Love poetry Anthology - CONTEXT Flashcards
Context
Whoso List to Hunt
By Sir Thomas Wyatt
- Wyatt was a courtier of Henry VIII - powerful position
renewed appreciation for art and cultural change. - alludes to affair with Anne Boleyn, led to prison 1536.
- Renaissance Poetry / context (1500-1660)
- Love poetry alluded to the courtship of woman as a battlefield for men, the surrender of the female and the victory of the male in winning his female prize through heroic acts.
- written from the man’s point of view and were sung by men.
- woman represented by the deer - The goddess Diana accompanied by a deer, representing her status as the goddess of hunting and of virginity.
- Deer symbol of innocence and purity. She is therefore also seen as a symbol of dangerous sexuality.(ACETON)
Context:
Sonnet 116
By William Shakespeare
Authorial Context:
* Queen Elizabeth’s reign: arts, literature and poetry
* time of uncommon peace- politics and wars
* addressed to an unnamed young man, rumoured to be either the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton
Literary context:
* Petrarchan sonnets-speaker-lover’s experience of desire unrequited love
* Shakespearean sonnets - three quatrains, typically rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF, and conclude with a couplet
* Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter, known to have a heartbeat sound.
CONTEXT
The Flea
By John Donne
Authorial Context:
* Metaphysical poet
* Donne Roman Catholic family(illegal in England)
* educated at Oxford + Cambridge but due to faith he could not receive a degree.
Metaphysical poetry:
* ‘Meta’ means ‘beyond’ or ‘after’ - ‘beyond the physical’
* asks serious questions about the nature of existence and the universe
* A conceit-extended metaphor, brings two vastly different ideas into one
Rhyme scheme and form:
* 3 stanzas, each nine lines long, stanzas composed of 3 rhyming couplets +tercet,
* repetition of 3 - union of the three - the flea, the woman and him- Holy Trinity
* The flea – an erotic symbol
* sexual intercourse involved a mingling of the blood.
* male observer who can only dream of going to such locations on body of lady
* male poet imagining himself as the flea – freedom of access, appetite, on female untouched flesh.
CONTEXT
To His Coy Mistress
By Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell
An English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician
Marvell’s poetic style
Marvell adhered to established stylised forms of neoclassical tradition.
combines an old poetic conceit (carpe diem philosophy) with linguistic features
**“Carpe diem”
**The poem is classed as “carpe diem”, meaning in Latin “seize the day”.
urging a woman to enjoy life before death takes her.
**Literary Context -
**Petrarchan sonnet form
metaphysical seduction poem.
CONTEXT
The Scrutiny
Richard Lovelace
Literary Context:
* Cavalier Poetry (1620s and the 1640s)
* focused on pleasures of moment-drinking,sensuality, expressing a ‘carpe diem’
* Many Cavalier poets were courtiers and sensual/romantic love main focus.
* celebrated beauty, nature, honour and social life, live life to the fullest.
* latter meant having sex with women and gaining material wealth
* Cavalier poetry taking on a boisterous and triumphant tone.
* uses tight logical structures and allegorical and classical references
* consisted in the man showing divine love to a woman, worshipped as a creature of perfection-common to hear praise of womanly virtues as though they were divine.
* Praise is largely absent from ‘The Scrutiny’, whose speaker is derogatory.
* Scrutiny literally refers to being critically examined/interrogation.
* speaker is under critical observation by the woman he is trying to turn down after making ‘vows’ that he didn’t actually mean.
Historical Context:
* Puritans advocated for country to adopt more radical Protestant faith. Charles I opposed them, insisting on the more conservative doctrines of the Church of England.
* ‘The Scrutiny’ was written in a time of political turmoil.
CONTEXT:
Absent from Thee
John Wilmot
John Wilmot:
* Known for his disreputable lifestyle and poetry
* poetry censored during the Victorian era due to his libertinism- self-indulgence and promiscuity.
* frequently banned from court +prone to violent temper, flagrant indiscretions and drink.
* He had several affairs and had a mistress, Elizabeth Barry
The Restoration:
* 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in Europe.
* The repression felt by the people was lifted and swung to license; there was a new sense of freedom
* Charles II’s reign is known as one of liveliness and new life.
The Title:
* The title is same as first line-creates echo and reinforces significance.-implies traditional love
* poem is for someone, it is intimate and private.
CONTEXT:
Garden of Love
William Blake
Author Context:
* Blake’s work embraced the imagination as ‘the body of God’.
* considered mad + claimed to have seen angels and other divine beings.
* hostile to the Church of England and other forms of organised religion.
* politics and sexuality were intrinsically linked and he was sexually liberated for his time
* Gardens allude to certain religious imagery- the 1st biblical garden - the Garden of Eden, which was luscious and abundant, Paradise.
* Blake subverts this concept of the ideal garden in his poem, as the present garden is bleak ,death, reflect Blake’s hatred of organised religion. This is especially evident in the richly symbolic landscape of the garden, which he uses to amplify the difference between the (Christianity-free) past and the chapel-dominated present.
* The garden of love, before -play and carefree childhood, is now the site of a chapel; a physical embodiment of the Church.
* “Graves-…..desires” - This stanza disrupts any sense of predictability. The internal rhyme slows the pace of the final two lines and echoes the speaker’s sense of confusion at what he has found in the garden.
* The double rhymes of the closing couplet reinforce how totally the speaker’s hopes have been crushed.
* ‘The Garden of Love’ is central to the ‘Songs of Experience’, as it marks the psychological passage from childhood innocence to adult experience
CONTEXT:
Ae Fond Kiss
Robert Burns
- Agnes had left her husband due to his mental cruelty and depression. They began a love affair via letters but she resisted his physical advances and he had a child with her maid instead.
- They maintained their love affair until she decided to return to her husband in Jamaica/he decided to marry Jean Armour, one of the women he fathered children with.
- She left Edinburgh in 1791. Nancy wrote in her journal: “This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns, in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in Heaven!”
- He kept a silhouette of her until his death
- The poem is written in simple quatrains. The metre puts a stress on the first syllable of every line and ends each line with an unstressed syllable (i.e. feminine endings), leading to feminine rhymes. This gives the poem a sad, falling rhythm.
- Lines five to eight present the idea of hope (and a lack of it). Repeating ‘him’ and ‘me’ at the end of these two pairs of rhyming couplets connects these lines and emphasises the difference between the speaker and other men.
CONTEXT:
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron
- Born into an impoverished, yet noble family in London
- His father-‘Mad Jack’, he squandered Byron’s mother’s money then left.
- Born with clubfoot, a source of shame for him.
- Mother’s drinking disgusted him. She either spoiled and indulged him, or abused him and referred to him as ‘a lame brat’.
- ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know.’
- number of affairs with both men and women.
**The romantic period:
**
* Describes the movement in art and literature distinguished by a new interest in human psychology, expression of personal feeling and interest in the natural world.
* Inspired by a desire for liberty, and they denounced the exploitation of the poor. There was an emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules.
Feminist interpretation:
* A feminist critic would probably focus on her passivity and lack of agency in the poem- she is being watched by the speaker of the poem, perhaps unknowingly: does this seem predatory in any way?
* A feminist critic might also examine the stereotypes of woman as a temptress/seductress and woman as innocent and pure- how far does Byron allude to both of these stereotypes in the poem?
CONTEXT:
Remember
Christina Rossetti
- Her family endured a prolonged period of financial difficulty mainly due to her father’s ill health, forcing the children into work at an early age.
- Faced a series of health issues, wrote ‘Remember’ when she was 19 years old, in 1842.
- Queen Victoria spent the last four decades of her life mourning her late husband Prince Albert, whose untimely death was said to have driven a noticeable rise in poems about mourning and death.
- Rossetti has 3 proposals in her life but never married (for religious reasons). ‘Remember’ was likely written to her fiance at the time, when she believed she was likely to die
- Momento Mori (Latin) - Reminder of our own mortality
Poetic form:
* explores the relationship between two lovers as one faces their impending death.
* portrays the final message and request of a dying narrator to their loved one.
* poetic devices indicate a deep love and communicating a great sense of sorrow
Poetic style and devices:
* The final lines of the poem are especially compelling due to the frankness and directness of her speech.
* the simple language is juxtaposed with the precise, intricate structure, meter and rhyme scheme.
CONTEXT:
Ruined Maid
Thomas Hardy
- Hardy was a Victorian realist, influenced by the Romantics
- focused on rural society, explore tragic characters struggling against their social circumstances
- His father was a stonemason; his mother was well-read and educated him until he went to school from the ages of 8-16. He could not afford a university education so trained as an architect.
- He moved to London,felt socially inferior, interested in social reform, including the plight of women in an unequal society.
- His first wife’s death affected him greatly, wrote poetry to cope with her death.
Clothing:
* Clothing in this poem symbolises Melia’s newly acquired social status, but also her ruin.
* Hardy juxtaposes her new clothes with the grime and physical ruin of the countryside.
**Prostitution: **
* Victorian England may seem very strict and moral on the surface but drug taking, violent crime, prostitution
* usually accepted or even expected that men had sex outside marriage but women who did this were called ‘fallen women’ and considered ‘ruined’.
* many poor women felt they had no option but to turn to prostitution to make enough money to live.
* Prostitution was seen as a big problem, not only as a nuisance in society, but as a threat to morality.
* Amelia labels herself as “ruined” repeatedly throughout the poem but by the end, the reader is conscious of the way Hardy toys with the definition of “ruined”.
* Amelia appears comfortable, clean and well dressed whereas her rural friend, by implication, is her opposite.
* In this regard, the rural woman, although not ruined in the Victorian societal sense, is also ruined. Most notably, she is physically ruined and worn out from labour and longs for another life. - The expectations the title lays out at the start are therefore met and then subverted.
* Which woman is truly ruined?
CONTEXT:
At an Inn
Thomas Hardy
- based on the relationship with aristocrat Florence Henniker - She was the wife of an army officer and at the time of their visit to The George Hotel in Winchester, in 1893, Hardy was married to his first wife, Emma Gifford.
- It seems that Hardy wanted more than friendship
- The poem suggests that love is thwarted and plagued by ill timing and lost opportunities.
- The pair did stay in Winchester that night, at the George Hotel, and Hardy took some pleasure from the staff thinking that the couple were in fact married.
Unrequited love:
* Florence Henniker was aristocratic married woman so no relationship
* LINKS TO GATSBY:
* There is an uneven degree of love on both sides- Gatsby seems much more obsessively in love with Daisy than Daisy is with him. Daisy is also married.
Unattainable love:
* Unfulfilled relationship with a married woman, the spirited, aristocratic Florence Henniker-
* LINKS TO GATSBY:
* Daisy is unattainable- she is of a higher social status, old money and she is married.
CONTEXT:
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats
- mother died of tuberculosis when he’s 14.
- Keats nursed his brother through same illness; he died.
- A short while after, Keats himself showed signs of the disease and, knowing he was going to die, went to live in Italy where, it was thought, the warmer weather would prolong his life.
- He wrote ‘La Belle…’ with the shadow of death hanging over him, in physical and emotional agony.
- Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne and they were engaged to be married, however were kept apart because of his financial problems, then his illness.
- She remained loyal to him until his death.
The Ballad:
* meant to be performed like songs - The rhyme scheme, music-like harmony.
* stylistic features of ballad- simple language, repetition and absence of detail.
* Keats does not identify questioner/knight/lady. Like some of the old ballads, it deals with the supernatural.
The title:
* comes from a 15th century poem by Alain Chartier, a French poet- dialogue between a male lover and the lady he loves (‘l’Amant et la Dame).
Flowers:
* Line 9: Lilies are often associated with death, so the ‘lily’ on the knight’s ‘brow’ (forehead) suggests that he is close to death. Lilies are also pale white, so reflect the knight’s colour.
* Line 11: Roses are associated with love – the knight’s ‘rose’ is ‘fading’ and ‘wither[ing]’. This implies the end of a romantic relationship. It also describes the knight’s complexion as the ‘rose’ in his cheeks fades.
* Lines 17-18: The knight makes a ‘garland’ and ‘bracelet’ of flowers for the lady. These seem to suggest that he is in love with her, the flowers
* Line 18: A ‘fragrant zone’ is a belt made from flowers; it could also be a euphemism for the lady’s genitals.
CONTEXT:
Cynarae
Ernest Dowson
- The poet led a tragic life- made little money + drugs and alcohol issues
- His parents died within months of each other; first his father from a chloral hydrate overdose and then his mother committed suicide.
- Ironically, he wrote a lot about passion and love but never seemed to have a reciprocal lover himself.
- The Decadent Movement which Dowson contributed to led by the belief in “art for art’s sake” and nostalgia.
- embodies the movement in the speaker’s miserable lament whilst indulging in expensive pleasures of life such as fine feats of food and wine. -
“I AM NOT THE MAN I WAS IN THE REIGN OF GOOD CYNARA”
* I am not the man I was in the reign of good Cynara.”– Horace, Odes Book 4.1
* Horace was the leading Roman poet during the reign of the Emperor Augustus.( 65BC-8BC). In the poem from which Dowson took his title, the speaker implores Venus to wage no further erotic wars on him.
* He is old and she should bother someone younger and better suited to love – he is not the man he used to be when good ‘Cynara’ used to reign over his heart.
Cynara - Artichoke:
* ‘Cynara’ comes from the Greek word for artichoke. Myth has it that Cynara was a beautiful woman with whom Zeus fell in love.
* He was unable to persuade her to leave her mother and earthly home to become a goddess, so –enraged – he transformed her into an artichoke, forever trapping her heart in the centre of a crown of thorny leaves.
* In the 1600s, the artichoke was chosen by French artist Abraham Bosse to symbolize taste in a series of paintings depicting the five senses.
* The painting shows a huge artichoke in a raised dish, with a lady stretching out her hand to remove the first leaf.
* Artichokes represent hope and love.
