Category: Poetry

“At an Inn” is a poem written by Thomas Hardy, a composition showcasing Hardy’s longing for another woman who is not his wife, Florence. In this work, Hardy focuses on the misinterpretations of the nature of the two’s relationship from strangers at an inn. He questions the idea of fate, but also alludes to the…

Psalm 142, verse 2: “No man cared…” This Biblical verse applies perfectly to “In Tenbris”, a poem written out of despair for the society Hardy in which lived. He expresses his pity and contempt for the materialist citizens and power hungry rulers. The rhyme scheme is a playful and simply happy one (abab), something similar…

The poems under study are (“NT”) and I Look Into My Glass (“Glass”). Both poems focus on loss of a different kind: “Glass” expresses the loss of Hardy’s youth; “NT” focuses on the death of Hardy’s estranged wife, it grieves the loss of their love. Although the losses are different, both poems use the vehicle…

The breakdown of a relationship is presented in many ways throughout both ‘Neutral Tones’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘Modern Love’ by George Meredith. For example, they both explore themes of memory, and loss (of love). I will be exploring and comparing both poems to each other in this essay. Firstly, the poem ‘Neutral Tones’ explores…

Though he is by no means a single-minded man, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti focus largely on the beauty and physical form of the woman he addresses these poems to. In seven of these sonnets, he calls this woman’s beauty her “hew”, or in the modern spelling, “hue”; each time ‘hew’ is used, it is paired with…

Spenser’s Faerie Queene fights against reduction; there is no one-to-one correspondence of thing to meaning. Spenser recasts figures and images throughout the poem, allowing meanings to be changed and complicated through the course of reading. Language and form work to divide these moments of action and implication; the space within or between stanzas (or cantos,…

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene features an array of characters that appear briefly, usually to influence Redcrosse in a critical moment along his journey. Fradubio is one such character, given sixteen stanzas in a poem of over 600 stanzas. The importance of Fradubio’s character becomes more puzzling considering his stanzas could be removed from Cantos…

Spenser’s Faerie Queene evinces the New Testament religious doctrine that God shows infinite mercy toward man, and by “heauenly grace doth…vphold” (VIII.1.3) him despite his weaknesses. This philosophy, shown in The Faerie Queene through Redcrosse Knight’s ascension to Sainthood despite his failures and weaknesses, contends that through God’s grace one can be a “righteous man”…

Varying representations of both genders are abundant in romantic literature of the Renaissance period in general, a fine example of which can be found in Edmund Spenser’s allegorical , The Faerie Queene. The poem depicts the tale of seven knights, who each represent the desirable noble virtues of holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy.…

“The Faeire Queene” is an written by Edmund Spenser in the 16th century – English Renaissance, but set in the Middle Ages because of its being a chivalric romance. Aside from religious allegories, juxtapositions, and contradictions, Spenser mentions the place of gender by giving his reader the stereotypes, meaning set of postulated ideas about the…