Passive voice of women in Victorian society
• highly patriarchal society
• Speaker’s lover exerts dominance over her, possessing her

Question 21

What quotations in this poem parallel with the great Gatsby

Answer 21

• “Gone far away into the silent land”
• “Her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick blood with the dust”- chapter 7

• “When you can no more hold me by the hand”
• “I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed”- Chapter 7