R Cards Flashcards
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Much of Raleigh’s work was written during his long imprisonment in the Tower of London and his most famous poems include All the World’s a Stage, Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea, in praise of Queen Elizabeth I, The Lie, and The Pilgrimage. His prose works include accounts of his voyages and expeditions and an unfinished History of the World.
(which is an answer to Marlowe’s”The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” is a GRE favorite)
This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh uses the same meter and references to present "mirror images" of Marlowe's poem. The feminine persona (the nymph) of the poem sets up a hypothetical set of questions that undermine the intelligence of the man's offer because all that he offers is transitory. She reverses his images into negative ones IF all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy Love.
But Time drives flocks from field to fold;
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
John Ruskin
Rushkin invented the term “pathetica fallacy,” so if you see it on the exam, you’ll know you’re looking at Ruskin.In literary criticism, the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human emotions, thoughts, sensations, and feelings.
Examples of the pathetic fallacy include:
- “The stars will awaken / Though the moon sleep a full hour later” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- “The fruitful field / Laughs with abundance” (William Cowper)
- “Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty” (Walt Whitman)
- “Nature abhors a vacuum” (John Ruskin’s translation of the well-known Medieval saying natura abhorret a vacuo, in his work Modern Painters.)
Samuel Richardson (1689 –1761)
Samuel Richardson (1689 –1761)
Samuel Richardson was a major 18th century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753).
Richardson had been an established printer and publisher for most of his life when, at the age of 51, he wrote his first novel — and immediately became one of the most popular and admired writers of his time.
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. It tells in the first person the story of the virtuous lady’s maid Pamela and the modest and agonized delicacy, yet determination, with which she rebuffs and reforms her aristocratic would-be seducer Mr B and is rewarded with marriage to him. Told through Pamela’s probingly introspective letters and diary, Pamela is widely considered a seminal influence on the direction the novel form was to take towards psychological analysis and self-examination.
The heroine, Pamela Andrews, is a maid whose master makes unwanted advances towards her. She rejects him until he shows his sincerity by proposing a fair marriage to her. In the second part of the novel, Pamela attempts to accommodate herself to upper-class society and to build a successful relationship with her husband.
Clarissa
Clarissa is an exceptionally long novel; excepting novel sequences, it may well be the longest novel in the English language. The full volume of its third edition, the edition most extensively revised by Richardson, spans over one million words. The first edition alone contains nearly 969,000 words.
Clarissa Harlowe, the tragic heroine of Clarissa, is a beautiful and virtuous young lady whose family has become very wealthy only in recent years and is now eager to become part of the aristocracy by acquiring estates and titles through advantageous pairings. Clarissa is forced by relatives to marry a rich but heartless man against her will and, more importantly, against her own sense of virtue. Desperate to remain free, she allows a young gentleman of her acquaintance, Lovelace, to scare her into escaping with him. However, she refuses to marry him, longing — unusually for a girl in her time — to live by herself in peace. Lovelace, in the meantime, has been trying to arrange a fake marriage all along, and considers it a sport to add Clarissa to his long list of conquests. However, as he is more and more impressed by Clarissa, he finds it difficult to keep convincing himself that truly virtuous women do not exist. The continuous pressure he finds himself under, combined with his growing passion for Clarissa, forces him to extremes and eventually he rapes her. Clarissa manages to escape from him, but remains dangerously ill. When she dies, however, it is in the full consciousness of her own virtue, and trusting in a better life after death. Lovelace, tormented by what he has done but still unable to change, dies in a duel with Clarissa’s cousin. Clarissa’s relatives finally realise the misery they have caused, but discover that they are too late and Clarissa has already died.
Christina Rossetti
an English poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron’s friend and physician, John William Polidori.
Born in London and educated privately, she suffered ill-health in her youth, but was already writing poetry in her teens. Her engagement to a painter, James Collinson, was broken off because of religious differences (she was High Church Anglican). This experience is credited with inspiring her most popular poem ‘Remember’. She refused to marry Charles Cayley, whom she was deeply in love with, because of religious reasons.
Many of her poems were written for children. “Goblin Market” seemed like a children’s nursery rhyme with its talk of goblins. However, it was really an allegory for temptation. It is similar to the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve.
Christina rejected the social world of her brother’s “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”, preferring “my shady crevice — which crevice enjoys the unique advantage of being to my certain knowledge the place assigned me.”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti is most notable as the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,an avart guarde group that believed in the primacy of mimetic and detailed art (painting in particular). His role on the GRE is mostly an historic one since as a poet his was a rather minor figure.
an English poet, painter and translator. The son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, D. G. Rossetti was born in London, England and originally named Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti. His family and friends called him “Gabriel”, but in publications he put the name Dante first, because of its literary associations. He was the brother of poet Christina Rossetti and the critic William Michael Rossetti and a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt
Phèdre
Phèdre was a 1677 play by Jean Racine, based on both the play Hippolytus by Euripides, and a later Roman play Phaedra by Seneca the Younger. Due to its negative reception in the popular press, Racine abandoned writing for the public theater after this play (although later in his career he did write additional works on a royal commission). It is generally considered his finest work; it was chosen for inclusion in the Harvard Classics. Phèdre is the last secular tragedy of Racine before a long silence of twelve years, during which time he devoted himself to the service of King Louis XIV and to religion. In Phèdre, Racine again chose a subject already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets. In the absence of her husband, King Thésée, Phèdre falls in love with Hippolyte, son of Thésée of a preceding marriage.
Every aspect of Phèdre was celebrated: the tragic construction, the depth of the personages and the wealth of the versification. In contrast to Euripides in Hippolytos kalyptomenos, Racine puts off Phèdre’s death until the end of the play. In this way, she has time to learn of Hippolyte’s death. Phèdre, at once guilty of causing misfortune and being victim to it, is most remarkable among Racine’s tragic heroes and heroines.
