Pre 1900 poetry Flashcards
1
Q
AO3: ‘Who So List To Hount’
A
- Sir Thomas Wyatt was a courtier and one of King Henry VIII’s intimates during the time when he was arranging Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn
- When Boleyn was being tried for adultery, Thomas was imprisoned.
- When Wyatt was released, many claim that they were lovers. This poem is often cited as evidence.
2
Q
AO3: ‘Sonnet 116’
A
- When Shakespeare was writing his sonnets, the form was also used as a way to order thoughts about topics such as death and time.
- By Elizabethan times sonnet writing had become a way for the poet to prove his love as a way to win a lady.
3
Q
AO3: ‘The Flea’
A
- In early modern times, fleas were much more common in homes than today and it is likely that contemporary readers would not have been revolted by the poems flea imagery in the way that some modern readers are.
- The idea of the flea sucking the blood of both lovers would have slightly different connotations to Donnes contemporary readers since they believed that sperm and other sexual secretions were formed by the body’s purest drops of blood and thus that blood mingled during sex.
4
Q
AO3: ‘To His Coy Mistress’
A
- The trope of the male speaker seducing a female addressee seems to not be confined to centuries old poems.
5
Q
AO3: ‘Song Ae fond Kiss ’
A
- Considered the national bard of Scotland, Burns is a much loved poet.
- After Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus, there are more statues of Burns in the world than any other non religious figure.
- Many people meet on Burns night to mark his birthday for a supper that includes readings, haggis and whisky.
- The song was written for Agnes, ‘Nancy’ McLehose, a lady who was seperated from her husband who was working in the West Indies. Burns was deeply in love with her and corresponded daily in 1787 and 1788.
- When Burns found that Nancy was travelling to the West Indies to see her husband who hoped for a reconciliation, he sent her a copy of ‘Ae Fond Kiss’
6
Q
AO3: ‘She Walks in Beauty’
A
- James Webster-Wedderburn wrote that Byron was inspired to write the poem the day after meeting a woman called Mrs Wilmot at a party in London.
7
Q
AO3: ‘At an Inn’
A
- The poem was inspired by Hardy’s relationship with aristocratic and literary Florence Henniker.
- Their growing friendship and her congeniality, polished manners and lively interest in Hardy led him to draw the wrong conclusions about their relationship.
- Hardy took her to The George. Despite those at this inn thinking them lovers, Florence drew the line at flirtation; her Christian beliefs meant that Hardy would never be more than a friend.
8
Q
AO3: ‘Non sum qualis earn bonae sub regno Cynarae’
A
- Dowson was part of the Decadent Movement of the late 1890s.
- This movement explored perversity, paradox, and transgressive sexuality.
9
Q
AO3: ‘The Ruined Maid’
A
- In the 19th century, a woman’s value was closely tied to her chastity; losing it outside of marriage was considered “ruinous” and led to social exclusion.
- Women had very few economic opportunities, and some turned to prostitution or becoming mistresses as a means of survival.
- Hardy is often seen as a Realist, exploring social struggles, class, and morality.
- Hardy frequently criticized Victorian social norms, especially those affecting women.
10
Q
AO3: ‘Remember’
A
- Victorian poet known for her religious devotion and themes of love, loss, and mortality.
- Rossetti was deeply influenced by her Anglo-Catholic faith, which emphasized the afterlife and spiritual reflection.
- Remember is a Petrarchan sonnet, a traditional form often used for love and philosophical meditations.
- The poem is part of the Victorian preoccupation with death and mourning, influenced by Romanticism but more restrained in emotion.
11
Q
AO3: ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci.’
A
- Keats was a Romantic poet, focusing on emotion, nature, imagination, and the supernatural, all of which shape the poem’s dreamlike and tragic tone.
- The poem reflects Gothic themes and medieval chivalric tradition (the doomed knight and the femme fatale).
- Keats was dying of tuberculosis, which influenced the themes of suffering and inevitable loss.
- The femme fatale represents 19th-century anxieties about women’s sexuality and control over men, showing how love and desire can be destructive.
12
Q
AO3: ‘The Garden of Love’
A
- Blake was a Romantic poet, rejecting institutional control and valuing emotion, imagination, and individual freedom over rigid religious and social norms.
- He was deeply spiritual but opposed to institutional religion, believing it corrupted innocence and suppressed human desires.
- Written in 1794, the poem reflects concerns about the increasing control of institutions over personal freedom.
13
Q
AO3: ‘A song [Absent from thee]’
A
- Written in the late 17th century, during the Restoration period, when poets like Rochester rejected moral restraint in favor of pleasure and excess.
- Rochester, a notorious womanizer, explores the conflict between romantic love and sexual desire, questioning traditional ideas of monogamy and faithfulness.
- The poem’s language mimics religious devotion, but instead of worshiping God, the speaker worships physical pleasure, mocking Puritan values that had dominated England before the Restoration.
- Embraces “carpe diem”… love and pleasure should be enjoyed before death and time destroy them.
14
Q
AO3: ‘The Scrutiny’
A
- Lovelace was a Cavalier poet who supported King Charles I during the English Civil War.
- Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651)
- Resistance to authority and conventional morality, a theme common in Cavalier poetry.
- The poem embraces the “carpe diem”
- Challenges the traditional, idealized notion of courtly love as it often explores views on sexual freedom that were controversial in his time.
15
Q
AO5: ‘Sonnet 116’
A
“The whole sonnet presents a love that is steadfast and loyal and unchanging” - David Wheeler
