Just Flashcards
Poetry Elements
Rhyme: words that have the same sound
Repetition: words or phrases that are repeated
Alliteration: the letter at the beginning of a word that is constantly
repeated (like a tongue twister )
Simile: comparisons using: -like or -as
Metaphor: comparisons without using -like or -as
Onomatopoeia: words that make sounds
Which are the symbols form Sir Gawain and The Green Knight and what do they mean?
The pentangle: five-pointed star. endless truth, and has figures is Christianity. The virtues of the Knight
The Green girdles: the belt that the lady fives to Sir Gawain. protection form danger, and cowardly
The green color: the color from the Knight. symbol of nature, and shows immortality from a super natural character
Which are the exact numbers of Edmund Spenser’s Sonnets?
Sonnet 1
Sonnet 35
Sonnet 75
Name of the Sonnet 1 from Spencer?
The Amoretti Sonnets
And this 1st paragraph means? (1)
Happy ye leaves when as those lily hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you and hold in love’s soft bands,
Like captives trembling at the victor’s sight,
First four lines : It’s a metaphor he is comparing himself with a book, that is read by his love. (Elizabeth)
This 2nd paragraph means? (1)
And happy lines, on which with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look
And read the sorrows of my dying spright,
Written with tears in heart’s close bleeding book.
Second four lines: His desire to see his dear Elizabeth, meanwhile she reads his poem, or maybe when she sees Spencer. He longs for Elizabeth to see his sadness because she has not yet loved him.
3rd and last paragraph means? (1)
And happy rhymes bathed in the sacred brook10
Of Helicon whence she derived is,
When ye behold that angel’s blessed look,
My soul’s long lacked food, my heaven’s bliss.
Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.
Last six lines (sestet): It alludes to a spring of water in Greek mythology from which the muse of poetry flows, called Hippocrene, in the Helicon mountains. Spencer calls Elizabeth an ‘angel’ in this poem, and when she reads his sonnets Spenser is satisfied as with food. There is no woman on earth he longs to please as much as Elizabeth.
Meaning of Hippocrene
Was the name of a fountain on Mt. Helicon. It was sacred to the Muses (are the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science and the arts), and was formed by the hooves of Pegasus. Its name literally translates as “Horse’s Fountain“ and the water was supposed to bring forth poetic inspiration when imbibed.
1st paragraph meaning (35)
My hungry eyes through greedy covetize,
Still to behold the object of their pain,
With no contentment can themselves suffice:
But having pine and having not complain.
For lacking it they cannot life sustain,
And having it they gaze on it the more:
In their amazement like Narcissus vain
Whose eyes him starved: so plenty makes me poor.
About how he likes looking at his wife and has to keep looking at her more and more, nothing compares to his love for her and her beauty, everything else he used to look at, no longer pleases him.
Meaning of the rest of the poem (35)
Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store
Of that fair sight, that nothing else they brook,
But loathe the things which they did like before,
And can no more endure on them to look.
All this world’s glory seemeth vain to me,
And all their shows but shadows, saving she.
The only theme In this Spencer’s poem is that beauty increases upon observation. The more he saw her and got to know her the more he loved her. The more beautiful she got. The allegory is that it’s not him simply looking at her and admiring her outward appearance, but it’s him loving her, knowing her, speaking with her, befriending her. This is where her true beauty is. And I’m sure she wasn’t hard to look at either.
1st paragraph meaning (75)
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
He starts with an incident that could have happened anysummer dayat the seaside. He writes his love’s namein thesand at the beach, but the ocean’s waves wipe it away, just as time will destroy all manmade things.
2nd paragraph meaning (75)
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.”
It describes the woman’s reaction to the man’s charming attempt to immortalize her. She claims that the man’s attempts were in vain and that no mortal being can be immortalized due to the cruelness of time.
3rd paragraph meaning (75)
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Represents a turning point in the poem and the author reveals that his wife will be eternally remembered in his poems and his verse. The final couplet at the end, “Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, Out love shall live, and later life renew,” summarizes the theme of the poem by comparing the eternalness of love and death to the brevity of life and humanity.
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
In the first stanza, the shepherd invites his love and pleasure prove. This immediately gives mildly sexual tone, but in a very innocent way, in a naïve way. He is referring that the geography country side of England, contains all types of pleasure to the lovers.
What else can you tell from the 1st paragraph from The Passionate Shepard to his love?
This trait is a very common theme in pastoral poetry. The idealization of rural life is essentially what separates pastoral poetry from simplerustic verse. Realism, which would not come into being as a poetic or literary style for many centuries after Marlowe, has little place in pastoral verse.
