How do the poems ‘Valentine’ and ‘Sonnet 43’ compare in their portrayal of love? Two poems written approximately 150 years apart, by two extra-ordinary women of their era: ‘Sonnet 43’, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a classic example of a Victorian love poem written as a sonnet, with a flexible rhyming scheme. ‘Valentine’, by Carol Ann Duffy, a controversial expression of modern day free verse; the irregular stanza allowing for the freedom of speech that Browning would not have experienced. Elizabeth Barrett Browning opens her sonnet with a rhetorical question: ‘How do I love thee?’ which she answers with a list to her husband-to-be, expressing how much she loves him. Her father disapproved of Robert Browning and eventually disinherited her; she never saw her father again when she went to Italy.
It will describe my initial reactions after reading the poem, my analysis of the poem, and my feelings after reading Harold Blooms analysis of the poem. My first impression that came to mind while reading “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe was of a children’s fairy tale that contained a rhythm and a musical tone. Throughout the poem Poe seems to rhyme every word to the poem’s title “Annabel Lee”. Towards the end, I noticed the original tone darken a bit with phrases such as “the wind came out of the cloud chilling,” and “killing my Annabel Lee” with the progression of the poem. Poe’s starting fairy tale tone worked to show innocence, a true love, an inseparable couple in perfect harmony with each other soon turned sad and dark.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s sonnet sequence Sonnets from the Portugeuse, explores the experence of idealised love in the patriarchal confines of the Victorian era, juxtaposed against F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, which comments on the unatanability of idealised love due to the corruption of the American dream. Through an exploration of love, both composers subvert societies preconcieved attitutdes to love through the reccurring motif of ‘Plato’s ladder of love’. Barrett-Browning’s poems highlight the realities of a spiritual, connected love, contrasting to Fitzgeralds commentary on the illusionary goals of ‘true’ platonic love in the post WWI hedonistic, materialistic society. Barrett-Browning conveys the Romantic ideals of platonic love, against the prudish rationalism of the Victorian era. The Petrarchan sonnet form has an inbuilt dialectic structure, enabling her to have a progressive narrative, which follows the path of the Platonic system.
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.
The irony of the title is mirrored by the irony that the form that this epic work takes is the sonnet; traditionally (in accord with Dante and Petrarch) a love poem and often presented as a gift. Each sixteen-line sonnet can be read individually as well as seen as part of a whole. Like any upstanding Victorian marriage, the meter is controlled and well mannered. Meredith opts for an ABBA rhyme scheme, with a different set of rhymes for each quatrain. The usual octet-sestet form would be too limiting for the narrative to move freely.
(Title) Edgar Allen Poe wrote his stories during the Romantic Literary movement. This movement began with the book published by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. Authors during this time period (1770-1860) included Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Longfellow. Yet one author who was the most prominent at this time was Edgar Allen Poe. Poe’s writing style demonstrated the knowledge of the human mind, the fears that haunt human being, and the work of literary genius.
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe “Annabel Lee” is the last complete poem Edgar Allan Poe made. This particular poem has the theme of the death of a beautiful woman like many other poems Poe made does. The voice of this poem may be the author, Allan Poe, or it very well may be a character the author developed. Even though Poe uses first person in this poem, one must be careful to not assume that he is talking or referring to himself; because if one was to assume that the speaker is the author then the reader would try to make connections between the poem and the author. Drawing connections between the author and poem is not always what the author intends on his reader to do.
An Analysis of Two Poems “My Last Duchess” and “My Ex-Husband” are two poems that are very similar even though they come from two very different time periods. “My Last Duchess,” written by Robert Browning, is a poem of dramatic monologue by the speaker Duke Ferrera. “My Ex-Husband,” by Gabriel Spera, was written to be a modern-day copy of the poem “My Last Duchess.” It includes dramatic monologue like the original “My Last Duchess.” However, Spera modernizes the poem, making the speaker a divorced woman. The two poems show similarities and differences in characters, diction, and cultural differences. In “My Last Duchess” the characters are the speaker Duke Ferrara, and his spouse the late Duchess.
Gatsby’s Fairy Dream In the early 19th century, at the end of the “Romantic Period”, an English poet named John Keats composed a poetic masterpiece called La Belle Dame sans Merci. The Romantic writers, along with Mr. Keats, created a political, social, and literary movement that explored how much love defined the human nature. La Belle Dame sans Merci, on the surface, may seem to be just another Romantic poem revolving around the tale of courtly love, but in truth, there is a deeper meaning and story associated to the love that the knight feels for his fair lady. The romantic encounter that the knight and the beautiful fairy have in the story abruptly ends in tragedy for the smitten, young man as he becomes so enraptured with the mythical,
English Poetry Essay Choose a poem which appealed to you because it was striking – show which techniques the poet has used to capture your interest and engage your feelings “To His Coy Mistress” is a piece of metaphysical poetry written by Andrew Marvell. This poem, like most metaphysical poetry, makes use of original images and has a very profound meaning behind it. “To His Coy Mistress” is particularly striking because of the deeper themes that it deals with, such as mortality and the idea of “carpe diem”, as well as the unique imagery used throughout and the interesting structure and progression of the poem. The use of the image “vegetable love” is very effective in capturing the reader’s interest. “Vegetable” is not usually the