By separating lines and starting new stanzas during mid-flow, she is able to portray a hesitance in the person’s voice. By writing in sonnet form, Shakespeare was also able to use regular external rhyme. This makes the poem feel as one and allows ideas to be linked throughout the poem. The use of para-rhyme can also be seen in Sonnet 116; ‘Love…Remove’. This gives a jarring effect, causing the words to stand out to the reader.
“It is the texts that passionately and intelligently engage with the changing reality of their period that we value most highly.” Write an essay in which you explore the extent to which this is true of the texts you have studied in your elective. (Two Plath poems, one additional text) The texts that passionately and intelligently engage with the changing reality of their period are the texts that challenge society’s views. They become the texts we value most highly as they make us question old values and progress in our ways of thinking as a society. The most highly valued texts are the ones that change opinions – that make people understand different perspectives and see issues in new ways. Sylvia Plath was a poet and author who deeply and thoughtfully engaged with the period in which she lived, which was rapidly evolving and developing.
Similarly in The Duchess of Malfi, when the Duchess’ attempt to deceive her brothers and conceal her marriage leads to her death. However self-deception is also a recurrent theme in both of the plays, in Othello, it can be argued that Othello’s self- deception proves just as destructive as Iago’s, as by deceiving himself of his true nature and labelling himself as “one not easily jealous,” he continually supresses his feelings of inner turmoil until he breaks under the influence of Iago. F R Leavis agreed with this stating, “The mind that undoes [Othello] is not Iago’s but his own.” The role of deception would be nowhere near as essential to the play without the influence of Iago; described by AC Bradley as the “artist of evil” his ruthless manipulation of the other characters in the play ensures not only the destruction of Othello, but his own. Self- deception plays a crucial role within Othello and The Duchess of Malfi; it allows the audience to see further into the characters personality and gain a deeper understanding of them as a character. Othello himself is the most palpable example of self- deception within the plays as from when the audience is first introduced to him in Act One Scene Two, he believes
The main character, Thetis, watches Hephaestos's labors, and Auden creates an ironic conflict between her expectations of beautiful scenes and the images Hephaestos renders instead, of imperial Rome and of the modern world's industry and impersonality. This discrepancy shows the distance between the myth of history and its brutal reality; moreover, Auden suggests, the notion of progress itself is a myth, since the brutal past is scarcely distinguishable from the brutal present. The poem thus exemplifies Auden's vision of poetry as a powerful way to "disenchant and disintoxicate" the reader (Dyer's, 27), freeing one from the myths and fictions of history that, for all their beauty, often serve to compound or conceal human misery. In book XVIII of the Iliad, Homer writes of how the goddess Thetis, mother of Achilles, the greatest of Greek warriors, petitioned the god Hephaestos to forge him a new suit of armor to replace the one stripped by the Trojan leader Hector from the body of Achilles's slain friend, Patroclus. In describing the ornate design that Hephaestos works into the armor, Homer relates a world history that encompasses all the ages of man, and by connecting art, history, and war, Homer makes epic poetry a means of exploring the richness of human culture through a narrative of
Character Essay The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock An insecure yet very opinionated character was Prufrock. A “seen it all” kind of attitude was through the whole poem, but there was still a simple love character beneath him that he was too shy to show. He expresses a lot of himself, though he lacks a sense of confidence. (40) “And indeed there will be time, to wonder, ‘Do I dare? And ‘Do I dare?’, Time to turn back and descend the stair, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair”.The poem starts out with verses of “what not to do with your love”, yet he fails to express the person he has feelings for but also fails to recognize himself in all this.
In “Ulysses”, Tennyson presents the characteristics and attitudes of the eponymous central character through the dynamic form of the dramatic monologue. Through an adroit blending of literary techniques including those of structure, form and language, he seeks to clarify much of the mystique behind the mythological background of Ulysses, and reveal his persona of desire and heroism, alongside his undesirable traits of contemptuousness and hubristic pride. Throughout the poem, its form and structure allow Tennyson to reveal the character of Ulysses as he wishes him to be portrayed. “Ulysses” takes the form of the dramatic monologue, with Tennyson adapting the persona of his mythical character and using this form to reveal Ulysses’ character through his own words. This choice of form, combined with the structural use of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, allows the poem to adopt a rhythm that is one of the closest imitators of human speech in verse.
Essay: Robert Browning - My Last Duchess Write an essay in which you show how Browning uses the style and structure of the dramatic monologue to convey both the meaning and the intention of the poem. Comment on his use of specific poetic techniques to enhance understanding and intention of the poem: Robert Browning writes his poem, The Last Duchess, in the form of a Dramatic Monologue. The style and structure of this poem adds significant importance and relevance to the message and intention of the poem. Browning's intentional use of specific poetic techniques such as tone of voice, diction, flowery language, rhetorical questions, enjambment and rhyme are vividly explained in this essay. Robert Browning attains a reputation for “oddness”, as the novelist Henry James termed it, for his difficult and obscure written poems.
Shakespeare uses it as opening lines to introduce the idea of love being harmful and painful from the very beginning of the play, truly making it a theme throughout the play. It conveys to the audience that he doesn’t want to love her but can’t seem to help it, which in turn makes audience question if they would love if they had a choice in it. Shakespeare creates a sense of Pity for Orsino and his situation in the audience, with him almost physically hurting because of the strength of the emotional pain love is causing him to endure. As many people will have felt a similar way before – if not as intense a pain – from the very start of Twelfth Night we can empathise with the characters.
By using aggressive verbs and strong beat, it shows the conflict between the two families, which is very important for people to know so that they can have better ideas of why Romeo and Juliet’s love is a forbidden love. Quotes, such as “What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?”, “keep the peace”, are well-used in order to describe Tybalt as a hothead and Benvolio as a calm and mature person. Third song, “Tragic story”, is written in a special form. It’s like a conversation between the singers. Thanks to that unique style, whole picture of the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo are shown.
Towards the beginning of the play A Mid Summer Nights Dream Lysander states that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.’ Throughout the play along with the love song ‘Wild Horses’ by U2 we learn that love does not always make sense, that love is about emotions rather than rules and that love can cause us to both laugh and cry. Both the play and song use sophisticated language techniques that helps the audience understand certain emotions and believe certain truths about love. Love is about emotions rather than rules therefore can be unpredictable and can be chaotic. This is shown through the characterisation of Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander despite the Athenian rules.