The Prelude Flashcards
Perspective
• Poem as a whole is autobiographical
• First person narration
• Past tense with many uses of present participles, e.g. “leaving”, “sparkling” and “glittering”. By blurring past and present, wordsworth shows the reader how this experience has shaped how he lives and how he still views the world in the present, as if he were to be experiencing it a new.
Structure
• Epic Poem. Is possible that Wordsworth intended the adventure to not be his physical actions but his spiritual growth and journey to becoming a poet, including his awakening to nature’s power and his own insignificance.
• Entire extract is a single stanza, emphasises the overwhelming power of nature. This is heightened bevause there are no breaks or pauses, causes reader to feel breathless. Causing the reader to feel overwhelemed could be to reflect how wordsworth was overwhelmed by the immensity of the mountain.
• Cyclical structure, begins and ends in the mooring of the boat. Emphasises that the change was internal and psychological rather than external and physical.
• Enjambment, makes the poem flow but also gives a sense of lack of control. Makes the poem feel like a stream of consciousness. Enjambement suggests an uncontrollable urge to convey the power of nature, hinting that he wants to try and express what he felt.
Language
• Loss of eloquence, as the poem progresses and the speaker beocmes overwhelmed by the mountain the language becomes less sophisticated. Start of the poem, language is poetic and descriptive, e.g “elfin pinnace”, “small circles glittering idly”. Revelation of nature’s true power renders him literally speechless and his desceoptions become more simple and clumsy, repeats adjective “huge” in “huge peak, black and huge” to compensate for his devolved vocabulary.
• Repition of “huge” also emphasises the sheer size of the mountain. Perhaps wordsworth couldn’t think of a compaeision to how big the mountain is as it is incomparable. Repition sounds like stuttering, may suggest he is nervous and intimidated in the face of such raw power.
• Personification of nature, referende to nature as “her” or “she” is an allusion to the idea of Mother Nature. Nature can be seen as female, it creates, sustains and nurtures life like a mother. Contrasts the role of nature to the role of a human- while women nurture a single child, nature nurtures and entire planet, demonstratuibg its superiority.
• Parenthesis, “(led by her)”, suggests it was added later. This imples he was unaware of this control until his moment of revelation when he realised nature’s supremacy.
• Similes are used to try and help readers understand his experience, e.g. “like a swan”, “like a living thing”, “like one who rows”.
Similarities betwen The Prelude & Ozymandias
• Both display nature as more powerful than mankind; on Ozymandias, human power is shown as intrinsically weak and transieng and lost to time and nature. In The Prelude, failed attemots of mankind to overpower and manipilate a force beyond its control are displayed.
• Theme of pride is key in both, it being the cause of the speaker’s eventual fall. Both link to Milton’s Paradise Lost in this sense of ‘fall of man’. Links to the irony of statue in desert in Ozymandias.
Differences betwen The Prelude & Ozymandias
• Whilst both poets explore how pride is unfounded because human power is inferior to the power of nature, they present this in different ways. In The Prelude, the overwhelming power of nature leads to the speaker’s loss of eloquence and how he becomes unanle to define his world. On the other hands, in Ozymandias, this power is conveyed theough the symbolism of the desert and time.
Similarities betwen The Prelude & SOTI
• Both poems show nature as powerful. In SOTI, its due to violence of nature – military metaphors. In The Prelude, its due to size and extent of nature, e.g. “huge peak”.
• Speakers in both discover truths about the world through their encounters with nature. In SOTI, the islanders realise unabikity to control the storm, displayed through the poem’s cyclical content and narrative as the islanders always end up afraid. Could also potentially be about the Northern Ireland Conflict. In The Prelude, there is a spiritual development of a poet explored, as the speaker realises their own significance.
Differences betwen The Prelude & SOTI
• The conflict with nature is displayed differently in each poem. In SOTI, it is physical, as if they are being attacked by nature, whereas in The Prelude, it is psychologicalx nature is inciting fear and redifing their view of the world.
