WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Here you can find my previous post about William Wordsworth, a major English Romantic poet, well-known for his celebration of nature.

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2023/11/william-wordsworth-5c-linguistico.html

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2015/03/i-wandered-lonely-as-cloud.html

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2012/11/william-wordsworth-composed-upon.html

ENGLISH LITERATURE LESSONS

 

Why is English literature so important in schools? Read here.

Here you can find several useful videos dedicated to English literature.

GLOSSARY OF POETRY TERMS

Glossary of Poetry Terms

Poetic Devices 

Literary Terms 

Figures of speech

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS - 4^C LINGUISTICO

https://nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/ 

https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/sonnets/section1/

BRIGHT STAR - 5^C LINGUISTICO

 

"Bright Star" is a sonnet written by the Romantic poet John Keats as a homage to his beloved Fanny Brawne. 

It is primarily made up of two analogies. The first analogy is a negative one, where the poet describes the aspect of the star that he doesn’t wish to resemble. The second analogy is a positive one, where the poet explains the aspect of the star that he aspires to be like — namely, steadfast loyalty to his beloved.

https://www.eminentediting.com/post/bright-star-by-john-keats-analysis

LORD BYRON - 5^C LINGUISTICO

George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron (1728-1844) with his aristocratic behaviour, personal charm and unquestionable beauty stands out as a rock star poet and the prince of passionate people’s perceptions during the so-called Regency era in England (1792 – 1830).  

He is an immense poet, combining the best of Augustan wit and intellect with the best of sensuously and politically charged Romanticism. 
Lord Byron was described in his own time as ‘a child of passion and the fool of fame‘.

George Gordon Byron  -  life and works

 The outstanding Romantic

"She Walks in Beauty"

"She Walks in Beauty"  Presentation

BRIAN BILSTON'S REFUGEES

With his identity clouded in mystery, Brian Bilston has amassed over 80,000 Twitter followers and has become known as the unofficial Poet Laureate of the social media platform. Read here.

https://brianbilston.com/2016/03/23/refugees/comment-page-3/

W.H. AUDEN - 5^C LINGUISTICO

English poet, playwright, critic, and librettist Wystan Hugh Auden exerted a major influence on the poetry of the 20th century. He grew up in Birmingham, England and was known for his extraordinary intellect and wit. His first book, Poems, was published in 1930 with the help of T.S. Eliot. Just before World War II broke out, he emigrated to the United States where he met the poet Chester Kallman, who became his lifelong lover. W.H. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety. Much of his poetry is concerned with moral issues and evidences a strong political, social, and psychological context. Read here.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - 5^C LINGUISTICO

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2018/12/william-wordsworth-5c-linguistico.html

SONNET 130

 

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is an anti-Petrarchan love poem that uses a mocking and realistic tone to subvert the exaggerated and idealized conventions of traditional sonnets. Instead of using grand metaphors to describe his beloved, the speaker lists her ordinary, non-ideal features, such as eyes not as bright as the sun and lips less red than coral, to argue that his love is more genuine because it is based on reality, not hyperbole. The poem concludes in the final couplet by asserting that despite her lack of conventional beauty, his love is as valuable as any "false compare" used by other poets.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zqg9g2p#zm9jg2p

Here and here you can read a short commentary on this sonnet.

SONNET 18

It is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets. It is also one of the most direct in language and intent.

The poet starts the praise of his dear friend without ostentation, but he slowly builds the image of his friend into that of a perfect being. He is first compared to summer in the octave, but, at the beginning of the third quatrain (line 9), the speaker states with a renewed assurance that “thy eternal summer shall not fade” and that his friend will preserve his beauty and even cheat Death and Time by becoming eternal. He achieves this through his sonnet. The final couplet reaffirms the poet's hope that as long as there is breath in mankind, his lines too will live on, and ensure the immortality of the “fair youth”.

Here  and here you can read a short commentary on this sonnet.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

In the late 16^th century  it was fashionable for English gentleman authors to write sonnets, lyric poems composed of 14 lines. The sonnet is composed with a formal rhyme scheme, denoting different thoughts, moods, or emotions, sometimes summed up in the last lines of the poem.

The two main forms of the sonnet are the Petrarchan (Italian) and the Shakespearean (English).

Sonnets had been glorified by Petrarch in Italy more than 200 years before English poets even knew about them. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, were among the first to introduce the sonnet into England. 

The Italian sonnet has an eight-line stanza, or octave, and six-line stanza, or sestet. The octave has two quatrains, rhyming abba, abba, but avoiding a couplet; the first quatrain gives the theme, and the second develops it. The sestet is built on two or three different rhymes; the first three lines reflect on the theme, and the last three lines bring the whole poem to an end.

The English sonnet  is divided into three quatrains, each rhymed differently, with an independently rhymed couplet at the end. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Each quatrain takes a different appearance of the idea or develops a different image to express the theme. In his lifetime William Shakespeare composed 154 sonnets  which  were in this form and can be divided into three groups:

1. twenty-six sonnets written mostly to a young man, seventeen  of them urging marriage;

2. one hundred and one sonnets, also written to a young man (probably the same young nobleman as in the first twenty-six). These have a variety of themes, such as the beauty of the loved one; destruction of beauty; competition with a Rival Poet; despair about the absence of a loved one;  and reaction toward the young man's coldness;

3. the remaining twenty-seven sonnets are written mainly to a woman, popularly known as  "the Dark Lady." Seemingly Shakespeare had a love affair with this woman.

Most Elizabethan sonnets were written about joys and sorrows of love. Some of Shakespeare's sonnet arrangements are thought to be autobiographical. This is why scholars have tried to learn about William Shakespeare's life from his sonnets. But some of the critics view the sonnets as "purely literary exercises."  

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet written by John Keats when he was just 20 years old. Essentially, it is a poem about poetry itself, describing a reading experience so profound that an entire world seems to come to life. 

The poem talks specifically about a translation of Homer, the Classical Greek poet, by George Chapman, an Elizabethan poet whose translations were more concerned with the reader's experience of the text than loyalty to the original form.  Read here. 

WILFRED OWEN - DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Wilfred Owen immortalized mustard gas in his indictment against warfare, "Dulce et Decorum Est." Written in 1917 while at Craiglockart, and published posthumously in 1920, the poem details what is, perhaps, the most memorable written account of a mustard gas attack.

The Latin title is from Horace (1^st century BC)  and it means “it is sweet and proper”. This is followed by the phrase pro patria mori, or “to die for one’s country” in English.

The poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. It combines two sonnets and is formed by 28 lines. Read here.

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2017/05/revising-wilfred-owen.html

WILLIAM BLAKE - 5^C LINGUISTICO

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity ... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the key figures of English Romanticism, and some of his poems are universally known thanks to their memorable phrases and opening lines. Read here.

"One thought fills immensity."
William Blake 

https://www.thehistoryofart.org/william-blake/poetry/

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI ~ 5^C LINGUISTICO

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
       Alone and palely loitering? 
The sedge has withered from the lake, 
       And no birds sing. 

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
       So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel’s granary is full, 
       And the harvest’s done. 

I see a lily on thy brow, 
       With anguish moist and fever-dew, 
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
       Fast withereth too. 

I met a lady in the meads, 
       Full beautiful—a faery’s child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
       And her eyes were wild. 

I made a garland for her head, 
       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 
She looked at me as she did love, 
       And made sweet moan 

I set her on my pacing steed, 
       And nothing else saw all day long, 
For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
       A faery’s song. 

She found me roots of relish sweet, 
       And honey wild, and manna-dew, 
And sure in language strange she said— 
       ‘I love thee true’. 

She took me to her Elfin grot, 
       And there she wept and sighed full sore, 
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
       With kisses four. 

And there she lulled me asleep, 
       And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!— 
The latest dream I ever dreamt 
       On the cold hill side. 

I saw pale kings and princes too, 
       Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci 
       Thee hath in thrall!’ 

I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 
       With horrid warning gaped wide, 
And I awoke and found me here, 
       On the cold hill’s side. 

And this is why I sojourn here, 
       Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is withered from the lake, 
       And no birds sing.

John Keats 

Here you can  find an analysis of this handsome ballad  which is considered an English classic. It is a narrative of an encounter that causes both pleasure and pain. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite simplicity of structure. Composed of  twelve stanzas, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, the poem is full of enigmas, and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
Read here.

SOLDIER'S DREAM

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.

Wilfred Owen [1893-1918] was a remarkable young man. When he died he was just 25 years old, but his poetry has proved enduring and influential and is among the best known in the English language. He left behind a unique testament to the horrific impact of the First World War on an entire generation of young people.

Here you can find a text analysis of this poem.

JANUARY MORN

 

“Bare branches of each tree
on this chilly January morn
look so cold so forlorn.
Gray skies dip ever so low
left from yesterday's dusting of snow.
Yet in the heart of each tree
waiting for each who wait to see
new life as warm sun and breeze will blow,
like magic, unlock springs sap to flow,
buds, new leaves, then blooms will grow."

Nelda Hartmann

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - 5^D LINGUISTICO

Here you can explore the Wordsworth Museum which is next door to Dove Cottage  - it was in this little cottage, at times "crammed edge full" with people, in the heart of the remote Lake District, that William Wordsworth wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language.

WILLIAM BLAKE'S ILLUMINATED PRINTING

"A method of printing which combines the painter and the poet." William Blake

Read here.

https://www.skoletorget.no/abb/eng/blake/ill_print.html