Poetry Anthology / Gatsby question. Flashcards
(30 cards)
“La Belle Dame” Structure, form, rhythm & rhyme.
- Romatic lyrical ballad - making it seem light-hearted and simplistic.
- Each quatrain - 3 lines of iambic tetrameter + 1 line iambic dimeter.
- ABCB.
- Cyclical structure - shows lack of resolution.
“La Belle Dame” Language analysis and quotes.
- Keats repeats the speaker’s question to draw attention to the knight’s weakened condition.
- This is reflected inimagerydescribing the closing in of winter, perhaps signalling death.
- Rich and sensual imagery describes an intense love affair between a chivalrous knight and a beautiful, wild lady.
“La Belle Dame” Plot summary.
- Set in a rural location. It describes a dying knight who becomes infatuated with a beautiful and comforting fairy woman. It can also be considered anelegy due to its focus on death.
- The poem introduces a conversation between a speaker and a knight.
- The speaker inquires as to the knight’s welfare as he appears to be ill.
- The speaker asks the knight again what is wrong with him, implying the knight is silent.
- The speaker describes the knight as sad (“woe-begone”) and wearied (“haggard”).
- The speaker appears to encourage the knight to leave as winter is coming.
- The speaker describes a “lily” on the knight’s brow.
- The knight is very sick and feverish. His face shows “anguish” (severe pain) and is sweaty (“fever-dew”). The colour in his cheeks is fading (implied by a “fading rose”).
- The knight replies to the speaker and says he met a beautiful lady in the fields. He describes her as very beautiful and magical (a “faery’s child”).
- The knight relates the romantic moments they spent together in the fields. The knight took the lady riding on his fast horse. The lady bends to the side and sings a magical (“faery’s”) song to him.
- She takes the knight to an elf cave. In the cave she shows empathy for the knight’s condition.
- The knight is sent to sleep by the lady, but his rest is disturbed.
- He exclaims anominouswarning, “woe betide!”, meaning bad tidings or bad news.
- The knight says he dreamed his “latest” dream, perhaps meaning his final dream.
- The knight says that in the dream he saw “pale” kings, princes and warriors and repeats they were all “death-pale”. They warn him about the lady and say she has enchanted him. They call her a beautiful lady without thanks or mercy.
- The knight describes the men he sees in the dream. The men are “starved”, and their mouths are wide open. This wakes the knight, and he finds himself on the cold hill, not with the lady in the cave.
- The knight explains that this is the reason he stops (“sojourns”) on the hill.
“La Belle Dame” Context.
Keats was well aware of his ill-health and the danger of his disease:
His mother and brother had died of tuberculosis earlier in his life.
“La Belle Dame” Themes.
- Romantic love.
- Death and loss.
- Guilt and regret.
- Dangers of love.
- Unrequited love.
“Non-sum” Structure, form, rhythm & rhyme.
- Form: Lyric poem
- ABACBC - not a common scheme, and it gives the poem a slightly off-kilter, haunting quality — suiting the obsessive and unbalanced emotions of the speaker.
- The meter is mostly iambic hexameter, also known as alexandrine (6 iambs per line — 12 syllables).
“Non-sum” Language analysis and quotes.
Repetition of phrases like “I was desolate”, “sick of an old passion”, and the refrain reinforces a kind of obsessive despair..
“Lips,” “kisses,” “wine,” “roses” — sensuous, decadent words associated with indulgence, passion, and the body.
Symbol of lost love, or more than that — the idealized love that ruins all others.
She doesn’t speak or act in the poem — she’s a phantom, existing only in memory and torment.
“Non-sum” Plot summary.
- The speaker addresses Cynara, telling her that the previous night he was with another woman, the memory of her, the “shadow” of Cynara, fell between them. He feels terrible with the “old passion” he has for the woman Cynara.
- The reader is informed that the woman the speaker is with is a prostitute. “bought red mouth”.
- The speaker confesses his attempts to move on without Cynara, and to enjoy his life without her but he can’t shake the feelings he has for Cynara.
- The speaker says that despite his attempts to enjoy himself, he cannot shake the memories of her.
“Non-sum” Context.
Born in London to a middle-class family. He attended Oxford but didn’t obtain a degree. His father overdosed on medication whilst suffering from tuberculosis. His mother hanged herself a year later.
He’s most famous for his unrequited love for an 11-year-old girl, whom he proposed to when he was 23. She did not accept.
The decadent movement – A literary movement in the 1890s combining a tendency towards sexual promiscuity with an appreciation of classical literature and mythology and a devotion to the catholic church.
‘Cynara’ comes from the Greek word for artichoke. She was a beautiful woman with whom Zeus fell in love however he was unable to persuade her to leave her mother and earthly home to become a goddess, he transformed her into an artichoke.
“Non-sum” Themes.
- Enduring love.
- Love and loss.
- Guilt and regret.
- Lust.
- Passion.
- Obsession.
- Unrequited love.
“Whoso list to Hount” Structure, form, rhythm & rhyme.
- English sonnet.
- Containing 3 quatrains and one rhyming couplet.
- Volta after line 8.
“Whoso list to Hount” Language analysis and quotes.
- Many short (1 syllable) words featured in the first parts which represents the hunt.
- Extended metaphor of a hunt being chasing the love for a woman.
- Enjambment (could represent being caught up in the hunt).
- Caesura’s (could represent chasing her and having to take breaks, alliteration.
“Whoso list to Hount” Plot summary.
The poem is a metaphor for the pursuit of a woman (possibly supposed to be Anne Boleyn). The extended metaphor of the hunt suggests that the woman is a deer that he just can’t catch.
“Whoso list to Hount” Context.
- The poem is supposedly about Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII’s 2nd wife) who was executed in 1536 and accused of infidelity whilst married to Henry.
- The marriage didn’t work as Henry wanted a son and she could not give him that.
- It was rumoured that Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt had a relationship and therefore the theory that the poem is written about her.
- In 1536 Wyatt was imprisoned in the tower of London for possible committing adultery with her however he was set free.
“Whoso list to Hount” Themes.
- Unrequited love.
- Losing love.
- Lust.
- Passion.
- Obsession.
- Desire.
- Barriers.
- Male perspective.
“To his coy mistress” Structure, form, rhythm & rhyme.
Each line is in flawless iambic tetrameter, and the lines rhyme with each other in an AA scheme. Further, the first line introduces a thought which the second line completes. This establishes a pattern for the poem: the speaker’s thoughts often fall into two-line rhyming units, or couplets.
“To his coy mistress” Language analysis and quotes.
Uses biblical time frames to suggest infinite patience — ironically, only to show how unrealistic that is.
Words like “sport,” “devour,” “tear,” “roll” give a physical, energetic feeling to passion.
“To his coy mistress” Plot summary.
An anonymous lover attempts to convince his reluctant mistress to have sex with him.The speakeraddresses the object of his affection directly, and his monologue takes the form ofan argument.He begins by inviting his mistress to imagine that they had all of time at their disposal. If he could devote an eternity to his seduction, then there would be no need for the two of them to hurry. He could court her leisurely and spend years praising every aspect of her beauty. However, sincea human being’s time on earth is very short, time is of the essence.Instead of deferring their desire, the speaker insists that he and his mistress must consummate their passion now. Over the course of the poem, the speaker develops this argument through a series of elaborate poetic conceits that are oftenhumorousandoverstated.In the end, though, his message is quite straightforward: his coy mistress should have sex with him now becauselife is too short.
“To his coy mistress” Context.
- Metaphysical poet.
- “Carpe diem” – seize the day in latin (living in the moment).
“To his coy mistress” Themes.
- Love and loss.
- Lust.
- Death and loss.
“Sonnet 116” Structure, form, rhythm & rhyme.
Sonnet 116 is a 14-line poem, a characteristic feature of the Shakespearean sonnet form. The poem follows the typical Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
“Sonnet 116” Language analysis and quotes.
The language is started at 116 is very simple and over 3/4 of the words are monocytic making this so accessible to everyone which fits the statement about love being a universal experience.
“Sonnet 116” Plot summary.
This sonnet attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that love—” the marriage of true minds”—is perfect and unchanging; it does not “admit impediments,” and it does not change when it find changes in the loved one. In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is through a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships (“wand’ring barks”) that is not susceptible to storms (it “looks on tempests and is never shaken”). In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is not: it is not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips and cheeks come within “his bending sickle’s compass,” love does not change with hours and weeks: instead, it “bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom.” In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that love is as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he must never have written a word, and no man can ever have been in love.
“Sonnet 116” Context.
Elizabethan England was heavily influenced by ideas of:
* Courtly love (idealized, unattainable love),
* Marriage as a social contract, often arranged for wealth/status,
* Religious views on love and fidelity.
