Remember

Question 1

structure

Answer 1

petrachan sonnet (split into octave and sestet)

Question 2

rhyme scheme

Answer 2

alternate rhyme scheme shows conflict in her desires (changes in sestet, showing shift in speakers request)

Question 3

metre

Answer 3

iambic pentameter (trict iambs shows speakers self restraint and witholding emotions)

Question 4

volta

Answer 4

shows shift in speakers requests

Question 5

‘me; you’ ceasura

Answer 5

emphasise the distance between the dead and living

Question 6

significance of ‘silent land’

Answer 6

anticipates entering heaven (far from life and earth) echos classical concept of hades

positive interpretation- rest, soul sleep

negative interpretation- isolation from lover

Question 7

image of holding hands

Answer 7

employed by dante gabriel in his pre-raphelite paintings to depict love (suggests desire to cling onto physical intimacy, also posession)

Question 8

significance in rhyme of ‘away’ and stay’

Answer 8

shows conflict in narrator in entering heaven and leaving love

Question 9

significance of ‘darkness and corruption’

Answer 9

corruption alludes to physical decay of death (used in bible)

euphamism for death

Question 10

‘do not grieve’

Answer 10

contrasts victorian tradition of long period of mourning

Question 11

19th century context

Answer 11

19th century, an era known for its customs of mourning which were exacerbated by high mortality rates.

Queen Victoria spent the last 4 decades of her life mourning her late husband, Prince Albert, whose death is said to have spiked a noticeable rise in poems about death in that era.