a birthday Flashcards
metre
iambic tetramater
rhyme scheme
irregular rhyme scheme- love and excitement that cannot be contained
written
- written in 1857
anaphora
creates a sense of abundance, as though the speaker’s heart is so happy that they could think of an number of similarly happy things, but no simile is quite right, implying that words can not capture the bliss the speaker feels
fleurs de lyst
associated with Virgin Mary/ holy trinity: reinforcess her readiness to remove innocence
repetition of similies significance
alludes to joyous and incomprehendable nature pleasure of love/faith
‘my heart is like a singing bird’
symbol of love and imagrey of nature
first similie, alludes to joyous and incomprehendible nature of love or faith
‘whose nest is in a water’d shoot’
-nest is a symbol of rebirth , suggests love is like a rebirth
-nest has connotationsof domesticity, familial connection and fertility
-natural imagrey suggests naturalness of love
‘why heart is like an apple tree
whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit’
apple tree- connotation of fertility (link to apple gathering) suggests that the apple is ripe and mature, suggesting readyness for sexual connection, indicative that love grew in a natural way
-b alliteration emphasises abundance
-abundance indicates richness of love
‘my heart is like a rainbow shell
that paddles in a halcyon sea’
by this point rossetti has mentioned natural imagrey or air, earth and water- suggests the expansiveness of speakers love
‘nest is like…’ significant
domestic imagery: familial connection/fertility
significance of abundance of natural imagery
-fertility/ natrulness of love
-richness of emotion suggested by abundance of ‘thickset fruit’
‘my heart is like an apple tree’
link to apple gathering
connotations of fertility suggests apple is ripe and pure: readiness/longing for sexuality in the abundance of love
what does the change in tone in the second stanza mean
change in tone an pace in frantic effort to portray the extent of love
semantic feild of royalty in second stanza: ‘dais of silk’ ‘vair’ ‘purple’ ‘gold and silver’
places her lover/god on a pedestal
imagrey of luxury/richness shows intensity of love for god or this earthly love
links to language of pre-raphelite excess (aestheticism) and is at odds with rossettis usal denunciation of temporal delights (foreshadows her religious crisis where she disregards them)
indulgence in temporal delights suggests she has put love before god
what is vair
fox fur
repressents the excessive temporal delights love makes speaker wish to indludge in- contrasts rossettis usual rejection of hedonism/ aestheticism or pre. raphelite actions
or fur could foreshadow the temporal/ transcient nature of love
pomegranates significance
symbol of fertility and desire for intimacy
grapes symbolism (biblical reference)
one of the crops of the fertile promised land of Israel (symbol of maternity/feritility)
‘birthday’ significance
rebirth: love gives a new significance to life
significance of time it was written
- written in 1857
- reunited with god after her religious hysteria leading to her illness
anaphora of My heart (and listing effect)
shows abundance and emotiopnal excitement
rainbow shell significance
Biblical
- The rainbow appearing after God promises Noah to not flood the earth again
