[LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

William Blake’s ‘Infant Joy’

Infant Joy is taken from the collection of Songs of Innocence, and thus one can find the elements of
innocence and carefree hovering in the poem. Before we adapt a critical analysis of the poem, we
should know something about Blake’s theory of poetry and his religious views. This is help in better
understanding of the poem.

Blake’s Poetic Theory: Blake considers poetry as the highest level of human imagination and
something that emanates straight from the heart. He doesn’t advocate the idea of putting logic in
poetry. Neither he approves the thought that poetry is to please and instruct. He opposed the idea
of the Neo-classical mode of putting regulation in art and gave truly to his inner vision and
surrendered to his imagination.

Blake’s idea of God: Blake believes in the idea of a loving God. In many of his poems, he presents the
idea that God dwells among man and the purpose of existence in joyous.

The Poem with Annotations

“I have no name: ->I have…old: This line is spoken by a little child who is just two days old and without a name

I am but two days old.”

What shall I call thee? ->What….thee: spoken by the child’s mother

“I happy am,

Joy is my name.” -> I…name: The baby is happy to be born on Earth and his name is Joy

Sweet joy befall thee! -> Sweet…thee: The mother calls her child by sweet joy and bless him.

Pretty Joy!

Sweet Joy befall thee!

Sweet Joy I call thee:

Thou dost smile,

I sing the while,

Sweet Joy befall thee!

Introduction to the poem Infant Joy: The poem hardly has any content and suggests the use of
repetition. However it is considered as one of the most sweet poems which aroused myriad
viewpoints among the critics. The poem is basically the imaginary conversion between the mother
and her unborn child. It’s been just two days the child is conceived in the mother’s womb. Mark, the
child has no worldly name and associates his name to Joy. If we’re to accept this viewpoint, Blake’s
inference may be to make his readers realize that the life of children is happy before and after birth.

Other viewpoints include the child being actually born, and thus a conversation between the child
and the mother.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Critical Appreciation of Infant Joy: The poem is remarkable for the expressions, although it is too
less to be captured. The innocent lisping of the infant unfurls a beautiful relationship of a mother
and her child.

“I happy am,

Joy is my name.”

One can get along with the theme of the poem but there is an extremely critical analysis conveyed
hidden in the poem. The question is to understand the degree of happiness enjoyed by the mother
and the child. Although the development of the poem is actually the imagination of the mother, yet
the question

Is the child or mother happier? In this world, human beings are born into joy! The infant stage of life
is joyful. Also, giving birth to a child is a matter of great joy and delight from a mother’s end. I think
Blake is able to perplex the reader by introducing the character of the new born child and the
phrase, “I happy am”, and we are yet to settle with his controversial question of who is more happy,
the mother or the child

The Speaker of The Poem: Whether the child is actually born or not may still be a question that only
Blake can answer! However, the thought of the poem is vivid and clear. In “Infant Joy” the speaker is
the mother who creates an imaginary conversation with her child. She actually speaks the words of
the child herself and then provides response to that. Thus, the name of the child ‘Joy’. The feeling
every mother holds at the eve of child birth or just by seeing the little angel in her lap. Blake repeats
the expression, “Sweet Joy befall thee!” to intensify the mother’s care and love for the child.

Concept of the Virgin Mary: The poem can also be looked from a religious point of view. Virgin Mary
was told by the angel of Annunciation that she will bear a child. The development of the poem
reflects the prime thought of ‘songs of innocence’. The child manifests everything into joy. Joy is not
conceived as an expression in the poem. Indeed it forms the very essence of life and integrates with
our being.

TITLE: the title suggests, focuses on the joyous gift of a new born baby; Blake expresses his belief on
how the strongest feelings, of ‘Joy’ in this case, are often the least complicated and most precious
emotions.

Main theme: the relationship between mother and baby, the mother pretends to have an imaginary
conversation with her new-born child. ‘I happy am, /Joy is my name’. Through this powerful
conversation between two connected minds, the mother names her baby Joy. The physical and
emotional bond between a mother and her child is one so powerful and Blake studies this joining of
life. ‘Sweet joy befall thee!’ The repetition of this phrase emphasises the love and care a mother has
for her child – even whilst in the womb, the gift of life is joyful. Blake very much believed in the idea
of loving God, hence why the poem concentrates on the happiness, love and magic of new life
entering the world. Religion had a great influence over his writing.
In comparison to the blissful imagery created in the poem ‘Infant Joy’, ‘Infant Sorrow’ views the
same situation from the perspective of a baby rather than the mother of a child and therefore, the
poem bares a more sorrowful tone. William Blake captures the pain of childbirth, however this time,
from the infant’s viewpoint.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Stanzas: The two stanzas of Infant Joy parallel each other quite closely, although the first stanza is a
dialogue, while the second only features the voice of the mother (who is, of course, realistically the
only person who could actually be talking.) However, the whole of Infant Sorrow is spoken by the
new-born child, hence offering imaginatively the thoughts of a person whose true thoughts can
never really be known. ABCDAC for the first stanza, and ABCDDC for the second.

William Blake’s ‘Infant Sorrow’

My mother groand! my father wept.

Into the dangerous world I leapt:

Helpless, naked, piping loud;

Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands:

Striving against my swaddling bands:

Bound and weary I thought best

To sulk upon my mother’s breast.

Major theme: The poem suggests that childbirth is not always joyful and happy but can bring sorrow
and pain. The response of the child itself may be different from that of the child in "Infant Joy"
because of the behaviour of the parents. In this poem the parents seem depressed by this unwanted
birth, and this may be reflecting on the child itself. This poem could be considered as a work of
societal allusion. It is well known that William Blake was strongly opposed to the industrial
revolution; similarly, he was opposed to the mistreatment of children by rich factory owners. When
the infant is being brought helpless and naked to the "dangerous world", this world could refer to
the industrial revolution. Blake utilizes this as a symbol of temporary security. While the child is
young, he/she will be nurtured and protected by their parents. But once the child matures, they will
find a life devoid of any joy or pleasure, such as working in the factories with no security. The child
decides to "sulk" upon the breast of the mother's child, almost in a manner that allows the child to
enjoy what little comfort it has left. This poem is powerful in the sense that it outlines the
sometimes desperate, sorrowful situation facing children as they grow.

Stanzas: regular AABB rhyme scheme for both stanzas.

William Blake ”The Tyger”

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright What the hand dare sieze the fire?

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye And what shoulder, & what art.

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

In what distant deeps or skies And when thy heart began to beat,

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? What dread hand? & what dread feet?

On what wings dare he aspire?

 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

What the hammer? what the chain? Did he smile his work to see?

In what furnace was thy brain? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

When the stars threw down their spears, What immortal hand or eye

And watered heaven with their tears, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

As the speaker hints in the last stanza, this poem is a companion poem for “The
Lamb.” The speaker in “The Lamb” talks as if he or she is teaching a five year old
Sunday school. The answer as to who made the lamb is a kind, loving, gentle
God. That makes this poem all the more surprising, because all of the sudden we
are hearing about a God that creates with fires, anvils, and hammers. But the
speaker in this poem hints that this god was the same god that created the
lamb. Blake was interested in the idea that heaven and hell were not that far
apart.

The poem has religious connotations: creation, God's ability to create. A

Supreme Being created the tiger and the lamb.

Theme: Religion: Blake has no problem questioning God, or dabbling in religious arenas that don’t
automatically assume that the Christian God is actually alpha and omega. Thus, Blake questions who
"could" create the Tyger, casting aside the notion that such a being is omnipotent (all-powerful). He
also challenges he who "dares" forge the Tyger, and contain ("frame") its "fearful symmetry." Blake
is not afraid of religious visions, since this poem is full of them, but he's not interested in simply
rehashing the Christian doctrine.

SYMBOLS:

The Tyger: is one of the two central mysteries of the poem (the other being the Tyger’s creator). The
Tyger could be inspiration, the divine, artistic creation, history, the sublime or vision itself. Really,
the list is almost infinite. The point is, the Tyger is important, and Blake’s poem barely limits the
possibilities.

Wings: (Line 7) Wings are what the creator uses to "aspire" to the creation of the Tyger. Essentially,
they are the power or inspiration that allows the creator to "dare" go about the task of creating the
Tyger.

Smith Tools ("Hammer," "chain," "furnace," "anvil"): (Stanza 4) In the poem, these tools make up an
extended metaphor of the creator and his creation of the Tyger. A blacksmith uses these tools to
make objects out of super-hot metal. The word "forge" – to create or form – is a smith term as well
as another name for a smith’s furnace. The smith reference also ties into all the fire imagery
associated with the Tyger, and heightens the energy and danger of the Tyger’s creation.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Body Parts (hands, eyes, shoulders, feet): The body parts referenced in this poem – hands, eyes,
shoulders, and feet – are examples of synecdoche. Synecdoche is when a part of something is used
to refer to the whole thing. He wants the people and their hands to help with the ship. So, the
phrase "immortal hand" references the whole being or person that the hand belongs to, while at the
same time focusing on the hands as the means of creation. The eye is representative of the whole
body and person, but also focuses (ha ha) our attention on the faculty of sight.

Fire: The fire serves multiple purposes as an extended metaphor. First, it’s often associated with the
Tyger, which contributes to the Tyger’s ferocity and sublimity (the fact it’s big, powerful, and
mysterious). Fire is also a source of energy, and since the Tyger seems to be filled with fire, then he
must also be filled with energy. In another sense, the fire of the smith’s furnace is the fire of
creation, the means by which the Tyger was formed.

Apostrophe: Apostrophe is when the speaker talks directly to someone who isn’t there or
something that can’t actually be talked to, such as the Tyger. The whole poem is addressed to the
Tyger. Can the Tyger talk? No. Does it even exist in a concrete sense? Probably not. The apostrophe
helps the poet keep the subject alive and in-your-face, rather than talking about a bunch of
generalities.

Important features of The Tyger to keep in mind:

I."The Tyger" contains only six stanzas, and each stanza is four lines long. The first and last stanzas
are the same, except for one word change: "could" becomes "dare."

II."The Tyger" is a poem made of questions. There are no less than thirteen question marks and only
one full sentence that ends with a period instead of a question mark. Addressing "The Tyger," the
speaker questions it as to its creation – essentially: "Who made you Mr. Tyger?" "How were you
made? Where? Why? What was the person or thing like that made you?"

III. The poem is often interpreted to deal with issues of inspiration, poetry, mystical knowledge, God,
and the sublime “To love God is to fear him"? That’s talking about something sublime).

IV. The first stanza opens the central question: "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy
fearful symmetry?"

V. The second stanza questions "the Tyger" about where he was created.

VI. The third about how the creator formed him.

VII. The fourth about what tools were used.

VIII. The fifth stanza goes on to ask about how the creator reacted to his creation ("the Tyger") and
who exactly was this creator.

IX. Finally, the sixth restates the central question while raising the stakes; rather than merely
question what/who could create the Tyger, the speaker wonders: who dares.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

William Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

This simple poem, one of the loveliest and most famous in the Wordsworth canon, revisits
the familiar subjects of nature and memory, this time with a particularly musical eloquence.
The plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet’s wandering and his discovery of a field of
daffodils by a lake, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely,
bored, or restless.

Themes:

The Beneficial Influence of Nature: nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human
mind. All manifestations of the natural world—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—
elevate thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations.
Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and
spiritual development. A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the
spiritual and the social worlds.

The Power of the Human Mind: by using memory and imagination, individuals could overcome
difficulty and pain. The transformative powers of the mind are available to all, regardless of an
individual’s class or background. This democratic view emphasizes individuality and uniqueness.
Throughout his work, Wordsworth showed strong support for the political, religious, and artistic
rights of the individual, including the power of his or her mind. In the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads,
Wordsworth explained the relationship between the mind and poetry. Poetry is “emotion
recollected in tranquility”—that is, the mind transforms the raw emotion of experience into poetry
capable of giving pleasure.

The Splendor of Childhood: In Wordsworth’s poetry, childhood is a magical, magnificent time of

innocence. Children form an intense bond with nature, so much so that they appear to be a part of
the natural world, rather than a part of the human, social world. Their relationship to nature is
passionate and extreme: children feel joy at seeing a rainbow but great terror at seeing desolation or
decay. Through the power of the human mind, particularly memory, adults can recollect the devoted
connection to nature of their youth.

Symbols: Memory: allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the harshness of the contemporary
world. Recollecting their childhoods gives adults a chance to reconnect with the visionary power and
intense relationship they had with nature as children. In turn, these memories encourage adults to
re-cultivate as close a relationship with nature as possible as an antidote to sadness, loneliness, and
despair.

Form: The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each
line is metered in iambic tetrameter.

William Wordsworth ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey is about William Wordsworth, and his longing to
return to this special place a few miles above Tintern Abbey which he absolutely adores. We can see
he has been away from this place for five years, and he always thinks about this magical place with
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

its steep lofty cliffs and its beautiful scenery. He loves the mountain cliffs and springs. He loves the
quiet, it gives him a chance to stop and think; seclusion.

In the first stanza, Wordsworth talks about how 5 years have passed since he visited this magical
place. He longs to visit the waters from the mountain springs, to hear their soft inland murmur. He
wants to see the steep and lofty cliffs that rise up from the ground. He talks about how the day has
come when he will return to this wonderful spot. He loves the way that the cottages are, "Mid
groves and copses; these pastoral farms, green to the very door." He loves the way that the greenery
goes up to the very doors of the little cottages, and also the way that the wreaths of smoke from the
fires in the cottages are sent up in silence from among the trees.

William then goes on in the second stanza to explain how he has longed to return to this place. He
has had a long absence from these ‘beauteous forms'. He says how amidst the stress and noise of
towns and cities, in hours of weariness, he has only to think about this wonderful place and he is
immediately refreshed.

The third stanza is about how his heart is lightened with the thoughts of this place. He talks about
how when he thinks about this place, all the weary weight of this unintelligible world is lifted from
him. He is being led by his affections for this place, and it is affecting how he thinks and acts.

Form: blank verse (unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter). Its style is therefore very fluid and
natural; it reads as easily as if it were a prose piece. But of course the poetic structure is tightly
constructed;

Important features to keep in mind:

I. “Tintern Abbey” is a monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing

the specific objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing others—once the spirit of
nature, occasionally the speaker’s sister.

II. The language of the poem is striking for its simplicity and forthrightness; the young poet is
concerned with speaking from the heart in a plainspoken manner.

III. The poem’s imagery is largely confined to the natural world in which he moves, though there are
some castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical (the memory is “the anchor” of the
poet’s “purest thought”) to the architectural (the mind is a “mansion” of memory).

IV. Religious sentiment: It is reinforced by the speaker’s description of the power he feels in the
setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously links the ideas of God, nature, and the human
mind.

“Preface to Lyrical ballads” William Wordsworth

It focuses on the "ordinary", the role of poetry and the poet, and the poet's response to public taste
and opinion. These are not necessarily the most important issues of the Preface; however, they are
issues that illustrate visible gaps between the two poets.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Emphasis on the "Ordinary": In the Preface, Wordsworth describes his desire to break away from
the overdecorated style of 18th century poetry and create a comprehensible art form for the
"ordinary man". Wordsworth states that "personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these
volumes; and are utterly rejected, as an ordinary device to elevate the style, and raise it above
prose" (preface, 9).

Wordsworth wants to emphasize and adopt the language of men, which rejects personification as a
"mechanical device of style or as a family language which Writers in metre seem to lay claim to by
prescription" (preface, 9).

Wordsworth was to awaken the romantic beauty of nature to his readers. Wordsworth proceeds to
define a permanent poetic voice that should not reflect those of wealth and importance. Coleridge
disagrees with this completely. He believes that common language does not apply to all classes; and
therefore, should not be practiced.

It is evident that Coleridge and Wordsworth differ in writing style: Wordsworth with his lack of
"poetic diction" versus Coleridge's formal writing style.

The Role of Poetry and the Poet: The ordinary man is closer to nature; and therefore closer to
human-nature. To succeed in directing poetry toward the "ordinary man", Wordsworth must
address the significance of language in his poetry, as well as the effects of poetry on the reader. This
leads to the discussion of the poet's role where Wordsworth claims he, being a poet, is capable of
educating the reader by his ability to be affected by absence. The poet is a "man speaking to men"
whose language should not fall short of that which would be heard by men.

Response to Public Taste: This new trend of poetry, created by both Wordsworth and Coleridge
in Lyrical Ballads, led to many criticisms. The readers of this time were set in their ways, accepting
elegant, aristocratic writing styles.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

Argument: How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the
South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific
Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancient Mariner came back to
his own Country.

Major Themes

The Natural World: The Physical: it is clear that the spiritual world controls and utilizes the natural
world. At times the natural world seems to be a character itself, based on the way it interacts with
the Ancient Mariner. From the moment the Ancient Mariner offends the spirit of the "rime,"
retribution comes in the form of natural phenomena. The wind dies, the sun intensifies, and it will
not rain. The ocean becomes revolting, "rotting" and thrashing with "slimy" creatures and sizzling
with strange fires. Only when the Ancient Mariner expresses love for the natural world-the water-
snakes-does his punishment abate even slightly. It rains, but the storm is unusually awesome, with a
thick stream of fire pouring from one huge cloud. A spirit, whether God or a pagan one, dominates
the physical world in order to punish and inspire reverence in the Ancient Mariner.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

The Spiritual World: The Metaphysical: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" occurs in the natural,
physical world-the land and ocean. However, the work has popularly been interpreted as an allegory
of man's connection to the spiritual, metaphysical world. The Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross
as if to prove that it is not an airy spirit, but rather a mortal creature; in a symbolic way, he tries to
"classify" the Albatross. Like all natural things, the Albatross is intimately tied to the spiritual world,
and thus begins the Ancient Mariner's punishment by the spiritual world by means of the natural
world. Rather than address him directly; the supernatural communicates through the natural. The
ocean, sun, and lack of wind and rain punish the Ancient Mariner and his shipmates. When the dead
men come alive to curse the Ancient Mariner with their eyes, things that are natural-their corpses-
are inhabited by a powerful spirit.

The Ancient Mariner detects spirits in their pure form several times in the poem. Even then, they
talk only about him, and not to him. When the ghost ship carrying Death and Life-in-Death sails by,
the Ancient Mariner overhears them gambling. Then when he lies unconscious on the deck, he hears
the First Voice and Second Voice discussing his fate. When angels appear over the sailors' corpses
near the shore, they do not talk to the Ancient Mariner, but only guide his ship. In all these
instances, it is unclear whether the spirits are real or figments of his imagination.

Liminality: A liminal space often signifies a liminal state of mind, such as the threshold of the
imagination's wonders. Coleridge expresses a fascination with the liminal state between the spiritual
and natural, or the mundane and the divine. Recall that this is what Burnet calls the "certain [and]
uncertain" and "day [and] night."

In the Ancient Mariner's story, liminal spaces are bewildering and cause pain. The first liminal space
the sailors encounter is the equator, which is in a sense about as liminal a location as exists; after all,
it is the threshold between the Earth's hemispheres. No sooner has the ship crossed the equator
than a terrible storm ensues and drives it into the poem's ultimate symbolic liminal space, the icy
world of the "rime."

Religion: Although Christian and pagan themes are confounded at times in "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner", many readers and critics have insisted on a Christian interpretation. The Ancient Mariner
essentially preaches closeness to God through prayer and the willingness to show respect to all of
God's creatures. He also says that he finds no greater joy than in joining others in prayer: "To walk
together to the kirk, / And all together pray, / While each to his great Father bends, / Old men, and
babes, and loving friends, / And youths and maidens gay!" He also champions the Hermit, who does
nothing but pray, practice humility before God, and openly revere God's creatures. The Ancient
Mariner's shooting of the Albatross can be compared to several Judeo-Christian stories of betrayal,
including the original sin of Adam and Eve, and Cain's betrayal of Abel. Like Adam and Eve, the
Ancient Mariner fails to respect God's rules and is tempted to try to understand things that should
remain out of his reach. Like Cain, the Ancient Mariner angers God by killing another creature. Most
obviously, the Ancient Mariner can be seen as the archetypal Judas or the universal sinner who
betrays Christ by sinning. Like Judas, he murders the "Christian soul" who could lead to his salvation
and greater understanding of the divine.

Imprisonment: It is a portrait of imprisonment and its inherent loneliness and torment. The first
instance of imprisonment occurs when the sailors are swept by a storm into the "rime." In the
beginning of the poem, the ship is a vehicle of adventure, and the sailors set out in one another's
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

happy company. However, once the Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross, it quickly becomes a
prison. When the other sailors drop dead, the ship becomes a private prison for the Ancient Mariner.

Retribution: it is a tale of retribution, since the Ancient Mariner spends most of the poem paying for
his one, impulsive error of killing the Albatross. The spiritual world avenges the Albatross's death by
wreaking physical and psychological havoc on the Ancient Mariner and his shipmates. The Ancient
Mariner speaks from beyond the grave to warn others about the harsh, permanent consequences of
momentary foolishness, selfishness, and disrespect of the natural world.

The Act of Storytelling: Coleridge draws our attention not only to the Ancient Mariner's story, but to
the act of storytelling itself. The Ancient Mariner's tale comprises so much of the poem that
moments that occur outside of it often seem like interruptions, the messages that the protagonist
delivers to his audience apply to us, as well. Storytelling is a preventative measure in the poem, used
to dissuade those who favour the pleasures of society from disregarding the natural and spiritual
worlds.

Lord Byron’s stanzas 1-94 of the Canto I of Don Juan

Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses,
portraying Juan not as a womaniser but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on
the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire".

Canto I argument: Don Juan lives in Seville with his father José and his mother Donna Inez. Donna
Julia, 23 years old and married to Don Alfonso, begins to desire Don Juan when he is 16 years old.
Despite her attempt to resist, Julia begins an affair with Juan. Julia falls in love with Juan. Don
Alfonso, suspecting that his wife may be having an affair, bursts into their bedroom followed by a
"posse concomitant" but they do not find anything suspicious upon first searching the room, for Juan
was hiding in the bed. However, when Alfonso returns on his own, he comes across Juan's shoes and
a fight ensues. Juan escapes, however. In order to avoid the rumours and bad reputation her son has
brought upon himself, Inez sends him away to travel, in the hopes that he develops better morals,
while Julia is sent to a nunnery.

Form: The poem is in eight line iambic pentameters with the rhyme scheme ab ab ab cc , often the
last rhyming couplet is used for a humor comic line or humorous bathos. This rhyme scheme is
known as ottava rima.

The story in Canto I is told by an "I" persona who is said to be a friend of Don Juan's family. Byron
may have foreseen the difficulties involved in making this persona a witness who would be present
with Don Juan in his various adventures and so decided to discard him.

Canto I of Don Juan is without doubt the most interesting, entertaining, and amusing of all the
cantos. For anything of this kind comparable in quality and liveliness in English verse, the reader has
to go all the way back to Chaucer.

Major characters:

Don Juan: The son of an easy going father and a strict mother who is doted on by his parents. At the
age of sixteen he has an affair with Donna Julia.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Don José: Juan's father, who is unfaithful to his wife and careless of his reputation.

Donna Inez Juan's mother, a learned woman plagued by the infidelity of her husband. One of her
chief interests is the education of her son.

The Narrator A friend of Don Juan's family. He is dismissed from the story in the first canto and his
place is taken by the omniscient author.

Donna Julia The wife of Don Alfonso and a friend of Don Juan's family. She is twenty-three and
unhappily married.

Don Alfonso The husband of Donna Julia. He is fifty and fails to provide his wife with the love she
yearns for.

Antonia: Donna Julia's maidservant who helps her in her intrigue with Don Juan.

Pedrillo: Juan's tutor, the victim of cannibalism by the survivors of the wreck of the Trinidada.

P. B. Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’

Summary

It has a single idea, a stretched-out description of the song of a bird. The poem opens up with the
speaker calling out to a bird ("Spirit"). He tells the bird how much he loves its singing. Then he
describes how it shoots up into the sky at dusk, into the purple evening.

After that, he compares the bird's song to a bunch of different things, including a star, the planet
Venus, a poet, a maiden, a worm, a rose, and so forth. Then he starts to talk about how all of the
beautiful things that human beings make can't compare to the song of this bird. All human songs are
sad, but this bird's song is just pure joy. Finally the speaker dreams of being able to sing with as
much joy and freedom as this happy bird.

The secret of its capacity to sing so happily would be an incomparable gift for the poet. If the skylark
could communicate to Shelley half its happiness, then he would write poetry that the world would
read as joyfully as he is listening to the song of the bird.

Important features to keep in mind:

1. It is an analysis of the human condition. Man knows pain, experiences weariness,

annoyance, and love's satiety. He is plagued by hate and pride and fear. He cannot escape
his past, thoughts of the future cause him worry, he longs for what does not exist, and his
laughter is mixed with sorrow. He dreads death. The skylark, on the other hand, Shelley
fancies, "of death must deem / Things more true and deep / Than we mortals dream."
Therefore the skylark has no fear of death.
2. Shelley, in personifying the skylark, has created a myth, just as in "Ode to the West Wind"
and "The Cloud." He has endowed his skylark with mind ("Teach us, Sprite or Bird, / What
sweet thoughts are thine"). The skylark is happy because it knows only what makes it happy.
It has a decided advantage over human beings, who know both what makes them happy and
what makes them unhappy.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

3. Shelley knows that his skylark is merely a bird with a song that, to the human ear, sounds
like a happy song. The exquisite happiness that his ear has heard in the song of the
nightingale has carried him away. In the last stanza of the poem he appeals to the creature
of his imagination to teach him half the gladness "that thy brain must know." Happiness is
the secret of the lovely song of the skylark.
4. The poem is an ode. The Romantic poets wrote a lot of odes, and Shelley was no exception.
The ode was perfect for them, because it had a really long history, going back thousands of
years. It also gave them a chance to talk about really big issues while still focusing on their
own feelings and the world around them.
5. Rhyme: ABABB
6. And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest: In this case the order is reversed. The
unstressed syllable comes first, followed by the stress( da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM). We call
that kind of meter iambic. In this case, there are six beats in total, which is called hexameter.
So, putting that all together, the last lines that stick out at the end of every stanza are
written in iambic hexameter.

The speaker in "To a Skylark" doesn't give us many hints about who exactly he is, in the most basic
sense. We do know that he's a poet, or an artist of some sort. We also get a ton of info about how
he's feeling. He feels and sees and thinks about things deeply and intensely. He tends to be a little
melancholy, a bit of a pessimist about his life and his art. But he's also full of passion and love and
hope, very much alive to the world. That's important because this poem is all about feeling, about
the way that the natural world can create joy or sorrow in us.

P. B. Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’

The speaker of the poem appeals to the West Wind to infuse him with a new spirit and a new power
to spread his ideas. In order to invoke the West Wind, he lists a series of things the wind has done
that illustrate its power: driving away the autumn leaves, placing seeds in the earth, bringing
thunderstorms and the cyclical "death" of the natural world, and stirring up the seas and oceans.

The speaker wishes that the wind could affect him the way it does leaves and clouds and waves.
Because it can’t, he asks the wind to play him like an instrument, bringing out his sadness in its own
musical lament. Maybe the wind can even help him to send his ideas all over the world; even if
they’re not powerful in their own right, his ideas might inspire others. The sad music that the wind
will play on him will become a prophecy. The West Wind of autumn brings on a cold, barren period
of winter.

Important features to keep in mind:

1. "Third rhyme," an Italian rhyme scheme most famously used by Dante in The Divine Comedy.
The idea with terza rima is that the lines are in groups of three, and the middle rhyme of one
set of three becomes the outside rhyme of the next set. Handbooks of literary terms will tell
you that this means the rhyme scheme is "ABA, BCB, CDC" and so on.
2. It’s an ode. As if using terza rima weren’t enough to make "Ode to the West Wind" remind
us of Dante, Shelley also divides the poem into five cantos, each of which is fourteen lines
and ends in a couplet.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

THEMES:

Men towards the natural world: "Ode to the West Wind," Nature is grander and more powerful
than man can hope to be. The natural world is especially powerful because it contains elements like
the West Wind and the Spring Wind, which can travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every
cloud, leaf, and wave as they go. Man may be able to increase his status by allowing Nature to
channel itself through him.

Transformation: As the speaker of "Ode to the West Wind" feels himself waning and decaying, he
begs the wind to use him as an instrument, inhabit him, distribute his ideas, or prophesy through his
mouth. He hopes to transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larger "Spirit" of the West
Wind and of Nature itself.

Mortality: The West Wind in Shelley’s ode is depicted as an autumnal wind, preparing the world for
winter. As a result, the poem is filled with images of death and decay, reminders of both natural and
human mortality. The speaker hopes that the death of one world will be inevitably followed by a
new rebirth and a new spring, but the poem leaves this rebirth uncertain.

Language and Communication: At the end of "Ode to the West Wind," the speaker betrays his
deepest concern: the fate of his ideas. He hopes that his words and thoughts will be spread
throughout the world. He’s not sure of the quality of his thinking, but at least it can provide a
starting point for other thinkers.

Ode to a Nightingale John Keats’s

Summary: The poem begins as the speaker starts to feel disoriented from listening to the song of
the nightingale, as if he had just drunken something really, really strong. He feels bittersweet
happiness at the thought of the nightingale's carefree life. The speaker wishes he had a special wine
distilled directly from the earth. He wants to drink such a wine and fade into the forest with the
nightingale. He wants to escape the worries and concerns of life, age, and time. He uses poetry to
join the nightingale's night time world, deep in the dark forest where hardly any moonlight can
reach. He can't see any of the flowers or plants around him, but he can smell them. He thinks it
wouldn't be so bad to die at night in the forest, with no one around except the nightingale singing.

But the nightingale can't die. The nightingale must be immortal, because so many different kinds of
generations of people have heard its song throughout history, everyone from clowns and emperors
to Biblical characters to people in fantasy stories.

The speaker's vision is interrupted when the nightingale flies away and leaves him alone. He feels
abandoned and disappointed that his imagination is not strong enough to create its own reality. He
is left confused and bewildered, not knowing the difference between reality and dreams.

Important features to keep in mind:

1. It’s an ode in an iambic pentameter.

2. Rhyme scheme: ABABCDECDE.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

3. The speaker is such a good actor that he can even fool himself. First he demonstrates his
acting chops by pretending to be drunk. He's like an alcoholic who would do anything for a
drink, except he wants a drink that contains the essence of the south of France and the
Mediterranean coast. The speaker is definitely a poet because he tells us so. Lucky for him,
playing with language does the trick, and he manages to convince himself that he has been
transported to a completely new setting and perspective. Unlucky for him, he commits an
amateur mistake: he flubs a line. He wasn't supposed to use the word "forlorn!" (line 70).
This word breaks the spell of the performance, and he recognizes that the nightingale has
flown away.
4. Title: The first thing the title tells us is the form of the poem, the ode. But it's not just any
ode, it's an ode that is addressed "to" its subject. Throughout the poem, the speaker talks to
the nightingale as if it were a person.

Themes:

Versions of Reality: The entire poem is characterized by the speaker's "altered" mental state, which
he claims is not due to alcohol or drugs, although he compares it to these things.

Happiness: The speaker is mighty unhappy about the demands placed on him by life, time, and age.
He hates to consider that young, beautiful people. But he claims that the "ache" his heart feels is
due to extreme happiness for the nightingale. He seems content enough, at least, to have an "I could
die happy" moment around the middle of the poem.

Mortality: The speaker of "Ode to a Nightingale" fools himself into believing that the nightingale is
immortal, or at least its song is. But this statement seems only to give him another excuse to
complain about human mortality a common complaint in Keats's poetry.

Symbols:

 The nightingale is a symbol of beauty, immortality, and freedom from the world's troubles.
Nightingales are known for singing in the nighttime, hence the name. In Greek and Roman
myth, the nightingale also alludes to the Philomel whose tongue was cut out to prevent her
from telling about her rape, and who was later turned into a nightingale by the gods to help
her escape from death at the hands of her rapist.

 This poem is the ultimate dream of escapism. The speaker needs a getaway, and he uses his
mind to do it. His fantastical imagination allows him to experience night from the
nightingale's perspective, surrounded by dark and fragrant trees. It takes him back through
history and into the realms of fairies and magic. But, by the end, the speaker's imagination
fails to keep the bird from flying away, and he turns on his own "fancy" in
anger. (FANCY=IMAGINATION).

 Wine and intoxication: the speaker acts drunk enough under the influence of language, we'd
hate to see what happened if he got his hands on a couple bottles of actual wine. This poem
is structured to make us think that the speaker is intoxicated by the music of the nightingale,
which leads him to dream of fading off into a blissful nothingness, much like a really drunk
person.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

 This poem highlights the blissful music of the nightingale, but it also has a bleak side. The
speaker is desperate to escape the world because it is full of people getting old and dying.
Life is just a long parade of miseries, and he thinks it would be better to just go out quietly in
the middle of the night. The nightingale's world seems so enchanting that it makes our own
world seem like a real drag.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Plot overview: Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A
servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories
and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed,
Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked
in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in
the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent
away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs.

Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr.
Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and
privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for
his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike
attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus
epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the
departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After
a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves
dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.

After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a
manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished
housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark,
impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves
Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace
Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not
been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but
vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester
instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.

The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice
of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother
of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married
when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he
explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they
witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal.
Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his
wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing
that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who
live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary,
Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St.
John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her
one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds.
When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was
also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance
equally with her three newfound relatives.

St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him—as his wife.
Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John
pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon
forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over
the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the
ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his
eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he
lives with two servants named John and Mary.

At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story,
Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect
equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in
one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth.

THEMES:

Love versus Autonomy: Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not
just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Jane must learn how to gain
love without sacrificing and harming herself in the process.

Religion: Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure, between
obligation to her spirit and attention to her body. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr.
Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. Each represents a model of religion that Jane
ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and principle, and their practical
consequences. Jane ends up rejecting all three models of religion; she does not abandon morality,
spiritualism, or a belief in a Christian God. When her wedding is interrupted, she prays to God for
solace. As she wanders the heath, poor and starving, she puts her survival in the hands of God. She
strongly objects to Rochester’s lustful immorality, and she refuses to consider living with him while
church and state still deem him married to another woman.

For Jane, religion helps curb immoderate passions, and it spurs one on to worldly efforts and
achievements. These achievements include full self-knowledge and complete faith in God.

Social Class: Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian England’s strict social hierarchy. Brontë’s exploration of
the complicated social position of governesses is perhaps the novel’s most important treatment of
this theme. Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme
tension for the characters around her. Jane’s manners, sophistication, and education are those of an
aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics,
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

were expected to possess the “culture” of the aristocracy. Jane herself speaks out against class
prejudice at certain moments in the book. Jane is only able to marry Rochester as his equal because
she has almost magically come into her own inheritance from her uncle.

Gender Relations: Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In
addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal domination—against those who
believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Three central male figures
threaten her desire for equality and dignity: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and St. John
Rivers. All three are misogynistic on some level. Each tries to keep Jane in a submissive position,
where she is unable to express her own thoughts and feelings. In her quest for independence and
self-knowledge, Jane must escape Brocklehurst, reject St. John, and come to Rochester only after
ensuring that they may marry as equals. She will not depend solely on Rochester for love and she
can be financially independent. Furthermore, Rochester is blind at the novel’s end and thus
dependent upon Jane to be his “prop and guide.”

Characters:

Jane Eyre - The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane is an intelligent, honest, plain-featured
young girl forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and hardship. Although she meets with a
series of individuals who threaten her autonomy, Jane repeatedly succeeds at asserting herself and
maintains her principles of justice, human dignity, and morality. She also values intellectual and
emotional fulfillment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality challenges the Victorian
prejudices against women and the poor.

Edward Rochester - Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield, Rochester is a wealthy,
passionate man with a dark secret that provides much of the novel’s suspense. Rochester is
unconventional, ready to set aside polite manners, propriety, and consideration of social class in
order to interact with Jane frankly and directly. He is rash and impetuous and has spent much of his
adult life roaming about Europe in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his youthful
indiscretions. His problems are partly the result of his own recklessness, but he is a sympathetic
figure because he has suffered for so long as a result of his early marriage to Bertha.

St. John Rivers - Along with his sisters, Mary and Diana, St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) serves as
Jane’s benefactor after she runs away from Thornfield, giving her food and shelter. The minister at
Morton, St. John is cold, reserved, and often controlling in his interactions with others. Because he is
entirely alienated from his feelings and devoted solely to an austere ambition, St. John serves as a
foil to Edward Rochester.

Mrs. Reed - Mrs. Reed is Jane’s cruel aunt, who raises her at Gateshead Hall until Jane is sent away
to school at age ten. Later in her life, Jane attempts reconciliation with her aunt, but the old woman
continues to resent her because her husband had always loved Jane more than his own children.

Bessie Lee - The maid at Gateshead, Bessie is the only figure in Jane’s childhood who regularly treats
her kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Bessie later marries Robert Leaven, the Reeds’
coachman.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Mr. Lloyd - Mr. Lloyd is the Reeds’ apothecary, who suggests that Jane be sent away to school.
Always kind to Jane, Mr. Lloyd writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane’s story about her
childhood and clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed’s charge that she is a liar.

Georgiana Reed - Georgiana Reed is Jane’s cousin and one of Mrs. Reed’s two daughters. The
beautiful Georgiana treats Jane cruelly when they are children, but later in their lives she befriends
her cousin and confides in her. Georgiana attempts to elope with a man named Lord Edwin Vere, but
her sister, Eliza, alerts Mrs. Reed of the arrangement and sabotages the plan. After Mrs. Reed dies,
Georgiana marries a wealthy man.

Eliza Reed - Eliza Reed is Jane’s cousin and one of Mrs. Reed’s two daughters (along with her sister,
Georgiana). Not as beautiful as her sister, Eliza devotes herself somewhat self-righteously to the
church and eventually goes to a convent in France where she becomes the Mother Superior.

John Reed - John Reed is Jane’s cousin, Mrs. Reed’s son, and brother to Eliza and Georgiana. John
treats Jane with appalling cruelty during their childhood and later falls into a life of drinking and
gambling. John commits suicide midway through the novel when his mother ceases to pay his debts
for him.

Helen Burns - Helen Burns is Jane’s close friend at the Lowood School. She endures her miserable
life there with a passive dignity that Jane cannot understand. Helen dies of consumption in Jane’s
arms.

Mr. Brocklehurst - The cruel, hypocritical master of the Lowood School, Mr. Brocklehurst preaches a
doctrine of privation, while stealing from the school to support his luxurious lifestyle. After a typhus
epidemic sweeps Lowood, Brocklehurst’s shifty and dishonest practices are brought to light and he is
publicly discredited.

Maria Temple - Maria Temple is a kind teacher at Lowood, who treats Jane and Helen with respect
and compassion. Along with Bessie Lee, she serves as one of Jane’s first positive female role models.
Miss Temple helps clear Jane of Mrs. Reed’s accusations against her.

Miss Scatcherd - Jane’s sour and vicious teacher at Lowood, Miss Scatcherd behaves with particular
cruelty toward Helen.

Alice Fairfax - Alice Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall. She is the first to tell Jane that the
mysterious laughter often heard echoing through the halls is, in fact, the laughter of Grace Poole—a
lie that Rochester himself often repeats.

Bertha Mason - Rochester’s clandestine wife, Bertha Mason is a formerly beautiful and wealthy
Creole woman who has become insane, violent, and bestial. She lives locked in a secret room on the
third story of Thornfield and is guarded by Grace Poole, whose occasional bouts of inebriation
sometimes enable Bertha to escape. Bertha eventually burns down Thornfield, plunging to her death
in the flames.

Grace Poole - Grace Poole is Bertha Mason’s keeper at Thornfield, whose drunken carelessness
frequently allows Bertha to escape. When Jane first arrives at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax attributes to
Grace all evidence of Bertha’s misdeeds.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Adèle Varens - Jane’s pupil at Thornfield, Adèle Varens is a lively though somewhat spoiled child
from France. Rochester brought her to Thornfield after her mother, Celine, abandoned her. Although
Celine was once Rochester’s mistress, he does not believe himself to be Adèle’s father.

Celine Varens - Celine Varens is a French opera dancer with whom Rochester once had an affair.
Although Rochester does not believe Celine’s claims that he fathered her daughter Adèle, he
nonetheless brought the girl to England when Celine abandoned her. Rochester had broken off his
relationship with Celine after learning that Celine was unfaithful to him and interested only in his
money.

Sophie - Sophie is Adèle’s French nurse at Thornfield.

Richard Mason - Richard Mason is Bertha’s brother. During a visit to Thornfield, he is injured by his
mad sister. After learning of Rochester’s intent to marry Jane, Mason arrives with the solicitor Briggs
in order to thwart the wedding and reveal the truth of Rochester’s prior marriage.

Mr. Briggs - John Eyre’s attorney, Mr. Briggs helps Richard Mason prevent Jane’s wedding to
Rochester when he learns of the existence of Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife. After John Eyre’s
death, Briggs searches for Jane in order to give her her inheritance.

Blanche Ingram - Blanche Ingram is a beautiful socialite who despises Jane and hopes to marry
Rochester for his money.

Diana Rivers - Diana Rivers is Jane’s cousin, and the sister of St. John and Mary. Diana is a kind and
intelligent person, and she urges Jane not to go to India with St. John. She serves as a model for Jane
of an intellectually gifted and independent woman.

Mary Rivers - Mary Rivers is Jane’s cousin, the sister of St. John and Diana. Mary is a kind and
intelligent young woman who is forced to work as a governess after her father loses his fortune. Like
her sister, she serves as a model for Jane of an independent woman who is also able to maintain
close relationships with others and a sense of meaning in her life.

Rosamond Oliver - Rosamond is the beautiful daughter of Mr. Oliver, Morton’s wealthiest
inhabitant. Rosamond gives money to the school in Morton where Jane works. Although she is in
love with St. John, she becomes engaged to the wealthy Mr. Granby.

John Eyre - John Eyre is Jane’s uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune of 20,000 pounds.

Uncle Reed - Uncle Reed is Mrs. Reed’s late husband. In her childhood, Jane believes that she feels
the presence of his ghost. Because he was always fond of Jane and her mother (his sister), Uncle
Reed made his wife promise that she would raise Jane as her own child. It is a promise that Mrs.
Reed does not keep.

Alfred Lord Tennyson “Mariana”

Summary: This poem begins with the description of an abandoned farmhouse, or grange, in which
the flower-pots are covered in overgrown moss and an ornamental pear tree hangs from rusty nails
on the wall. The sheds stand abandoned and broken, and the straw (“thatch”) covering the roof of
the farmhouse is worn and full of weeds. A woman, presumably standing in the vicinity of the
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

farmhouse, is described in a four-line refrain that recurs—with slight modifications—as the last lines
of each of the poem’s stanzas: “She only said, ‘My life is dreary / He cometh not,’ she said; / She
said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, / I would that I were dead!’”

The woman’s tears fall with the dew in the evening and then fall again in the morning, before the
dew has dispersed. In both the morning and the evening, she is unable to look to the “sweet
heaven.” At night, when the bats have come and gone, and the sky is dark, she opens her window
curtain and looks out at the expanse of land. She comments that “The night is dreary” and repeats
her death-wish refrain.

In the middle of the night, the woman wakes up to the sound of the crow, and stays up until the
cock calls out an hour before dawn. She hears the lowing of the oxen and seemingly walks in her
sleep until the cold winds of the morning come. She repeats the death-wish refrain exactly as in the
first stanza, except that this time it is “the day” and not “my life” that is dreary.

Within a stone’s throw from the wall lies an artificial passage for water filled with black waters and
lumps of moss. A silver-green poplar tree shakes back and forth and serves as the only break in an
otherwise flat, level, gray landscape. The woman repeats the refrain of the first stanza.

When the moon lies low at night, the woman looks to her white window curtain, where she sees the
shadow of the poplar swaying in the wind. But when the moon is very low and the winds
exceptionally strong, the shadow of the poplar falls not on the curtain but on her bed and across her
forehead. The woman says that “the night is dreary” and wishes once again that she were dead.

During the day, the doors creak on their hinges, the fly sings in the window pane, and the mouse
cries out or peers from behind the lining of the wall. The farmhouse is haunted by old faces, old
footsteps, and old voices, and the woman repeats the refrain exactly as it appears in the first and
fourth stanzas.

The woman is confused and disturbed by the sounds of the sparrow chirping on the roof, the clock
ticking slowly, and the wind blowing through the poplar. Most of all, she hates the early evening
hour when the sun begins to set and a sunbeam lies across her bed chamber. The woman recites an
emphatic variation on the death-wish refrain; now it is not “the day,” or even her “life” that is
dreary; rather, we read: “Then said she, ‘I am very dreary, / He will not come,’ she said; / She wept, ‘I
am aweary, aweary,/ Oh God, that I were dead!’ ”

Form: “Mariana” takes the form of seven twelve-line stanzas, each of which is divided into three
four-line rhyme units according to the pattern ABAB CDDC EFEF. All of the poem’s lines fall into
iambic tetrameter, with the exception of the trimeter of the tenth and twelfth lines.

Important features to keep in mind:

1. The subject of this poem is drawn from a line in Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure :
“Mariana in the moated grange.” This line describes a young woman waiting for her lover Angelo,
who has abandoned her upon the loss of her dowry. Just as the epigraph from Shakespeare contains
no verb, the poem, too, lacks all action or narrative movement. Instead, the entire poem serves as
an extended visual depiction of melancholy isolation.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

2. One of the most important symbols in the poem is the poplar tree described in the fourth and
fifth stanzas. On one level, the poplar can be interpreted as a sort of phallic symbol: it provides the
only break in an otherwise flat and even landscape (“For leagues no other tree did mark / the level
waste” [lines 43-44]); and the shadow of the poplar falls on Mariana’s bed when she is lovesick at
night, suggesting her sexual hunger for the absent lover. On another level, however, the poplar is an
important image from classical mythology: in his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes how Oenone,
deserted by Paris, addresses the poplar on which Paris has carved his promise not to desert her.
Thus the poplar has come to stand as a classic symbol of the renegade lover and his broken promise.

3. The first, fourth, and sixth stanzas can be grouped together, not only because they all share the
exact same refrain, but also because they are the only stanzas that take place in the daytime. In
themselves, each of these stanzas portrays an unending present without any sense of the passage of
time or the play of light and darkness. These stanzas alternate with the descriptions of forlorn and
restless nights in which Mariana neither sleeps nor wakes but inhabits a dreamy, in-between state:
Mariana cries in the morning and evening alike (lines 13-14) and awakens in the middle of the night
(lines 25-26); sleeping and waking meld. The effect of this alternation between flat day and sleepless
night is to create a sense of a tormented, confused time, unordered by patterns of natural cycles of
life.

4. The poem as a whole involves no action or progression, except the final stanza. This stanza begins
with a triple subject (chirrup, ticking, sound), which creates a mounting intensity as the verb is
pushed farther back into the sentence. The predicate, “did all confound / Her sense” (lines 76-77), is
enjambed over two lines, thereby enacting the very confounding of sense that it describes: both
Mariana’s mind and the logic of the sentence become confused, for at first it seems that the object
of “confound” is “all.” This predicate is then followed by a caesura and then the sudden, active force
of the climactic superlative phrase “but most she loathed.” At this point, the setting shifts again to
the early evening as the recurrent cycle of day and night once more enacts Mariana’s alternating
hope and disappointment. The stanza ends with a dramatic yet subtle shift in the refrain from “He
cometh not” to the decisive and peremptory “He will not come.”

5. The refrain of the poem functions like an incantation, which contributes to the atmosphere of
enchantment. The abandoned grange seems to be under a spell or curse; Mariana is locked in a state
of perpetual, introverted brooding. Her consciousness paces a cell of melancholy; she can perceive
the world only through her dejection. Thus, all of the poet’s descriptions of the physical world serve
as primarily psychological categories; it is not the grange, but the person, who has been
abandoned—so, too, has this woman’s mind been abandoned by her sense. This is an example of
the “pathetic fallacy.” Coined by the nineteenth-century writer John Ruskin, this phrase refers to our
tendency to attribute our emotional and psychological states to the natural world. Thus, because
Mariana is so forlorn, her farmhouse, too, although obviously incapable of emotion, seems dejected,
depressed; when the narrator describes her walls he is seeing not the indifferent white of the paint,
but rather focuses on the dark shadows there. While Ruskin considered the excessive use of the
fallacy to be the mark of an inferior poet, later poets (such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound) would use
the pathetic fallacy liberally and to great effect. Arguably, Tennyson here also uses the method to
create great emotional force.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Tennyson’s “lady of Shalott”

summary

Part I: The poem begins with a description of a river and a road that pass through long fields of
barley and rye before reaching the town of Camelot. The people of the town travel along the road
and look toward an island called Shalott, which lies further down the river. The island of Shalott
contains several plants and flowers, including lilies, aspens, and willows. On the island, a woman
known as the Lady of Shalott is imprisoned within a building made of “four gray walls and four gray
towers.”

Both “heavy barges” and light open boats sail along the edge of the river to Camelot. But has anyone
seen or heard of the lady who lives on the island in the river? Only the reapers who harvest the
barley hear the echo of her singing. At night, the tired reaper listens to her singing and whispers that
he hears her: “ ‘Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.”

Part II: The Lady of Shalott weaves a magic, colorful web. She has heard a voice whisper that a curse
will befall her if she looks down to Camelot, and she does not know what this curse would be. Thus,
she concentrates solely on her weaving, never lifting her eyes. In the mirror, she sees “shadows of
the world,” including the highway road, which also passes through the fields, the eddies in the river,
and the peasants of the town. Occasionally, she also sees a group of damsels, an abbot (church
official), a young shepherd, or a page dressed in crimson. She sometimes sights a pair of knights
riding by, though she has no loyal knight of her own to court her. Nonetheless, she enjoys her
solitary weaving, though she expresses frustration with the world of shadows when she glimpses a
funeral procession or a pair of newlyweds in the mirror.

Part III: A knight in brass armor (“brazen greaves”) comes riding through the fields of barley beside
Shalott; the sun shines on his armor and makes it sparkle. As he rides, the gems on his horse’s bridle
glitter like a constellation of stars, and the bells on the bridle ring. The knight hangs a bugle from his
sash, and his armor makes ringing noises as he gallops alongside the remote island of Shalott.

In the “blue, unclouded weather,” the jewels on the knight’s saddle shine, making him look like a
meteor in the purple sky. His forehead glows in the sunlight, and his black curly hair flows out from
under his helmet. As he passes by the river, his image flashes into the Lady of Shalott’s mirror and he
sings out “tirra lirra.” Upon seeing and hearing this knight, the Lady stops weaving her web and
abandons her loom. The web flies out from the loom, and the mirror cracks, and the Lady announces
the arrival of her doom: “The curse is come upon me.”

Part IV: As the sky breaks out in rain and storm, the Lady of Shalott descends from her tower and
finds a boat. She writes the words “The Lady of Shalott” around the boat’s bow and looks
downstream to Camelot like a prophet foreseeing his own misfortunes. In the evening, she lies down
in the boat, and the stream carries her to Camelot.

The Lady of Shalott wears a snowy white robe and sings her last song as she sails down to Camelot.
She sings until her blood freezes, her eyes darken, and she dies. When her boat sails silently into
Camelot, all the knights, lords, and ladies of Camelot emerge from their halls to behold the sight.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

They read her name on the bow and “cross...themselves for fear.” Only the great knight Lancelot is
bold enough to push aside the crowd, look closely at the dead maiden, and remark “She has a lovely
face; God in his mercy lend her grace.”

Form: The poem is divided into four numbered parts with discrete, isometric (equally-long) stanzas.
The first two parts contain four stanzas each, while the last two parts contain five. The Lady’s half-
sick lament, then of the Lady’s pronouncement of her doom, and finally, of Lancelot’s blessing. Each
stanza contains nine lines with the rhyme scheme AAAABCCCB. The “B” always stands for “Camelot”
in the fifth line and for “Shalott” in the ninth. The “A” and “C” lines are always in tetrameter, while
the “B” lines are in trimeter. In addition, the syntax is line-bound: most phrases do not extend past
the length of a single line.

Important features to keep in mind:

1. Sense of mystery and elusiveness; “The Lady of Shalott” is about the conflict between art and life.
The Lady, who weaves her magic web and sings her song in a remote tower, can be seen to
represent the contemplative artist isolated from the bustle and activity of daily life. The moment she
sets her art aside to gaze down on the real world, a curse befalls her and she meets her tragic death.
The poem thus captures the conflict between an artist’s desire for social involvement and his/her
doubts about whether such a commitment is viable for someone dedicated to art.

2. Part I and Part IV of this poem deal with the Lady of Shalott as she appears to the outside world,
whereas Part II and Part III describe the world from the Lady’s perspective. In Part I, Tennyson
portrays the Lady as secluded from the rest of the world by both water and the height of her tower.
We are not told how she spends her time or what she thinks about; thus we, too, like everyone in
the poem, are denied access to the interiority of her world. The only people who know that she
exists are those whose occupations are most diametrically opposite her own: the reapers who toil in
physical labour rather than by sitting and crafting works of beauty.

3. Part II describes the Lady’s experience of imprisonment from her own perspective.

Her alienation results from a mysterious curse: she is not allowed to look out on Camelot, so all her
knowledge of the world must come from the reflections and shadows in her mirror. Tennyson notes
that often she sees a funeral or a wedding, a disjunction that suggests the interchangeability, and
hence the conflation, of love and death for the Lady: indeed, when she later falls in love with
Lancelot, she will simultaneously bring upon her own death.

4. Part II makes reference to all the different types of people that the Lady sees through her mirror,
including the knights who “come riding two and two” (line 61),

5. Part III focuses on one particular knight who captures the Lady’s attention: Sir Lancelot. He is
described in an array of colors: he is a “red-cross knight”; his shield “sparkled on the yellow field”; he
wears a “silver bugle”; he passes through “blue unclouded weather” and the “purple night,” and he
has “coal-black curls.” He is also adorned in a “gemmy bridle” and other bejeweled garments, which
sparkle in the light. Rich visual details: the sound and not the sight of Lancelot that causes the Lady
of Shalott to transgress her set boundaries: only when she hears him sing “Tirra lirra” does she leave
her web and seal her doom.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

6. Part IV, all the lush color of the previous section gives way to “pale yellow” and “darkened” eyes,
and the brilliance of the sunlight is replaced by a “low sky raining.” The moment the Lady sets her art
aside to look upon Lancelot, she is seized with death. The end of her artistic isolation thus leads to
the end of creativity: “Out flew her web and floated wide” (line 114). She also loses her mirror,
which had been her only access to the outside world: “The mirror cracked from side to side” (line
115). Having abandoned her artistry, the Lady of Shalott becomes herself an art object; no longer
can she offer her creativity, but merely a “dead-pale” beauty (line 157).

Christina Rossetti “After death”

I. Victorian poetry

II. Themes: death, tragic love and afterlife.

III. Written from a woman perspective. As Tennyson’s “lady of Shallott” the female subject
remains a motionless object of male desire.

IV. By giving the narrator (the woman) consciousness and voice endows the woman with
power in her own right.

V. "After Death" provides a rather new female perspective, but the poem's lack of description and
visual details also countered the general style of other poets associated with the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, who endowed their works with hard-edge realism. Rossetti begins the poem with a
short passage, setting the scene:

The curtains were half drawn; the floor was swept

And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where, through the lattice, ivy-shadows crept.

VI. The setting: she describes a floor and bed, covered in rushes, and a half-covered window.

VII. Rossetti provides no physical description of the man and woman portrayed in the poem. Instead,
she engages readers with more active verbs, such as, "swept," "strewn," and "crept," when
illustrating the setting. Then, to relay the man's actions at her bedside, Rossetti selects more forceful
verbs, "leaned," "turned," "wept," "touch," "ruffle," "take," "raise," and "pitied."

Rossetti also uses active verbs to describe the female narrator's perceptions — verbs that show her
as an intelligent, feeling human. Despite being deceased, the woman sees, hears, and feels her male
admirer's grief. As Rossetti writes, the narrator "heard him say, 'Poor child, poor child," "knew that
he wept," and perceived his strong love for her, which did not truly surface until after her death:

He did not love me living; but once dead

He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.

These last few lines assert the female subject in a position of power. Other Victorian authors often
afforded their feminine objects of desire a sense of authority, derived from a man's devotion toward
them.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

VIII. In selecting a female narrator and giving her a voice, thoughts, and feelings, however, Rossetti
heightened the woman's prominence in her own right. In doing so, Rossetti essentially made a
feminist statement, whether intentionally or not.

IX. Christina Rossetti draws her reader into what is poetry of experience. We hear and see the entire
poem from the perspective of a dead woman, and although such a vantage point may seem, at first,
to be somewhat of impossibility, Rossetti uses this perspective as a poetic device. By envisioning this
scene through the eyes of the deceased, we, as readers, are able to observe the mourner (the other
character in the poem) from a more objective standpoint. Thus we soon forget the speaker's odd
ability to consciously perceive her surroundings after death, and we begin to focus our attention on
the experience of the mourner.

X. The man's sentiments towards the woman are tenderer after her death than during her life, we
see the thematic implications of the poem.

FORM: classic Italian sonnet. The octave is written entirely in iambic pentameter and follows the
traditional rhyme scheme of an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet.

“Winter: My Secret” Christina Rossetti

Imagery: Winter - The poem presents winter as a dangerous season. To avoid the biting winds and
the draughts that cannot be excluded, the speaker must wrap herself securely in a ‘shawl, / A veil, a
cloak' (lines 11-12). Otherwise, she suggests that the snow and the wind have the potential to
envelop and freeze the life out of her.

Themes

Identity The use of the personal pronouns ‘my' and ‘I' throughout the poem point to the speaker's
sense of her individual identity. Holding a secret in the face of persistent enquiry implies a strong
sense of self for the person who does so. The first line both begins and ends with the pronoun ‘I'.
This suggests that the speaker encloses her secret within her own individual identity and that
nothing can break through and disturb the concealed interior.

Nonsense The speaker suggests that she may be only teasing the listener when she declares that her
secret may be ‘just my fun'. Nonsense was the poem's title in the manuscript version and hints at the
playfulness of the speaker's tone.

The revelation that there may in fact be ‘no secret after all' (line 8) suggests that the poem is more
about the act of concealment and the practice of secrecy than it is about a particular secret itself.

Curiosity Reprimanding the reader for being ‘too curious' (line 4), the speaker emphasises that the
secret is hers to give away or to conceal as she wishes. She suggests that her reticence to share her
secret is a direct result of the reader's curiosity.

Title The colon is usually used for list, but in poetry it can be used to explain equity or semblance
between two things, this being the winter and her secret.

What is the secret? it seems to be heavily suggestive that it’s a confession of her feelings for him
that would ultimately let her in. However it has to be at the right time. Look at the last stanza it’s
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

seemingly a perfect scenery “When drowsy birds sing less and less (perfect amount of noise)/And golden
fruit is ripening to excess (she’s ready and blooming)/If there’s not too much sun nor too much cloud (perfect
weather)/And the warm wind is neither still nor loud (nice calm breeze).” This is all suggestive that if he
wants to hear her secret it has to be the right time in her life.

Stanza Rhyme Scheme

1st: ABBACC
2nd: DEDFEGGEHHEIIIJJ
3rd: KKLLL
4th: FMMNNFM

Imagery and symbolism

The road - In Up-hill, the road symbolises the journey the speaker takes. Instead of being straight,
the fact that it is ‘winding' and ‘up-hill' suggests that the path is long and difficult.

The speaker will not have to carve or find her own path since it has already been revealed to her.

The road can be interpreted:

 Literally, as a long walk to an unseen destination

 Metaphorically, as representing the path that life takes

 Symbolically, as the way to live spoken of in the Bible. See Aspects of Literature > Big ideas
from the Bible > Path, way and Journey of faith, Exodus, pilgrims and sojourners.

The inn - The traveller is told that she ‘cannot miss that inn' (line 8) that stands at the top of the hill
and offers rest for those who have spent the entire day climbing. Literally, the fact that it stands out
in the darkness of the night indicates that the light that it sheds is powerful and will not be
overpowered. Metaphorically the ‘inn' represents security. Against the context of the Bible, the idea
of a place of welcome and rest echoes two allusions:

1. The description of the ‘rooms' in heaven prepared for believers (as referred to in A Convent
Threshold), taken from John's Gospel. Jesus comforts hisdisciples with the promise:

2. The inn which Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary sought for rest and a chance to give birth to
Jesus. Although there was ‘no room for them in the inn' (Luke 2:7) the poem gives assurance that
there will be space for the speaker.

The door - The traveller asks whether s/he will have to ‘knock' the door of the inn when s/he
reaches it or whether s/he will be kept waiting for admittance. S/he is reassured that the door will
be opened upon arrival and that ‘those who have gone before' will be ready to greet him/her.

Beds - The traveller is promised ‘beds for all who come' (line 16) to the inn. The image of beds
indicates rest, comfort, shelter and security. After a long struggle, the idea of resting is all that the
speaker can look forward to.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Themes

Moving upwards throughout her poetry, Rossetti draws on the imagery of flames, mountains, stairs
and hills to emphasise the upward progression of the spiritual journey. She suggests that the journey
to heaven is one of continuous upward movement in that the soul is moved upwards away from the
earth and its pleasures as it learns more of God and of heaven.

In Up-hill, Rossetti emphasises the idea that the upward progression of the soul is not a simple and
easy process. Lots of distractions, concerns and doubts can weigh a person down and the upward
movement can turn into one of struggle instead of one of joy.

Doubt The speaker's questions all arise from a sense of uncertainty and doubt. S/he is unsure what
the journey holds and what will be found at the end of it. The incessant questioning is short and
simple and the answers received often serve to create more questions. It is not a poem which
expands on certain doctrines or ideas.

Form Iambic Pentameter with Trimeter Variants.

E. B. Browning’s ‘The Feminine Education of Aurora Leigh’

The first part of Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s novel-poem about an orphaned poet,
focuses primarily on the issue of how gender affects the life of a female writer. Barret Browning
presents the protagonist, Aurora Leigh, as a well-educated and insightful woman. Through Aurora's
narration, the reader comes to understand her love of poetry and how she struggles to merge her
career as a poet while simultaneously meeting society’s expectations for her as a woman. In one
particularly perceptive passage early in the poem, Aurora Leigh comments bitterly on the function
that women are expected to serve for men in the domestic sphere. This criticism highlights how such
efforts by women are often under-valued:

The works of women are symbolical.

We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary — or a stool
To stumble over and vex you . . . "curse that stool!"
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this . . . that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps. [lines 457-65]

Important features to keep in mind:

I. Plot and Major Characters it tells the story of the young poet, Aurora Leigh, who lives in England
with an unsympathetic aunt after the death of her Italian mother and English father. The poem's
main action begins at the point her cousin Romney, a wealthy philanthropist and social activist, asks
her to marry him. Denying that women have either the innate capacity or the position in society
necessary to write important poetry, Romney clumsily tries to convince her to join his worthy cause.
Barrett Browning's heroine rejects her cousin's proposal, succeeds as a poet, and observes events as
he makes a fool of himself attempting to play Pygmalion and marry Marian Earle, a poor seamstress.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

After a series of melodramatic incidents, including the blinding of Romney, the two lovers unite and
marry, both having learned the proper role of gender and power.

II. Aurora Leigh takes the form of novel-poem, a composite genre that drew upon the one literary
form in which women authors excelled.

III. Barrett Browning's poem employs a contemporary setting and contemporary social issues as a
context for an inquiry into the relation between gender and genre. The poem, which explores the
Woman Question, as it was called by contemporaries, dramatizes the modern woman's severe need
for mothers — for, that is, nurturing political and literary female ancestors. In examining the growth
and development of a woman poet, Aurora Leigh shows that women cripple themselves by
internalizing patriarchal or androcentric conceptions of them.

IV. In presenting her heroine's path to poetic and personal maturity, Barrett Browning not only
explored the Victorian relation between gender and genre but she also created a female literary
tradition by alluding to her predecessors. Her work draws upon novels written by women, Charlotte
Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847).

R. Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’

Summary: The Duke of Ferrara is negotiating with a servant for the hand of a count’s daughter in
marriage. During the negotiations, the Duke takes the servant upstairs into his private art gallery and
shows him several of the objects in his collection.
The first of these objects is a portrait of his "last" or former duchess, painted directly on one of the
walls of the gallery by a friar named Pandolf. The Duke keeps this portrait behind a curtain that only
he is allowed to draw. While the servant sits on a bench looking at the portrait, the Duke describes
the circumstances in which it was painted and the fate of his unfortunate former wife.
Apparently the Duchess was easily pleased: she smiled at everything, and seemed just as happy
when someone brought her a branch of cherries as she did when the Duke decided to marry her. She
also blushed easily. The Duchess’s genial nature was enough to throw the Duke into a jealous,
psychopathic rage, and he "gave commands" (45) that meant "all smiles stopped together" (46).
After telling this story to the servant of the family that might provide his next victim, the Duke takes
him back downstairs to continue their business. On the way out, the Duke points out one more of his
favourite art objects: a bronze statue of Neptune taming a seahorse.

THEMES:

Power: the political and social power wielded by the speaker (the Duke) and his attempt to control
the domestic sphere (his marriage) in the same way that he rules his lands. He rules with an iron fist.
The Duke views everything that he possesses and everyone with whom he interacts as an
opportunity to expand his power base. Wives need to be dominated; servants need to understand
his authority; and fancy objects in his art gallery display his influence to the world. Kindness, joy, and
emotion are all threats to his tyrannical power.

Language and Communication: choices about what to communicate and what to withhold are the
means by which power is wielded (manipulated). The Duke sees communicating openly and honestly
with someone about the problems you have with their behaviour as impossible because it would
compromise his authority. It’s also possible to hint at his power by intentionally letting stories of the
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

past exploits slip to a new listener. However, because language is full of subtlety, the Duke might
accidentally communicate more than he meant to about his own psychosis.

Art and Culture: "My Last Duchess" is a piece of art about a piece of (fictional) art – a poem about a
pretend painting. In this poem, art and culture become tools for demonstrating social status – and
ways to reduce unstable elements, like the Duchess herself, to things that can be physically
controlled.

Madness: a husband murders his wife because she blushes and smiles at other. This is pretty much
the textbook definition of an abusive, controlling husband. The Duke doesn’t even want his wife to
thank people for gifts, because it makes him jealous. But we think this goes beyond abuse into the
realm of madness: after all, trying to control someone is abuse.

Jealousy: The Duke in "My Last Duchess" is pretty much the green-eyed monster incarnate. He’s
almost an allegorical figure for jealousy. He’s jealous of the attention his wife shows to other people.
He’s jealous of every smile and every blush that she bestows, intentionally or unintentionally, on
someone else. He’s so jealous that he can’t even bring himself to talk to her about her behaviour –
murder is the only solution he can come up with. His jealousy isn’t just about romantic attention; it’s
about any kind of attention.

FORM: Iambic Pentameter Couplets.

The speaker is, of course, the Duke of Ferrara. But it’s important to think about him, not only as a
character, but as a speaker. We need to consider his rhetoric, and syntax, and speech patterns. The
Duke’s speech is highly formalized, using strict rhyme and meter to organize itself into couplets
(AABBCC....). He’s a man who appreciates control, and he takes pains to control his own statements.
But the syntax, or sentence structure, of the poem pulls against its rhyme scheme.

Hopkins’s ‘God’s Grandeur’

Summary: "God’s Grandeur" starts off with a claim: the earth is full God’s special power, God’s
vitality. But the earth is ultimately temporary. The fire will go from it one day. It will reach a peak,
then slowly spread, and then collapse.
The speaker states that the natural world is inseparable from God, but at the same time temporary.
The speaker wants to know why don’t people don't take better care of the natural world. People
have been endlessly tromping and trudging through the world for so long, and now the surface of
the earth is calloused and burnt over by industry. It looks blurry and out of focus with all this
industry, and endless hard work covering it.

According to the speaker, we humans stunk up the earth – everything looks and smells like people,
and all the bad things people do. The ground we walk on doesn’t have any flowers or trees or grass
on it. And we have to wear shoes, so we can no longer feel the ground itself. We have lost our
connection with the natural world; the speaker assures us – nature never stops. It’s hiding
underground, like a hidden spring. And even though the sun always sets in the west bringing
darkness and night, it always rises again in the east, bringing light and morning.

The speaker assures us that morning follows night, and light follows darkness, because the Holy
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Ghost is always hovering over the messed up world, pondering deeply, and worried. The upside,
though, is that the Holy Ghost watches over the world and treats it in much the same way a bird
would treat her unhatched eggs, providing comfort, security, warmth, beauty, and motion.

THEMES:

Man and the Natural World: The speaker in "God’s Grandeur" looks deeply at the natural world, and
doesn’t hold back his or her contempt for the ways in which people and their industries have treated
nature. Yet, Hopkins claims that the consequences of this treatment are only on the surface. This
poem explores the idea of renewal, both for a damaged earth, and for the damaged people who
walk upon it.

Life, Consciousness, and Existence: "God’s Grandeur" proposes that the meaning of life and the
purpose of human existence can be discovered through nature. As an expression both of intense
anxiety and of intense joy, this poem can seem to be on the serious side. But all the language play
within the poem lightens the tone, and can give us a different perspective on life, whether we agree
with the poem’s ideas or not.

Religion: The speaker is telling us about his or her religious visions. The speaker sees God as
intimately connected to the earth. The exotic language of the poem moves us through this
fascinating religious journey.

Transformation: In the world of "God’s Grandeur" everything is shifting and changing and moving.
For better or worse, the potential for change runs through Gerard Manley Hopkins’s verse. The
speaker’s vision is at once apocalyptic and full of bursting green life, as he or she both laments
change and yearns for it.

FORM: God’s Grandeur follows the basic form of an Italian sonnet. (14LINES 8 IN THE FIRST SECTION
CALLED OCTAVE AND 6 IN THE SECOND SECTION CALLED SESTET)
The poem does follow the rhyme scheme of the tradition Italian sonnet, that is ABBAABBA and then
CDCDCD.

Hopkins’s ‘Starlight Night’

Important features to keep in mind:

I. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Starlight Night” characterizes the stars as living and dying
things. To do this, Hopkins uses a combination of vibrant language, effective punctuation, and strong
imagery. His poem brings to life bright images of magic and springtime in a way that draws the
reader in to the excited tone and pace set by the work and evokes ages old sentiments about the
stars.

II.High-energy style that enthrals the reader. Hopkins uses exclamation points as a tool to give
excitement and life to the poem and give stylistic breaks that speed the pace of the poem up.

III. The use of the comma provides a separation that rolls the poem into the pace seen throughout
the rest of the work.
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

IV. Hopkins’ hyphenation of words also adds to the energy of the poem. His word combinations,
such as “fire-folk” from line two or “mealed-with-yellow” in line eleven, drive the poem onward.
These combinations add weight and meaning to the words as well as giving the reader an idea of the
cadence at which the words should be read.

V. This poem is also an example of sprung rhythm, for which Hopkins took credit for the discovery.
Sprung rhythm is designed to display a likeness to normal speech cadences. A characteristic of
sprung rhythm that we see in “The Starlight Night” is the stressed first syllable of every line; each
line uses a more powerful or harsh sounding word at the beginning, “Look,” “Down,” “Buy.”

Powerful and vivid imagery:

1. Fire and brightness. Being a poem about the stars, it is also one of the most important ones.
But Hopkins does not stop at merely expressing the stars as fiery and brilliant things; he also
shows them as living, thinking entities. We first see this in the second line, “”O look at all the
fire-folk sitting in the air!” this is also a reinforcement of the religiousness with which things
of a celestial nature are approached.
2. snowflake and a dove, which are both images of light, not just in a biblical way, but in the
way that light plays off and reflects off of them. Snowflakes’ ability to reflect light is a well-
documented thing; the way the poem is phrased makes the reader think of the stars as
snowflakes around them, which brings the word “floating” into focus. “Floating” gives the
reader a sense of the stars being suspended or that they are drifting around them.
3. Spring is also a powerful tool used in The Starlight Night. Using this imagery, Hopkins
characterizes the stars as blooming, as living and dying creatures.

Hopkins was a Roman Catholic convert and a Jesuit priest. This greatly influenced his works. Line
fourteen seems to say that the stars and cosmos are the true holders of God and his/her meaning.

The poem brings to life the cosmos. Hopkins brings to life stars and makes the reader feel as if they
are dancing around them in the night, giving the reader an almost giddy feeling. The imagery he uses
involves older, more pagan sentiments about the cosmos, as well as more Christian concepts from
his time. The Starlight Night is a display of human feeling and activity about the stars and is a display
of Hopkins’ own personality and beliefs.

Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’

Summary: The speaker of the poem looks up and sees a windhover (another name for the common
kestrel, which is a kind of falcon). Windhovers have the ability to hover in place in the air while they
scan the ground for prey. The speaker watches the windhover ride the wind like it's a horse, and
then wheel around in an arc like a skater, then hover some more. The beauty and power of the bird
totally blow his mind, and he's got the exclamation marks to prove it.

Themes:
 [LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO

Awe and Amazement the inspiration for "The Windhover" is the speaker's awe and amazement at
the windhover's awesome and amazing skill at hovering on the wind, so you better believe that he's
more than a little impressed

Appearances "The Windhover" is about the speaker's admiration for a beautiful bird, true. But it also
touches on some bigger philosophical questions—like how even boring, everyday objects can appear
beautiful and amazing if only we know how to look at them in the right way. This poem is partly
meant to show us how to open our eyes to see the beauty hidden in everyday things.

Strength and Skill We can't discuss "The Windhover" without talking about the poet's inspiration for
writing: the awe-inspiring strength and skill of the bird itself. This bird, commonly called a windhover
because of its ability to hover on the wind, can actually fly in place in the air, even with high winds
buffeting it around.

Form: Petrarchan sonnet, with Sprung Rhythm.

The speaker of this poem never comes right out and introduces himself, so we have to dig a bit to
figure out what makes him tick. We know that he's a morning person—he's apparently the only
other living thing outdoors to witness the awesomeness of the windhover's flight. He also has a deep
appreciation for the beauty of nature.

SYMBOLS:

The Morning The speaker makes a lot of the fact that he catches sight of the windhover in the
morning. Most of the world is still quiet, so if you're out early enough, you might catch sight of
something special—like the windhover—.

Royalty Right from the beginning, the windhover reminds the speaker of something royal. It seems
so regal and so proud. The speaker seems to think that the bird is a kind of king of beasts. But the
windhover isn't royal because he's bigger or more dangerous than other animals. But because of his
amazing skill at harnessing the wind and riding the air.
[LITERATURA INGLESA II] MARTA MAROTO BUENO