Poetry context Flashcards
(17 cards)
Dulce et decorum est context
Craiglockhart War-Hospital (PTSD). A therapist advised Owen to write about his experiences in poetry so his work expresses the true horror of war rather than internalising it.
In contemporary Britain, war was romanticised to the point it had gained mythical status. Owen attempted to dispel the ‘old lie’.
Killed in action- 4 November 1918. A week before the armistice was signed, mirroring the tragedy he outlines in the poem.
The Soldier context
Patriotic and positive tone, takes on upbeat, hopeful atmosphere created by society at the beginning of the war. Yet to feel impact of war. Neo-Romantic poet (wrote after movement but contains similar elements). Died from a mosquito bite whilst aboard for WW1 (1915) - link to irony of the poem
Never experienced trench warfare. Before the war, he travelled widely and completed journalistic work. He suffered from home sickness (strong connection to England)
The Soldier acts as ‘propaganda poetry’ especially as it was published in 1915 by the Times Literary Supplement, demonstrating the feelings and thoughts of a country yet to feel the full extent and devastation of war. He wrote his series of sonnets called ‘1914’ after he had enlisted but before he had taken part in trench warfare, indicating his skewed outlook on war.
Mametz wood context
Owen Sheers, born in Wales 1974. Modern Poet, no actual experience of the War. Writes poems and novels.
Interest in history.
He was the Welsh Rugby Poet.
Mametz Wood in Norther France, Somme.
Went back to France on 80th anniversary of WW1, saw the land had repaired itself, regenerated.
-Welsh Battalion lost lots of men when sent for a ‘small’ battle in Mametz Wood. Told it would only last a few hours, lasted 5 days.
Owen Sheers felt that Welsh sacrifice/bravery was never really acknowledged.
A Wife In London context
Member of Naturalism movement, depicted harsh realities of life. Set in second Boer War. 1899 - 1902 between the British and Dutch settlers in South Africa over huge gold reserves. The conflict impacted many but the gold benefited few. Hardy was opposed to the Boer War and didn’t like the lack of information.
Set in industrial revolution, smog.
To Autumn context
Enlightenment Era (1700s - 1800s). Increasing geographic and social mobility, with more people moving to cities and the growth of a literate middle class. Growing urbanisation around cities.
New technologies dependant on power from fossil fuels.
Longer life-spans and rising standards of living enabled ideas or value including individualism, imagination, idealisation of childhood, families, love, nature and the past. In 1820 he was fatally stricken with tuberculosis, like his mother and brother, Tom. He sailed for Italy in the hope of recovering but died in Rome on 23 February 1821. To Autumn is one of his last poems.
He died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis.
Keats lived during a period of national and international upheaval. He was born only six years after the French Revolution and twelve years after the American Revolution. This was a period of fear and suspicion for all. The government reacted strongly to any perceived threat of rebellion. Keats suggests that nature acts as a predictable state (seasons passing) despite the rest of the world. The threat of revolution prompted to Prime Minister William Pitt to curtail the right to free speech.
The Prelude context
Romantic poets felt that natural world has the power to inspire us and to terrify us. Called the sublime. Nature should be treated with respect. William Wordsworth grew up in the Lake District - a solitary place for him. His mother died when he was 8 (he had to grow up faster, adulthood came to him faster, childhood was ripped away from him) and his sister was sent away.
Orphaned by nature, so his relationship with nature was interesting.
Nature became a mentor and guide, personified human prescence.
Greatly influenced by French revolution, saw them as taking back control of their own country. In favour of resisting growing industrialism by remembering a simpler, natural past.
Romantic poets didn’t like the way people attempted to impose power on other people, and even nature.
London context
Romantic poet.
Religion was English Dissenters (Protestants who had separated due to disagreement with interference of the state).
Written as part of his collection “Songs of Experience” , illuminating the challenges and sufferings of real life. This collection acted as a companion piece to his previously published “Songs of Innocence” which focused on the innocence and naivety of children as well as beauty and peace of nature, providing simple moral messages. Blake tried to suggest that innocence is lost with experience of the harshness of reality.
Blake was critical of the drive to industrialise. The pursuit of money had led to people treating each other as commodities and forgetting that everyone is a child of God.
He lived in London for most of his life and saw it as corrupted by greed and inequality.
Use of simple language so his poetry was accessible to all as he tried to use his poetry to instigate change.
He was considered to have radical views at the time.
Ozymandias context
Romantic poet–> very political, love of ordinary language, concise and clear expression. 2nd generation of Romantic, looked to antiquity
Wrote during the reign of George II - oppressive regime
Published poem in 1818. Sonnet writing competition.
Watched the arrival of an Egyptian statue called Ramesses to British museum. Acquisition of the British (British empire acquiring a statue from a previous powerful empire (Egyptian).
Shelley was an atheist
Cozy Apologia context
Rita Dove 1952, Contemporary American poet
US Poet Laurate in the 90s
Known for combining the historical with the personal
Married to Fred Viebahn (another writer)
Modern Poetry focuses on the ordinary and the everyday.
Hurricane Floyd: Very powerful hurricane struck East-coast of USA in 1999
People who lived in coastal regions as for North as North Carolina (below Virginia) were evacuated. 4th largest evacuation in American History.
Caused flash floods and $6.5 billion in damages
76 people died due to Hurricane Floyd, 51 in North Coraline and 4 people in Virginia (poem provides a real first-hand experience, direct impact on poet).
Valentine context
Writes as part of postmodernism movement, characterised by the deconstruction of ideas.
Criticises the ‘perfect’ love advertised by Valentine’s day and commercialisation. Asked to write an original poem for Valentine’s day in 1993.
Contemporary poet perhaps changes her perception of romance.
Writing at end of 20th century, during which traditional forms were out of fashion as they appeared unable to convey modern relationships
She Walks in Beauty context
Byron was often described as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ so perhaps he is so drawn to the goodness and purity of the woman because of his inability to recognise it within himself.
Romantic poets strove to idealise beauty by engaging with emotions, hence Byron uses ideas of religion and innocence to describe the woman.
Byron had a high literacy intelligence, and studied at both Harrow and Oxford, yet he is unable to find words to express his love for the woman, suggesting that her beauty feeds into the concept of the sublime.
Byron was exiled from Britain after having an affair with his half-sister, eventually gaining celebrity-status through the breaking of boundaries in both his life and poetry. Wrote this poem after he met his cousin’s wife who was young and beautiful - Mrs Robert Wilmot. She was wearing a black gown at a party. Published in Hebrew Melodies, intended to be accompanied by music. Marriage and courtship was typical at the time, yet Byron expresses no desire of this within his poem.
Sonnet 43 context
Romantic poet.
Elizabeth and Robert exchanged 574 letters in 20 months.
Her sonnets were very personal and she didn’t intend for them to be published until her husband persuaded her to. She published her sonnets under the impression that they were translations. “Sonnets from the Portuguese”. She was devoutly Christian. She described her childhood faith as the ‘wild visions of an enthusiast’. Her mother, grandmother and 2 brothers had died in the years before this poem was written. She felt guilty about the death of her 2nd brother as he died whilst visiting her.
Suffered from illness in her youth, was bedbound most of her life, perhaps her illness lends itself to the passionate appreciation she has of love and her husband. Perhaps being ill enabled her to see what a privilege love is, hence the intensity of this sonnet.
During the Victorian era, men and women weren’t equal yet in this poem, Browning almost breaks down boundaries, referring to Robert as an equal. Women were not expected to experience of express strong emotions. * Her Father disowned her when she married Robert Browning. She had a difficult relationship with her Father, he was controlling.
As Imperceptibly as Grief context
Part of Transcendentalism movement, references to spirituality and nature. Dickinson had a ‘normal’ childhood, but became increasingly shy and recluse-like, until she rarely left her bedroom, and kept in touch with her friends and family through letter writing.
Her mother’s health was declining and Emily acted as her carer from the 1850s until her death. Her mother demanded that one of her daughters remain by her side always as she was ill. This poem was written during this time.
She was obsessed and afraid of death. When she was 13 one of her closest friends died of typhus. She was sent to Boston to stay with family to recover
Between the age of 10 and 25 her bedroom overlooked a cemetery where 5 of her friends were buried.
Having been brought up in a deeply religious Calvinist household, Dickinson explores immortality and heaven. The earlier versions of Dickinson’s poems were altered by her publishers to make them more conventional (e.g. with titles and conventional use of capital letters and punctuation.)
Dickinson read widely, being influenced by the Romantic poets and Shakespeare
Living Space context
Dharker explores the poor living conditions of millions of inhabitants in Mumbai’s slums, sparked by her interest in other cultures. She is aware of the slums as she splits her time between the UK and Mumbai and perhaps she writes this poem to bring awareness to the poverty faced by those in the slums. Millions of people move from the rural areas of India to Mumbai because they are seeking/hoping for a better life. Unknown population (around 50 million people) Limited access to electricity, clean water, food, education. Lots of poverty.
Hawk Roosting context
Part of The Movement in British poetry, a literary group from the 1950s-60s, which rejected the ornate language celebrated by Romantic poets in favour of more direct language: The poem uses free verse and lacks a formal rhyme scheme which is typical of Hughes’ style.
Hughes studied anthropology, demonstrated through the poem’s focus on the instinctual behaviour of nature. Served in the Royal Air Force - exposed to violence
Spent most of his life living in rural areas and spent lots of his childhood outdoors
Fascinated by animals as a child.
Was aware of the harsh realities of growing up in the countryside, doesn’t portray nature as something cute and fluffy.
His father fought in WW1 and often told him stories about his time as a soldier. Influenced his writing, which often contains violent imagery. According to Thomas Nye: “He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state”.
Hughes said that Hawk Roosting was simply about a hawk, and nature thinking, it can be appreciated on two levels - the cruelty of nature, but also can relate to the world, and the thoughts of a person with power, whether a bully in school, or a political leader.
Death of a Naturalist context
Written in 1966 during the ‘troubles’ which split Irish society hence the 2 distinctive stanzas, one full of innocence, one full of violence.
The Troubles started in Northern Ireland when Heaney was 22.
Death of a Naturalist laments a lost world, the narrator’s lost world of innocence but also a lost world of Irish life and identity.
Much like Hughes (who Heaney was inspired by) he sees both the beauty and violence in the natural world, perhaps mirroring the violence that humans themselves are capable of.
He used nature as a metaphor for human nature, using it to explore identity.
“Death of A Naturalist” is also the name of his first collection, acting as the title poem. He attempted to demonstrate the violence of nature rather than a romanticised view of its beauty.
“Flax-dam” references. A flax-dam was used to soak flax that had been harvested earlier in the year and was then used as the raw material for the linen industry, this industry was in decline in Northern Ireland. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, this industry had employed up to 70,000 people.
While studying at St Columb’s boarding school, Heaney’s younger brother Christopher was killed in February 1953 at the age of 4 in a road accident.
Grew up on a farm near Castledawson, Derry.
Afternoons context
He wrote in post-war Britain. Member of The Movement poets, who wrote with irony and honesty about a society shadowed by WWII and the austerity that followed. Larkin spoke bleak truths about life.
The Movement poets encouraged mixing rationality with feeling, of objective control with subjective abandon. Ideas of honesty and realism about self and the outside world.
1979 he told the Observer, “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth”.
Gender roles were regimented in 1960s England.
Government was taking steps to get rid of run-down houses and replace it with modern living estates.
In 1957 Prime Minister Macmillan declared Britain was in a period of prosperity, contrasting with the austerity of previous decades impacted by two World Wars. His poem reflected the dreariness of post-war provincial England and voiced the spiritual despair of the modern age.
Lived in Hull, in a flat looking over a park. He spent a lot of time observing people and young mothers in the park with their children.
He criticises married life, perhaps defending his past failed relationships.
