Exercises & Assignment -- Week 13b

Exercise 1:

Paraphrase Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade". Then, summarize your paraphrase into one or two sentences, focusing on the topic, theme and tone of the poem.

Assignment:

As a group assignment, write an analytical paragraph of Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade".

A Reading of Alfred Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" and a Video Clip from an Old Movie Depicting the Event

A Reading of Alfred Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" and some Musical Interpretations

A Reading of Alfred Tennyson's "The Eagle"

Biographical Sketch: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Image from the University of Glasgow.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire (England). He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Arthur Henry Hallam, whom he later immortalized in In Memoriam (1850). Tennyson began to write when a child, largely to escape the oppressiveness of his homelife, made miserable by his father’s drinking and violence. He published some of his best-known poems, such as “Mariana” and “The Kraken,” when he was only twenty; in “Mariana,” he displays his early, and enduring, gift for suing objects and landscapes to convey states of mind and particular emotions. Between 1833, the date of Hallam’s death, and 1843, when Tennyson received an annual government pension to support his writing, he was especially hard-hit by the melancholia that would plague him all his life and so dominate his poetry. In the wake of Hallam’s death, Tennyson’s work assumed a decidedly darker note. He expressed his grief abstrusely in such poems as “Ullyses” and “Break, Break, Break” and directly in In Memoriam, a series of 131 quatrain stanzas written in iambic tetrameter, which Tennyson began within days of Hallam’s death and continued to write over a period of seventeen years. With the publication of In Memoriam, he finally attained the public recognition long denied him and earned syfficient money to marry Emily Sellwood after a ten-year on-again off-again courtship. He remained immensely popular until his death. His last major work was Idylls of the King, a project that occupied him for nearly fifty years; the first four idylls were published in 1859, and the complete cycle of twelve in 1885. In the work, which popularized the then obscure Arthurian legend, Tennyson upholds medieval ideals, such as community, heroism, and courtly love, and compares the decay of the Round Table to the moral decline of his own society.

Exercises -- Week 13a

Exercise 1:

Identify all the types of rhyme (e.g. perfect rhyme & imperfect rhyme; end rhyme & internal rhyme; masculine & feminine rhyme) in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Cloud".

Exercise 2:

Read the poem "The Cloud" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

What is the topic of this poem?
What is the main theme of this poem?
Summarize this poem in one or two sentences.
Which poetic devices does Shelley use most often in this poem?

Rhyme

Sound is a very important aspect of poetry. Probably one of the most important sound-features of poetry is rhyme (words that sound similar). For a more detailed discussion of rhyme, refer to Norton's Anthology of Poetry, 3rd Edition, p. 1410-1412.

There are various ways to describe rhyme:

• Perfect Rhyme, Imperfect Rhyme and Eye Rhyme

Perfect Rhyme is also known as exact rhyme, full rhyme or true rhyme. In perfect rhyme the rhyming words have sounds that correspond exactly, for instance: "red" and "bread"; "man" and "fan"; "feather" and "weather". Note that "red" and "bread" are not spelled the same; however, their rhyming sounds correspond exactly. Therefore "red" and "bread" is an example of perfect rhyme.

With Imperfect Rhyme the rhyming sounds are not exact, for instance: bone & moon; starry & barley; gone & thin. There are various types of imperfect rhyme, for instance off-rhyme. In off-rhyme the vowel sound and/or concluding consonant is changed; an example is "room" and "storm" or "gone" and "alone". Another type of imperfect rhyme is vowel rhyme. In vowel rhyme, only the vowels rhyme, e.g. "green" and "leaves" or "climb" and "eyes". Pararhyme is another type of imperfect rhyme. With pararhyme the vowel sounds are different, but the consonants are the same; for instance, "trod" and "trade".

Another phenomenon, known as Eye Rhyme, isn't really rhyme. With eye rhyme words merely look similar (in spelling), but actually sound very different. Examples of eye rhyme would be "prove" and "love" or "daughter" and "laughter". Note that these examples might also be example of parahyme.

• End Rhyme and Internal Rhyme

When words at the end of lines rhyme, it is known as End Rhyme. Both words should be at the end of the lines for it to be end rhyme. When words in the middle of a verse line rhymes with any other word(s), it is known as Internal Rhyme.

• Masculine and Feminine Rhyme

When single syllable words rhyme, it is known as masculine rhyme. Rhyming words with more than one syllable, where the stress falls on the last syllable, is also known as masculine rhyme. Examples of masculine rhyming words are: horse; divorce; remorse.

Feminine rhyme refers to rhyming words that are more than one syllable long, and where the stress does NOT fall on the last syllable. Examples of feminine rhyming words are: "turtle" and "fertile"; "intellectual" and "factual".

Exercises -- Week 12b

Exercise 1:

Look at the following poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley: "England 1819", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Ozymandias" and "Mutability".

Identify the forms that Shelley uses in each of these poems. If the form is a sonnet, identify the type of sonnet it is and take note of the closed forms (e.g. quatrains, octaves, sestets, and couplets) within it.

Exercise 2:

Compare the sonnets "To Wordsworth" and "Ozymandias" and the first stanza of "The Cloud". Are all of these sonnets traditional sonnets (i.e. English, Italian or Spenserian)?

Forms

Poetry lines are often grouped together. Such a group of lines are often referred to as a "verse" or a "stanza". Sometimes stanzas have very specific attributes, such as a fixed number of lines and a fixed meter. When the poem's stanzas have specific recognizable attributes, they are called closed forms. Closed forms with very specific and fixed, like the Japanese Haiku, are called fixed forms. Poems with stanzas that have no clear form are called open forms.

• Closed Forms

There are various examples of Closed Forms. Following are some of the closed forms that you may come across in this course: Blank verse, the couplet, the tercet, the quatrain, the, the Rhyme royal and the Sonnet.

Refer to the textbook (Norton's Anthology of Poetry, 3rd Edition) p. 1413-1415 for explanations of these forms.

• Fixed Forms
  

A fixed form is a type of closed form which is very specific in its form, for instance the amount of lines, the combination of closed forms, the meter and even the rhyme may all be "fixed". Examples of fixed forms are the haiku, the Limerick (a single stanza with five lines with often the last word in the first and second line repeating). The fixed form that you will most encounter in this course is the Sonnet.

There are three types of sonnets: The Italian Sonnet (also known as a Petrachan Sonnet), the Shakespearean Sonnet (also known as an English Sonnet, or Elizabethan Sonnet), and lastly the Spenserian Sonnet. Refer to the textbook (Norton's Anthology of Poetry, 3rd Edition) p. 1415-1417 for explanations of these sonnets. Note how each sonnet is combined of a different combination of closed forms. For example the Shakespearean Sonnet contains three quatrains and ends with a rhyming couplet.

• Open Forms
  

Open Form usually do not have a specific rhyme scheme or clearly identifiable meter. Althought the poet my use rhyme and meter in the poem, there doesn't seem to be a fixed pattern. Open form is sometimes also referred to as "Irregular form" or "Free Verse".

Refer to the textbook (Norton's Anthology of Poetry, 3rd Edition) p. 1419-1422 for a discussion on open forms.

A Reading and Visual Interpretation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mutability"

A Reading of Percy Bysshey Shelley's "Ozymandias", as well as an Interpretaive Video, and a Musical Rendition by "The Black League"

Exercises -- Week 12a

Exercise 1:

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" has one overarching metaphor. Identify this metaphor and describe the main theme of this poem.

Exercise 2:

How many personae / voices are there in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias"? Identify them. Which persona do you think is the most important? Explain your answer.

Exercise 3:

There are several "narrative layers" in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias". Describe these narrative layers. What do you think was Shelley's purpose with so many narrative layers?

Exercise 4:

Do an analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mutability". What do you think is the main message of this poem? Summarise the main theme of "Mutability" in one sentence.

Biographical Sketch: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born near Horsham, Sussex, to a well-to-do, conservative family. In 1810 he went to University College, Oxford, but was expelled in his first year for refusing to recant an atheistic pamphlet he had published with a classmate. He married a young schoolgirl the following year. In 1813 he moved to London, where he worked for a number of social causes and came under the influence of the radical social philosopher William Godwin. Shelley fell in love with Godwin’s daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (author or the novel Frankenstein), and eloped to Europe with her. Byron joined them in Switzerland in 1816 and followed them to Italy in 1818. Shelley was drowned when his small boat was caught in a squall on the Gulf of Spezia. Lord Byron eulogized him as “without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew.” The superlative opinion of friends did not reflect public opinion at large, however. Due to his radical social, political, and philosophical ideas and his unorthodox lifestyle, Shelley had few admirers in his lifetime. An avid student of Hume and Plato, he was deeply influenced by skeptical empiricism and idealism; he distrusted all claims to certainty – he never confessed a religious or philosophical creed – but held fast to his faith in the redeeming powers of love and the imagination. It is the latter that especially informs his poetry. In the influential essay “A Defence of Poetry,” he asserts: “A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” His formal achievement was great: he worked in elaborate, elegant stanza forms, many of his own invention, and displayed a complex tone of voice, which ranged from passionate to dignified and urbane.

From The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th Edition.

Exercises -- Week 11b

Exercise 1:

Read the poem "To Autumn" by John Keats and mark all the examples of alliteration and assonance.

Exercise 2:

Analyze the poem "On the Sea" by John Keats.

Exercise 3:

Compare and contrast William Blake's "To the Evening Star" and John Keats's "Bright Star".

Sound: Alliteration & Assonance

Alliteration and assonance refer to the repetition of similar sounds and is therefor a form of rhyme.

Alliteration concern the recurrence of consonant sounds, for instance the [s] and [m] sounds in Keats's poem "To Autumn": "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun". Assonance refer to the recurrence of vowel sounds, for example the [i:] and [ou] sounds, from the same poem: "Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; / Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep".

Alliteration and assonance focus the reader's attention on the words where it occurs. In modern poetry, therefore, poets usually keep alliteration and assonance for special occasions, so they can point out relationships between words or ideas or bring attention to something.

Exercises -- Week 10 & 11a

Exercise 1:

Analyze the following poems by John Keats:

• To Homer
• On the Sonnet
• La Belle Dame sans Merci

Exercise 2:

Identify and discuss the archetypes in Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci".

Exercise 3:

Perform scansion on Keat's "La Belle Dame sans Merci". Do all the lines have the same metrical feet? How do they differ? What do you think is the significance of this?

Exercise 4:

The form of "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a ballad. What is a ballad? How does it differ from a typical epic poem? How does it differ from a typical lyrical poem?

Exercise 5:

What might "La Belle Dame sans Merci" be about? For instance, the poem might be about the enslavement to sexual fantasy. Read the poem again and see if you can discover an alternative interpretation.

A Reading of Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci", as well as a interpretive trailer

Myths & Archetypes

The following are selections from An Introduction to Poetry (12th edition), by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (2007:253, 254, 257, 258).

About Myth

Poets have long been fond of retelling myths, narrowly defined as traditional stories about the exploits of immortal beings. Such stories taken collectively may also be called myth or mythology.

Traditional myths tell us stories of gods or heroes—their battles, their lives, their loves, and often their suffering—all on a scale of magnificence larger that our life. These exciting stories usually reveal part of a culture’s worldview. Myths often try to explain universal natural phenomena, like the phases of the moon or the turning of the seasons. But some myths tell the stories of purely local phenomena; one Greek legend, for example, recounts how grief-stricken King Aegeus threw himself into the sea when he mistakenly believed his son, Theseus, had been killed; consequently, the body of water between Greece and Turkey was called the Aegean Sea.

About Archetype

An important concept in understanding myth is the archetype, a basic image, character, situation, or symbol that appears so often in literature and legend that it evokes a deep universal response. (The Greek root of archetype is “original pattern.”)

Whatever their origin, archetypal images do seem verbally coded in most myths, legends, and traditional tales. One sees enough recurring patterns and figures from Greek myth to Star Wars, from Hindu epic to Marvel superhero comics, to strongly suggest there is some common psychic force at work. Typical archetypal figures include the trickster, the cruel stepmother, the rebellious young man, the beautiful but destructive woman [femme fatale], and the stupid youngest son who succeeds through simple goodness. Any of these figures can be traced from culture to culture.

Examples:

Visit this website for a list of many common archetypes. Many of these archetypes are found in literature and are known as "literary archetypes".

For fun:

Try this quiz and see which literary archetype you are.

Biographical Sketch: John Keats (1795-1821)

Image from Abolitionist.Com

John Keats was born in London, the son of a livery stableman and his wife. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon, and on completion of his apprenticeship did further training at Guy’s Hospital, London. Having qualified, Keats abandoned medicine for poetry. In 1818 he fell in love with Fanny Brawne, but was prevented from marrying her by financial difficulties. In 1819, his annus mirabilis, he produced all of his great odes, a number of fine sonnets, and several other masterpieces. The following year, he developed tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his mother and beloved younger brother, Tom. Hoping to prolong his life, he traveled to Italy, but died in Rome the following spring. At the time of his death he had published only fifty-four poems, and his reputation as a great poet was by no means secure. In his poetry he struggled to make sense of a world riddled with “misery, heartache and pain, sickness and oppression.” Rather than take solace in religious or philosophical creeds, as did Wordsworth and Coleridge, he strove to develop “negative capacity,” the ability to exist in a condition of “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any reaching after fact and reason.” He looked to sensation, passion, and imagination to guide him: “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affection and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth,” he wrote to a friend. Despite the brevity of his life and writing career, Keats mastered a number of difficult forms, producing complex variations of the ode and the Petrachan and Shakespearian sonnets.