The Cold Earth Slept Below - Percy Byshee Shelley Flashcards
What type of family did Shelley come from?
-Wealthy family> set to inherit his Grandfathers role as an MP
Who did Shelley elope to age 19?
Harriet Westbrook with whom he moved to the Lake District
what did Shelley do 3 years after getting eloped to Harriet?
-Left for Europe with another woman > Mary Godwin
What year did Harriet take her own life?
1816
How was Shelley seen to be the most political out of the Romantic poets?
-Circulated pamphlets in Dublin > advocating political rights for catholic
Why was Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg expelled from Oxford in 1811?
-Refusing Shelley’s authorship of ‘the necessity of atheism’
Why was Harriet Westbrook suspected to haven taken her life for?
-Due to her love for Shelley
Was Shelley able to take guardianship over his children Ianthe and Charles after Harriet’s death?
No
What was the Great Terror of 1792?
Kings supporters executed
What year was Shelley born?
1792
What was mainly channeled through his poetry?
-Passionate search for personal love
-Social justice
Who could be the subject of the poem?
-Shelley’s first wife Harriet Westbrook committed suicide in 1816
What is the overall tone and mood of the poem?
-variety of contrasting images and symbols > message and tone more complicated than it seems
-Sleep, winter and nigh > used to convey death
How is the supernatural presented in the poem?
-Imagery to depict a body/the dying light of the moon mirrors the dying person
-A fen-fire > attacks travellers to their death
-glowing eyes > represent life > ironic element
-Raven as a symbol of death
What is the form of the poem?
-Seen as a sort of eulogy > First half is about nature and setting / second half is about the dead body > almost cyclical as earth and its breath introduced at beginning and end.
What Is the meter of the poem?
-Iambic tetrameter
-Spondaic > The Heavy rhythm of the first two lines contrasts to the simplistic, upbeat and childish rhythm of the second stanza created by the Internal rhyme and anapaest
-presents contrast between life and death
What is significant about the pattern of internal rhyme throughout the 3rd line?
‘breath’ and ‘death’ > taking your last breath
‘Green’ and ‘seen’
echoes ghastly quality and creepy simplistic sounds > eerie
What is the significance of the personification in “The cold death slept below”?
-Nature has life but the person is not > reborn into nature or emphasises lifelessness through the juxtaposition
What is significant about “below”?
-In the ground like a grave
How is a chilled image of the earth presented?
-“cold”
-“chilling”
where are the landscapes presented to have their own presences?
-“from caves of ice and fields of snow’
-feels dark and malignant
what is significant about “breath of night” and “sinking moon”?
-Everything will be consumed by darkness soon - death
-Darkness > feels like death > creates fearful scene
What is significant about “The green grass was not seen”?
-Juxtaposition of nature > co-existence of opposite forces
What is significant by describing the scene as “black”?
-Pathetic fallacy > death and loss
-Eerie feeling of danger
What does the change in the path in stanza 2 signify?
-Change in the journey of his life > sudden realisation to make different decisions > perhaps due to the fear of death
What is significant about “frozen dew”?
-compares tears shed in the night
-Frozen perhaps due to time no longer a thing for the dead body > she is dead no ageing > frozen in time
What is significant about the last two lines of the poem?
-Hopeful tone
-Feels moved > feeling of the sublime
