Remember Flashcards
Who wrote this poem?
Christina Rossetti
What is the structure of the poem
Petrarchan sonnet and iambic pentameter
What type of sonnet is this poem?
Petrarchan sonnet
Give context of the writer of the poem
• One of the well-known poets of the 19th century
• Customs of mourning
• High mortality rates
• Rise in poems about mourning and death
• Enjoyed fame and popularity
• Romantic poetry
• References to death and dying
What topics does the sonnet explore
• Relationship between two lovers
• Impending death
• Final message and request
• Intimate language
• Sense of sorrow
• End of their relationship
What meaning does the title explore
• Alludes loss, remembrance, memory
What themes are explored in the poem and give quotations and their meaning
• Love: push-pull forces of love, underlying fear and hesitancy. “Half turn to go yet turning stay”.
- Transformative power of love: narrator hopes they remain a permanent part of their lovers life.
• Memory and death: The speaker believes death to be a distant place where they are permanently separated. “Gone away/ gone far away” reinforces the distance and the boundary between life and death
- “darkness and corruption” signifies the grave or afterlife, physical decay, earthly remains, corruption of the body, could reference the beloveds emotional state of grief.
What is the rhyme scheme of the poem
ABBAABBA CDD ECE
Describe the Petrarchan sonnet and it’s use in the poem
• Octave (or octet), eight
• Volta
• Sestet
• Rossetti uses Petrarchan style to mirror the changing thoughts and feelings of the speaker
• Octave: pleads with her lover to remember her
Sestet: different rhyme scheme, selfless turn
Volta: portrays this shift in emotion or thought, speaker realisation. Skilfully inverts a command to remember which highlights the complicated connection between memory and grief
Suggest why Rossetti writes in strict iambic language pentameter
• Strained feel
• A level of restraint
• Struggles to express their feelings
Explain the significance of the rhyme scheme
ABBA: reflects the speakers measured and composed speech
Sestet: complicated rhyme scheme, complicated feelings
ABBAABBA: palindromic nature reflects feelings of hesitancy, reflects cyclical nature of life and remembrance
How and why is direct address used in this poem
• Personal pronouns
• “you”, “us”, “me”
• Private farewell
What figure of speech is used in the following sentences and what is its significance
• “Hold me by the hand”/“half turn”
• “Better by”
• Alliteration: tenderness, desperate, urgency- line 1
• Plosive alliteration: intensity, need to be remembered- line 2
What figure of speech is used in the following sentence and state it’s significance
• “Silent land”
• Euphemism: describes the distance between the lovers, worlds of the dead and the living. Speakers love will only survive in memory
What other figure of speech shows the distance between the living and the dead and in what line?
• Caesura
• Lines 7&8, semicolon between “me” and “you”
What figure of speech is used in this sentence throughout the poem and what is its significance
• “remember me”
• repetition
• adds strength and weight to the speakers command
• Authoritative tone
• mirrors the speakers process of accepting their lover may forget them
What are the similarities and differences between remember and La belle dame sans Merci
Similarities
• Common theme of death and weakness
• Similar context, Keats wrote poem after his brothers death from TB
• Ballad poem explores death and memory through a display of obsessive love
Differences
• Structure is different: the last line of each verse in Keats is the shortest creating a sense of unfulfillment and unease
• La belle contains themes of obsession and in infatuation which alters the speakers sense of reality. Remember is far more grounded and balanced voice
What are the similarities and differences between remember and To his coy mistress
Similarities
• Religious imagery: “silent land”- remember, “I would love you ten years before the flood”, “the conversion of the Jews”
• Both pleading to their loved ones before death, “quaint honour to dust” and into “ashes” their lust
• Theme of death, “worms shall try thy long preserved virginity”, “marble vault”, “silent land”
Differences
• To his coy mistress: First flattery, threat, then urgency.
• Remember, a plea with 2 distinct verses
How is remember and sonnet 126 similar and different
• Theme of enduring love
• Transcends and overcomes time and death
• Permanently changes people
• Personification of love
• alludes to death
• Sonnet 116- remains confident in loves power
What is a genius interpretation of the poem
• Passive voice of women in Victorian society
• highly patriarchal society
• Speaker’s lover exerts dominance over her, possessing her
What quotations in this poem parallel with the great Gatsby
• “Gone far away into the silent land”
• “Her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick blood with the dust”- chapter 7
• “When you can no more hold me by the hand”
• “I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed”- Chapter 7
