19th Century British Poetry

Read "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Exercise 1:

Paraphrase each of the four sections of this poem.

Exercise 2:

This poem is considered a "ballad". Explain what is a ballad and why this poem is a ballad.

Exercise 3:

A refrain is a repetition of words, phrases or lines at regular intervals. When refrains follow a stanza they are called terminal refrains. When refrains are within stanzas they are called internal refrains. When a refrain changes a little with each repetition it is called an incremental refrain.

What is the refrain in the poem "The Lady of Shalott"? Where is it and what type(s) is it?

Exercise 4:

Listen to Loreena McKennitt's musical adaptation of "The Lady of Shalott". Which stanzas did McKennitt leave out and which stanzas did she use? Do you think that McKennit chose most appropriate stanzas or would you have included or excluded other stanzas?

Exercise 5:

Consider the "curse" of the Lady. What do you think was this curse? What triggered it to come into effect?

Exercise 6:

Identify the "liminal spaces" in this poem, and explain why you think they are liminal.

Exercise 7:

Discuss the similarities between the Lady's Castle and Plato's Cave.



Exercise 8:

It is possible that the Lady of Shallot is an allegorical figure. What do you think the Lady symbolizes? Keeping your answer in mind, what do you think the poem is about?

Exercise 1:

Paraphrase Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade". Then, summarize your paraphrase into one or two sentences, focusing on the topic, theme and tone of the poem.

Assignment:

As a group assignment, write an analytical paragraph of Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade".

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire (England). He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Arthur Henry Hallam, whom he later immortalized in In Memoriam (1850). Tennyson began to write when a child, largely to escape the oppressiveness of his homelife, made miserable by his father’s drinking and violence. He published some of his best-known poems, such as “Mariana” and “The Kraken,” when he was only twenty; in “Mariana,” he displays his early, and enduring, gift for suing objects and landscapes to convey states of mind and particular emotions. Between 1833, the date of Hallam’s death, and 1843, when Tennyson received an annual government pension to support his writing, he was especially hard-hit by the melancholia that would plague him all his life and so dominate his poetry. In the wake of Hallam’s death, Tennyson’s work assumed a decidedly darker note. He expressed his grief abstrusely in such poems as “Ullyses” and “Break, Break, Break” and directly in In Memoriam, a series of 131 quatrain stanzas written in iambic tetrameter, which Tennyson began within days of Hallam’s death and continued to write over a period of seventeen years. With the publication of In Memoriam, he finally attained the public recognition long denied him and earned syfficient money to marry Emily Sellwood after a ten-year on-again off-again courtship. He remained immensely popular until his death. His last major work was Idylls of the King, a project that occupied him for nearly fifty years; the first four idylls were published in 1859, and the complete cycle of twelve in 1885. In the work, which popularized the then obscure Arthurian legend, Tennyson upholds medieval ideals, such as community, heroism, and courtly love, and compares the decay of the Round Table to the moral decline of his own society.

Sound is a very important aspect of poetry. Probably one of the most important sound-features of poetry is rhyme (words that sound similar). For a more detailed discussion of rhyme, refer to Norton's Anthology of Poetry, 3rd Edition, p. 1410-1412.

There are various ways to describe rhyme:

• Perfect Rhyme, Imperfect Rhyme and Eye Rhyme

Perfect Rhyme is also known as exact rhyme, full rhyme or true rhyme. In perfect rhyme the rhyming words have sounds that correspond exactly, for instance: "red" and "bread"; "man" and "fan"; "feather" and "weather". Note that "red" and "bread" are not spelled the same; however, their rhyming sounds correspond exactly. Therefore "red" and "bread" is an example of perfect rhyme.

With Imperfect Rhyme the rhyming sounds are not exact, for instance: bone & moon; starry & barley; gone & thin. There are various types of imperfect rhyme, for instance off-rhyme. In off-rhyme the vowel sound and/or concluding consonant is changed; an example is "room" and "storm" or "gone" and "alone". Another type of imperfect rhyme is vowel rhyme. In vowel rhyme, only the vowels rhyme, e.g. "green" and "leaves" or "climb" and "eyes". Pararhyme is another type of imperfect rhyme. With pararhyme the vowel sounds are different, but the consonants are the same; for instance, "trod" and "trade".

Another phenomenon, known as Eye Rhyme, isn't really rhyme. With eye rhyme words merely look similar (in spelling), but actually sound very different. Examples of eye rhyme would be "prove" and "love" or "daughter" and "laughter". Note that these examples might also be example of parahyme.

• End Rhyme and Internal Rhyme

When words at the end of lines rhyme, it is known as End Rhyme. Both words should be at the end of the lines for it to be end rhyme. When words in the middle of a verse line rhymes with any other word(s), it is known as Internal Rhyme.

• Masculine and Feminine Rhyme

When single syllable words rhyme, it is known as masculine rhyme. Rhyming words with more than one syllable, where the stress falls on the last syllable, is also known as masculine rhyme. Examples of masculine rhyming words are: horse; divorce; remorse.

Feminine rhyme refers to rhyming words that are more than one syllable long, and where the stress does NOT fall on the last syllable. Examples of feminine rhyming words are: "turtle" and "fertile"; "intellectual" and "factual".

Exercise 1:

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" has one overarching metaphor. Identify this metaphor and describe the main theme of this poem.

Exercise 2:

How many personae / voices are there in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias"? Identify them. Which persona do you think is the most important? Explain your answer.

Exercise 3:

There are several "narrative layers" in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias". Describe these narrative layers. What do you think was Shelley's purpose with so many narrative layers?

Exercise 4:

Do an analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mutability". What do you think is the main message of this poem? Summarise the main theme of "Mutability" in one sentence.

Exercise 5:

Look at the following poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley: "England 1819", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Ozymandias" and "Mutability".

Identify the forms that Shelley uses in each of these poems. If the form is a sonnet, identify the type of sonnet it is and take note of the closed forms (e.g. quatrains, octaves, sestets, and couplets) within it.

Exercise 6:

Compare the sonnets "To Wordsworth" and "Ozymandias" and the first stanza of "The Cloud". Are all of these sonnets traditional sonnets (i.e. English, Italian or Spenserian)?