Heaney - Oysters Flashcards
Gist X
about the gluttony of the privileged classes
symbol of violent colonisation and violent history of Ireland
alternative reading - man and woman relationship/ uneasy marriage between Ireland and coloniser
political relationship between british and Irish
rape of the countryside
Themes present
Invasion/violence (colonisation) man vs nature poetry/writing nature memories ancestry
Sheers poems to compare
Late Spring - human damage to nature (castrating lambs)
The Fishmonger
Context
find out about history of violence of Ireland
Lit Crit
‘this poem opens the oyster, the mouth, the meal and the book’ - Ricks
Sounds of words
clacked - onomatopoeia
ripped and shuck and scattered - onomatopoeia
frond lipped, brine-stung… glut of privilege
Figurative/symbolic language
…?what does this mean… like poetry or freedom
Types of imagery
x
Figurative/symbolic language
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome (Romans symbol of the English and oysters symbolise Irish)
…?what does this mean… like poetry or freedom
Types of imagery
water imagery
sea imagery
gustatory imagery
Word play, patterns, clusters
x
Juxtaposition, oxymoron, contrasts
xx
Word play, patterns, clusters
I ate the day
tang might quicken me all into verb, pure verb
Juxtaposition, oxymoron, contrasts
x
Poem open and close
x
Perspectives
x
Tone
x
Type of stanzas
x
Line lengths and their contrasts
x
Type of stanzas
5 quatrains
Line lengths and their contrasts
ripped and shucked and scattered - polysyndeton and extended line length contrasts to previously shorter lines to place emphasis the violence caused by colonisation
Caesura/enjambment
Bivalves: the split bulb (symbolises split between republic and Northern Ireland)
Damp panniers disgorge..the frond-lipped brine-stung…glut of privilege - creates a sense of spilling over and emphasises avaricious nature of the privileged.
Masculine and feminine rhyme
x
Form
x
Masculine and feminine rhyme
lacking - further reinforces uneasy relationship between Ireland and the coloniser
Form
free verse
