Category: Poetry

In presenting the concept of the closed door, it advocates the very opposite idea that, once, the door was open. With this knowledge there comes a possibility that perhaps a closed door can be opened again, suggesting that there are two sides to a doorway. If this metaphor is continued, the ‘closed door’ can be…

Table of contents Introduction Enclosure in “The Lady of Shalott” Liberation and the Dichotomy of Shadows and Light Ulysses: The Enclosure of Returning Home The Palace of Art: Isolation and Fragmentation Conclusion Works Cited Introduction The theme of enclosure or entrapment permeates Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poetry, offering a lens through which we can examine the…

In his preface to Lyrical Ballads,William Wordsworth describes good poetry as being “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (6). The style of confessional poetry seems especially fitting to this description; to think that confessional poets merely transcribe powerful emotions onto paper is, however, a misconception. This paper attempts to examine the field and themes of…

In the opening line of Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters,” Odysseus issues the rallying call of “Courage!” to his men as they head forward in their trajectory towards a strange and unnamed “land.” For these weary wanderers, this place is clearly another inevitable detour and not their ultimate destination of home; even so, its exact nature…

In his critically acclaimed collection North, contemporary Seamus Heaney reveals a very personal side of himself and of his identity as a writer. Although each individual poem explores its own storyline and employs its own metaphors, one common thread seems to unravel throughout the collection: the past, particularly that of Ireland. And Heaney’s angst-ridden endeavor…

As legendary poet and hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur once said, “The seed must grow regardless of the fact that it’s planted in stone.” Those who live in impoverished neighborhoods are prone to a life empty of education and full of crime. From the very beginning of their lives, these disadvantaged people are often set on…

Although it is commonly understood that God created the natural world, Nature is often depicted as a force working in opposition to God and His creation. In lyric 56 of the poem In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Nature seems to have conquered God, leading to a cold, unfeeling world that shows no remorse for…

After one has read The Holy Grail by Alfred Lord Tennyson and watched the movie The Fisher King directed by Terry Gilliam, the question about the identity of the Fisher King in the movie naturally arises. In The Holy Grail, the Fisher King is described as a wounded man who is the last keeper of…

Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House” and Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” share similarities characteristic of the English “Country House” poem, but they also contain notable differences from each other. Both “To Penshurst” and “Upon Appleton House” describe the respective estates and family life of the poets’ patrons in idyllic terms. An admiration for the aristocracy also…

Tennyson’s reclusive speaker is shown to condemn the actions of both people and society as a whole within ‘Maud’; many of the speaker’s social criticisms are shown to be valid social critiques of the Victorian age, in contrast to his sometimes erratic and distorted cognitive patterns displayed through disjunctive structural techniques within the poem. Conversely,…