Category: Poetry
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“Break Break Break” Analysis
‘Break break break’ is a poem that was published in 1842, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores Tennyson’s feelings of loss concerning the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. The poem syncretises the perpetual cycle of nature with the speaker’s bitter desire for the world to stop. The purpose of this poem could be…
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Different Perspectives in “The Lotos-eaters” by Alfred Tennyson
In Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”, he brings into question the differing perspectives that each individual possesses. By describing the reality of the sailors before the consumption of the Lotos flower and after the ingestion of the enchanted Lotos, he brings attention to the idea that there exists various versions of reality and the ways that…
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The Victorian Conceptualization of Gender in Tennyson’s The Princess
The Victorian concept of masculinity is one caught up a series of interrelated metaphors relating to the empire and national identity. Throughout the Victorian corpus there are a number of texts that create a metaphorical relationship between femininity and the colonised. In Lord Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The Princess’, the poem represents the social conquest of marginal…
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“Mariana” and “Mariana in The South” Comparative Analysis
Poets often revise and re-revise their work, as it can be difficult to fully express the emotions they want to invoke in the reader. Just a change of one word can change the entire meaning of a line, and poetry’s usual brevity requires every single word to be the perfect choice. Tennyson wrote two versions…
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The Artist Figure from Alfred Tennyson’s Point of View
Discuss Tennyson’s representations of the artist figure and his conceptions of art, think about issues of esoteric isolation versus political or emotional connection. In his poem The Palace of Art, Tennyson portrays an artist attempting to build an existence, surrounding herself with only the beauty of art in a grand dwelling place. Ultimately the artist…
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Art and Self Relations in Tennyson’s Works
The relationship between art and the self is a reoccurring theme in Tennyson’s poetry; indeed in The Palace of Art the narrator declares “I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house”[i]; bridging the gap between the interior (soul) and exterior (palace) through art. In Maud we are given a poem which also deals with external and…
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Describing The Era in “The Lady of Shalott”
“The Lady of Shalott” was published in 1832, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores a series of themes that trigger the reader to question the societal prejudices that occurred during Queen Victoria’s reign. In order to stimulate thought, Tennyson paints a romantic picture of Camelot and uses an array of literary techniques to lure…
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The Meaning of Nature in Morrison’s and Rossetti’s Works
For centuries, nature in literature has been used as a means to reflect both our society and humanity. Both Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Christina Rossetti’s selected poems use nature as both a tool of oppression and a support, challenging the inequalities and ideals of their times. However, within their contexts – Morrison writing in the…
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The Famine and Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney’s “At a Potato Digging”
Seamus Heaney paints a picture of Ireland through his poems, at times describing its culture and at other times its politics. In poems like ‘Digging’ and ‘The Follower’ he ascribes a sense of dignity to the act of farming, comparing it to the art of writing poetry. Northern Ireland, where Heaney was born in 1939,…
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Culpability of The Fisherman in Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty”
Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” is written as an elegy for a friend who was killed in a bombing in Northern Ireland shortly after Bloody Sunday. His friend, who was a Catholic, failed to obey a curfew set in place by the Irish Republican Army. He was consequently killed in the bombing of the pub he often…