...“To my Dear and loving Husband” Poetry Explication The poem “To my Dear and loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet is a heart felt expression of a wife’s marital unconditional love and commitment to her husband. Indirectly, it is also about a puritan woman, who is supposed to be reserved, conveying a message of ever-lasting love and devotion to her husband through vivid imagery and emotions. By reading the poem it seems to be directed to an audience consisting of people who are in love and a person who cherishes their partner’s love. “To my Dear and loving Husband” is classified as a lyrical poem written in couplet form which means in each of the two adjacent lines, it is poetry that rhymes. For example: in the beginning, “If ever two were one, then surely we, If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;” (1-2) each line ends with a rhyme – we and thee. “To my Dear and loving Husband” is written in iambic pentameter that makes you read the poem with an obvious rhythm. The couplet form is AABBCCDD and so on making the lines come in rhyming pairs. The poem supports the rhythm with the masculine rhymes using the repetition in the final sounds in every last syllable. The poem consists of monosyllabic words such as we, thee, man, can, gold, hold, and pray. When reading the poem out loud the reader will notice there are many open vowel sounds and soft consonants, which adds to the sincere tone and gives the poem a sense of overall simple, unaffected speech. The beginning...
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...Poetry Explication “My Papa’s Waltz” was written in 1948 by a man named Theodore Roethke. This poem is about a young boy who has to live and deal with a father who beats him, or as metaphorically stated in the poem “waltzes” with him. There is a lot of meaning behind the title of this poem. “My” implies that this is something he takes ownership of, “Papa’s” shows that he loves his father but there is something the father has going on or has to deal with, and “Waltz” is a metaphor for the rampage his father goes through every time he comes home drunk. This poem has four stanzas with four lines in each stanza. It is written in tri-meter time and has a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b. This is one of the simplest writing styles in poetry. It was written in such a simple format in order for the audience/reader to interpret easily. He wanted everyone to understand that his father was abusive and for you to get it immediately without him saying it out right. In the last two lines in the 2nd stanza the author uses personification to show the mother’s disapproval of the situation saying that her “countenance could not unfrown.” This enhances the meaning of the poem because it shows that the mother doesn’t like what’s going on but just sits there and watches, maybe crying a little, because she knows that what’s going on is wrong but she has no chance standing up to the drunken man. Almost to say that she cares but she’s scared and doesn’t want to get hurt herself either. This poem is...
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...Tekela Genous October 28, 2009 ENG 435 Langston Hughes “Mother to Son” is written entirely from a weary mother’s point-of-view and presents inspiration, themes, and imagery concerning the appearance and the reality of the poem. Every mother wants to see her child be successful in life through the hardships and the good times. The poem was written from a mother to her young son demonstrating the love and concern a mother has for her son and educating him on how life may be. The overall message is to never give up, although life is hard, one can never give up no matter what your struggles are, keep pushing forward. This poem implies that experience can teach life lessons, which the mother has been through time after time. She explains to her son in a well spoken way that things may go wrong, don’t get content, move forward and never give up. This poem reminds me of a novel named Push, written by Sapphire in 1996, it illustrates the conditions of living in Harlem in the 1980’s and the suffering of a girl, Claireece Precious Jones, who experienced sexual harassment, being committed twice by her own father, having two children by him, but never giving up. The first couple of stanzas show that the son may have asked his mother a question, because she starts with, "Well, son, I'll tell you." The mother then goes on and uses the metaphor “Life for me ain't been no crystal stair,” which can symbolize her spiritual pursue towards Christ or telling her son that life is...
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...Running head: A LITERARY EXPLICATION ON THE POEM "A GIRL'S A Literary Explication on the Poem "A Girl's Garden" by Robert Frost Galen College of Nursing A Literary Explication on the Poem "A Girl's Garden" by Robert Frost Even people who are not a connoisseur of poetry are familiar with Robert Frost and his works. Even though he was a very complex man who kept to himself he excelled in poetry. He found success in poetry that few poets are able to achieve. He lived from 1874-1963. Living most of his life in the New England area, his poems reflects the New England life style and ways of thinking. The poem “A Girl’s Garden” was written in 1916 by Frost. (Meyer, 2008, pg. 1118-1136). The narrator in this poem is unknown. It is told in first person reflecting on a neighbor that tells the same story to all the new people that she meets. A sweet poem with many thoughts and values hid away in the stanza makes the reader reflect on their childhood and experiences of achieving independence. Although the little girl in the poem thought she was starting on an adventure that was fun and exciting, her father was truly teaching her a lesson of independence and hard work. As child, many children venture into doing large projects without thinking about all the hard work that is put into the end product. This is much like the young girl in the poem that decides that she wants to grow her own garden. Without batting an eye her father finds her a small piece of land to place...
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...of the beholder, while others argue that there are scientific and social factors that contribute to a clear definition of beauty. The same type of argument comes into focus when one considers literature. Dictionary.com defines literature as “written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit,” but this brings into question how one is to judge whether a work has greater or enduring artistic value. This question is addressed in Plato’s Ion. In Ion, Plato addresses whether it is through experience and skill or through divine intervention that Ion judges the merit of works. Through an explication of the text, one can consider whether it is knowledge or preference that leads to determining value through literary criticism. The dialogue opens with Socrates speaking to Ion who is a rhapsodist, or a professional performer of epic poetry. The reader learns that Ion is a skilled rhapsodist as he has just won first place among competitors at the festival of Asclepius. It is upon this knowledge and skill that Ion bases his affinity for Homer. Ion makes the claim that Homer is a superior poet and because of this, Ion is better able to interpret his works as compared to his inability to interpret other poets’ works. When this claim is made, Socrates goes through a series of deductions in order to determine how Ion has come to realize the merit of Homer’s works. Unlike Ion, Socrates believes that Ion’s judgment is based on divine intervention as opposed...
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...Infer: to draw a reasonable conclusion from the info given Imply: to express (something) in an indirect way Evoke: to cause (something) to happen Explication: to explain or analyze Speaker: narrator Lyric: a poem Elegy: poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead Ode: a poem which a person expresses a strong feeling pf love or respect for someone or something Hymn: a song of praise or joy Folk Ballad: culture song Literal: usually meaning of the word Concrete: relating to or involving specific people, things, or actions rather than general ideas or qualities Abstract: elating to or involving general ideas or qualities rather than specific people, objects, or actions Figure of Speech: simile or metaphor Simile: “like”, “as”, “seems” and or “appears” Metaphor: “to be”, “is”, “are”, “was” and or “were” Metonymy: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another Synecdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole Image: the thought of how something looks or might look Imagery: language that causes people to imagine pictures in their mind Meter: arranged and measured rhythm in verse Foot: the basic unit of verse meter consisting of any of various fixed combinations or groups of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables Iamb: unstressed-stressed Trochee: stressed-unstressed Anapest: unstressed-unstressed-stressed Dactyl: stressed-unstressed-unstressed Pyrrhic: unstressed-unstressed ...
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...CODE: ENG 503 PROPOSAL TOPIC TEACHING POETRY APPRECIATION IN THE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL: A CASE STUDY OF THREE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE TECHIMAN MUNICIPALITY INTRODUCTION Very few people are gifted with talents to understand or write poetry. The taste of poetry has to be cultivated with a careful handling of the subject failing which the poetry can results into irritating sign of neurosis on the students. Hence, there is great need of suitable curriculum as well as careful handling of the subject. Despite the fact that, poetry is one of the highly specialized forms of language, its status is diminished. It is partly because of the curriculum and partly because of the English teachers who execute the curriculum of poetry [Robert Scholes, 2001]. Most teachers of literature in general and poetry to be specific have the tendency of rather relying too heavily on critical commentaries of literary works (Yenkson 1987). Yenkson further asserts that “these notes are written by Secondary School teachers with the sole purpose of helping students to pass their exams”. Many of these teachers think that the use of those notes will spare them and their students the agony of having to study their recommended text. Apart from this, Senior High School English and Literature in English lessons are dominated by the need to prepare students for exams, hence in especially core English lessons the literature aspect particularly poetry is relegated to background since the literature...
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...|[pic] |Syllabus | | |College of Humanities | | |ENG/125 Version 3 | | |Literature in Society | Copyright © 2010, 2008, 2006 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. Course Description This course introduces themes in literature and provides guided study and practice in reflecting on themes which describe the human experience across cultural and societal boundaries. The course includes readings from literature in different genres and cultures. Students study the literature in thematic units and are asked to make connections to their own lives and cultures. Policies Faculty and students/learners will be held responsible for understanding and adhering to all policies contained within the following two documents: • University policies: You must be logged into the student website to view this document. • Instructor policies: This document is posted in the Course Materials forum. University policies are subject to change. Be sure to read the policies...
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...LIT 2030: Interpretation of Poetry – Paper One – Fall 2012 At this point, you have read and discussed a number of different pieces of poetry from a wide range of cultural contexts and aesthetic agendas. Furthermore, you have learned some of the core elements of poetry and continue to build upon and deploy a growing lexicon of terms with each class you attend. This assignment tasks you with creating an original claim about a poem, locating textual evidence to support your argument, and then synthesizing said evidence with thoughtful analysis to prove your claim. In this first-major essay, you are working on close-reading skills and are prohibited from using any outside sources whatsoever. This means you will compose your argument and subtopics based solely off your reading of the text. It is not reasonable to expect a strong argument to leap from your forehead, nuanced, sophisticated, and fully formed the night before class. But if you keep the assignment in mind during our discussions and when reading on your own, you are more far more likely to come up with a strong, provable thesis. In closing, I encourage you to understand writing to be a process that one improves at over time and is continually fine-tuned. The sooner you get to work, the faster you will see results. Assignment: Utilizing one of the poems we have discussed in class, you will come up with an original argument that lends itself to a more sophisticated understanding of the piece by analyzing genre-specific...
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...Mike Carrier Mr. Holdeman Shakespeare Course 18 January 2014 Time Will Kill You: An Explication of Sonnet 160 Sonnet 60 is a member of the fair youth sequence in which Shakespeare continues to express his love to an unnamed young man. In the sonnet, Shakespeare appears to be talking directly to his love, as evidenced by his use of the word our in line 2: “our minutes hasten to their end.” The sonnet focuses on the theme of time passing, which is one of the major themes present in many of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The three quatrains in sonnet 60 focus on a different symbol, but they all tie into the sonnets main theme, the passage of time. In the first sonnet, the ocean and its waves are compared to the passage of time. The first two lines use a classic simile to do this: “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end;” (1-2). Lines 1-4 also employ personifications to talk about how we as humans insist on rushing through our lives when death awaits at the finish, as waves rush to get to the shore where they will disappear: “In sequent toil all forwards do contend” (4). In the second quatrain, Shakespeare describes the progression of human life through time by comparing it to the progression of the sun through the day. In the first line of the quatrain, nativity (birth) is compared to the morning sunrise: “Nativity, once in the main of light,” (5). The second line compares the “crawl to maturity”, or adolescence, to sun at noon...
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...It happened two years ago as I lay sprawled out on the floor of the library lounge at the Universite de Grenoble in Grenoble, France. I was working on an explication du texte of Guillaume Apollinaire' poem "La Loreley" for my Poemes et Proses du XXe Siecle class when I suddenly put it together: this was my approach to literature. Close reading, formalism. Staying close, very close, to the text. I was certain. Certainty, however, proved rather unstable. I knew it was important not to close myself off from other approaches to literature, so when I returned to Swarthmore from Grenoble, I took two courses which I knew would be highly theoretical-Women Writers 1790-1830 and Feminist Literary Criticism. These courses brought me around to a kind of hybrid approach to literature which I...
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...Narrative A narrative is a sequence of events that a narrator tells in story form. A narrator is a storyteller of any kind, whether the authorial voice in a novel or a friend telling you about last night’s party. Point of View The point of view is the perspective that a narrative takes toward the events it describes. First-person narration: A narrative in which the narrator tells the story from his/her own point of view and refers to him/herself as “I.” The narrator may be an active participant in the story or just an observer. When the point of view represented is specifically the author’s, and not a fictional narrator’s, the story is autobiographical and may be nonfictional (see Common Literary Forms and Genres below). Third-person narration: The narrator remains outside the story and describes the characters in the story using proper names and the third-person pronouns “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they.” • Omniscient narration: The narrator knows all of the actions, feelings, and motivations of all of the characters. For example, the narrator of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina seems to know everything about all the characters and events in the story. • Limited omniscient narration: The narrator knows the actions, feelings, and motivations of only one or a handful of characters. For example, the narrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has full knowledge of only Alice. • Free indirect discourse: The narrator conveys a character’s inner thoughts...
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.... ] Breaking the Book Known as Q Readers, in fact, never confront abstract, idealized texts detached from any materiality. ey hold in their hands or perceive objects and forms whose structures and modalities govern their reading or hearing, and consequently the possible comprehension of the text read or heard. —Roger Chartier O let my books be then the eloquence . . . —“23” Shake-speares Sonnets I COLEMAN HUTCHISON is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Northwestern University. He is completing a dissertation entitled “Revision, Reunion, and the American Civil War Text.” N THE FIRST SENTENCE OF HER ART OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS, Helen Vendler tells a little white lie: “I have reprinted both the 1609 quarto Sonnets and a modernized version of my own” (xiii). e crux of this declaration is “reprinted.” Vendler does indeed print a version of the 1609 quarto—or “Q,” as it is referred to bibliographically; one could even say that she “reprints” the type of the quarto. Vendler does not, however, “reprint” the 1609 quarto Sonnets. Like nearly every modern editor before her, Vendler presents the poems as discrete units on a page, eliding and ignoring the page breaks that so o en—and, I will argue, so meaningfully—interrupt the poems. In “reprinting” these poems, Vendler uses a de cut-and-paste method to rearrange, re-member, and reconstitute the type of the 1609 quarto into uninterrupted material units, into what we would visually recognize as “sonnets.” e...
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...electronic transmission, in any way. THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE trans. S. H. Butcher, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Cover Design: Jim Manis Copyright © 2000 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE Analysis of Contents A TRANSLATION BY S. H. BUTCHER I ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry. II The Objects of Imitation. III The Manner of Imitation. IV The Origin and Development of Poetry. V Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy. VI Definition of Tragedy. VII The Plot must be a Whole. VIII The Plot must be a Unity. IX (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity. X (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots. XI (Plot continued.) Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained. XII The ‘quantitative parts’ of Tragedy defined. XIII (Plot continued.) What...
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...Assignment 10: Personal Response to Poetry The Shadow by Hilda Morley The narrator reflects on the impermanence of all things in life. She seems to realize all of a sudden, that life was slipping by and she had not done anything significant or contributed anything of value to this humanity or to impact the world at large. While dwelling on such thoughts, she reflects on the life of another friend, Lawrence who was dying at the young age of 44.She seems quite astonished that Lawrence was leaving behind more than what would be expected of a man his age. He was leaving behind him novels, stories and poems while she being so much older than him had so little to show for all her living. She thinks to herself that her life had certainly not been a dull one and so many things had been “brewing” in her life, which she should have documented to the best of her ability. She reveals that she had been quite shy and timid at one time to even think of doing what she now thought was possible for her. The narrator goes on to describe in such beautiful detail the nature that surrounds the place where she lives. She describes the trees with their leaves of different shapes and sizes and colors of green, she describes the hills and the beginnings of mountains, she talks about the clouds little and big, and the yellow moon with the mist around it. While she thus describes this she sees a bird that flies against the sun so swiftly and disappears into the sky hardly...
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