In the early seventeenth-century, English poets used metaphysical poetry to enlighten highly intellectual and often abstruse imagery in their works, which further advanced the poetic style of John Donne. Donne’s poetry makes use of complex images, which are remarkably convincing to the reader. Despite the use of extensive techniques and varying images, the greatness of Donne’s poetry is the simplicity in the ideas expressed. John Donne’s poem, “The Triple Fool,” suggests unrequited love and folly through his use of creative imagery, sorrowful diction, and assertive tone. Firstly, Donne's poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of images.
There is no rhyme pattern that could mean that there is no flow or ease in this relationship. Overall you can see that this poem has significantly open structure. “My Last Duchess” has a very different structure. It does have a rhyming pattern, which has connotations to the idea of rhythmic love and the standard stages through a relationship. It also has iambic pentameter, its rhymed iambic pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of Shakespeare’s plays and other Elizabethan drama.
Walt Whitman writes his poem in independent stanzas that despite flowing flawlessly with the rest of the poem could just as effortlessly tell a story on their own. Whitman also steers away from the overrated, cliché style of rhyming; rather using decorative adjectives and detailed imagery, giving
“Nihil ex Nihilo, I always say” (Gardner 150). Those are the nihilistic words that Grendel used to profess his belief that life has no purpose. Little did he know, those words would lead to a series of misfortunes that would conclude in his death. John Gardner’s Grendel is a modern work of literature that affirms the importance of human meaning through its downplaying of different philosophical beliefs, which ultimately express that life has no purpose. Gardner begins this modern work with the breakdown of Solipsism; the belief that only the self exists.
Ryan Wong 8/21/12 APLAC “All literature is protest.”-Richard Wright. Through this quote Richard is saying that all writing usually conveys a purpose, to persuade, to explain or even to call people to action. In a fictitious novel the purpose is most likely conveyed as a constant moral, or thesis throughout the story. In a review he wrote for the New Masses magazine called “Between laughter and tears”, Wright criticizes Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Richard claims that there is no central idea or theme to Hurston’s book, thereby giving it no persuasive, explanatory or call to action-like traits.
I Do Not Love Thee Structure: How is the poem organized (lines, stanzas, etc.)? The poem is in an AB AB format. What is unique or interesting about the structure of the poem? There is nothing unique or interesting about the structure. Does the poem rhyme?
ﻌRalph Waldo Emerson- transcendentalist poet and philosopher; urged American writers to forget European traditions and write about American interests. ﻌHenry David Thoreau- transcendentalist who believed that one should reduce his bodily wants so as to gain time for a pursuit of truth through study and meditation. (Glowing Literary Lights) ﻌNot all poets and writers of the time were
Unknown Darkness To write about things nobody likes to talk about or even mention in real life makes Nathaniel Hawthorne a great poet and a famous one at that. Hawthorne wrote so much about the American Colonies and how they lived their lives, he captured the smallest details of that time. Imagine being a writer in those times trying to find things to write about, in some of his poems you can see what a morbid mind he had, and it’s possibly due to his environment. Some of his Ancestors were direct descendants of Puritan judges. Which might have influenced his all famous “Scarlet Letter” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, both these poems evoke each readers own personal judgments on human nature.
Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, just because it is his." In this quote Emerson is elaborating on the idea that one must express intellectual independence and nonconformity. The question of, “Why does one rely on others to determine the way he thinks, acts, dresses and speaks?” frequently comes up in the defense of transcendentalism. Two very influential and active authors in transcendentalism, Thoreau and Emerson, both tried to incorporate this idea into their writings. When an individual allows others to influence his own ideas, he showed be deemed weak-minded and ignorant.
Explore the ways in which the central character is presented in the poem My Last Duchess by Robert Browning - the poem is narrated in the first person, as if it was being spoken by a character on stage. We don't know who this character is, however. We have no name and no physical description - two things you would expect to have for any fictional character. All we have to go on is the words the Duke uses. The key to writing about characterisation here is to identify the use of certain techniques: * title - we know the Duchess is no longer around because of the title * possessives - we know the Duke is possessive because of his regular use of "my" * repetition - we know he is self-obsessed because of his repeated use of "I" * metaphor and form - we know he is hiding something because of his use of the curtain and the fact that the poem in written in rhyming couplets but the rhyme scheme is hidden * punctuation - we know he gets angry because the flow of his speech breaks down around line 22 * meaning - we suspect he may be guilty of something because the ambiguity of "I gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together", which has two meanings * imagery - we might conclude that he had his wife (the last Duchess) killed because the final image of the expensive bronze statute also works as a metaphor: a lively-sea horse (the Duchess) is being tamed by someone powerful (the Duke) and that sense of life (the lively Duchess, the rolling sea) is now solid and heavy and dark (like