She Waks In Beauty (1814) Flashcards
Author
Lord Byron
Story
Third person speaker celebrates the physical and inner beauty of an unnamed woman
Themes
Beauty/appearance
Admiration
Wonder
Tone
Reverential
Enchanted
Form and structure
Regular rhythm and rhyme (tetrameter ABABA)- rhythm of walking, faultless like the woman is being described
Present tense- sense of immediacy and continuity of love
Language
Similar-“like the night”- vast, I contained, unimaginable
Alliteration and assonance- create rich sounding patterns “cloudless clones and starry skies”
Repeated opposites (antihesis)- May highlight speakers confusion and lack of comprehension
Context
Byron was a famous womaniser, this poem is beloved to be based on a woman in a black spangle gown at a London party
Romantic poet and era, emotion and sentiment
“Like the night”
Critics maintain images of darkness appear because glimpses that inspired the poem was at a funeral
Dark clothes and time of spiritual darkness only accentuates her beauty
‘Like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies’
Light of the starts and shadow of night brought forth as contrasts similar to compare beauty with something unconfirmed and almost unimaginable
Starry skies
Reference to skies give an impression she’s unobtainable distance between her and him means he’ll never have her
That’s best of dark and bright
Suggests while she walks in dark beauty she is her self a brighter beauty
Rhyme scheme
Alternate (ABBA) draws attention to the words in the end of the. Line
One shade the more one ray the less.
Perfectly balance tiny change could ruin her perfection line exactly balanced words syllables opposite woman’s beauty
She walks in beauty
Present tense suggests the woman’s beauty is eternal
Cloudless climes and starry skies
Alliteration cliche suggests that her beauty is pure with “cloudless” high lights the contrast of dark and light she’s the epitomy of perfect
