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Literary Terms

A Complete List of Literary Terms

A Glossary of Literary Terms

All American: Glossary of Literary Terms


A Glossary of Terms for Literary Analysis


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William Shakespeare



Details about William Shakespeare’s life are sketchy, mostly mere surmise based upon court or other clerical records. His parents, John and Mary (Arden), were married about 1557; she was of the landed gentry, he a yeoman—a glover and commodities merchant. By 1568, John had risen through the ranks of town government and held the position of high bailiff, similar to mayor. William, the eldest son, was born in 1564, probably on April 23, several days before his baptism on April 26, 1564. That Shakespeare also died on April 23, 52 years later, may have resulted in the adoption of this birth date.
William no doubt attended the local grammar school in Stratford where his parents lived, and would have studied primarily Latin rhetoric, logic, and literature [Barnet, viii]. At age 18 (1582), William married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Their first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583), and twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which include his schooling, early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an actor and playwright in London; and the last five in retirement back in Stratford where he enjoyed moderate wealth gained from his theatrical successes. The years linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of information about Shakespeare, and are often referred to as the “dark years”; the transition from active work into retirement was gradual and cannot be precisely dated [Boyce, 587].
John Shakespeare had suffered financial reverses from William’s teen years until well into the height of the playwright’s popularity and success. In 1596, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, almost certainly purchased by William, who the next year bought a sizable house in Stratford. By the time of his death, William had substantial properties, both professional and personal, which he bestowed on his theatrical associates and his family (primarily his daughter Susanna, having rewritten his will one month before his death to protect his assets from Judith’s new husband, Thomas Quiney, who ran afoul of church doctrine and public esteem before and after the marriage)

Shakespeare probably left school at 15, which was the norm, and took some sort of job, especially since this was the period of his father’s financial difficulty.


When, in 1592, the Plague closed the theaters for about two years, Shakespeare turned to writing book-length narrative poetry. Most notable were “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece,” both of which were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, whom scholars accept as Shakespeare’s friend and benefactor despite a lack of documentation. During this same period, Shakespeare was writing his sonnets, which are more likely signs of the time’s fashion rather than actual love poems detailing any particular relationship. He returned to play writing when theaters reopened in 1594, and published no more poetry. His sonnets were published without his consent in 1609, shortly before his retirement.
Amid all of his success, Shakespeare suffered the loss of his only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of 11. But Shakespeare’s career continued unabated.
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin King James of Scotland, the Chamberlain’s Men was renamed the King’s Men, and Shakespeare’s productivity and popularity continued uninterrupted. He invested in London real estate and, one year away from retirement, purchased a second theater, the Blackfriars Gatehouse, in partnership with his fellow actors. His final play was Henry VIII, two years before his death in 1616.


Incredibly, most of Shakespeare’s plays had never been published in anything except pamphlet form, and were simply extant as acting scripts stored at the Globe. Only the efforts of two of Shakespeare’s company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, preserved his 36 plays (minus Pericles, the thirty-seventh) [Barnet, xvii] in the First Folio. Heminges and Condell published the plays, they said, “only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare” [Chute, 133]. Theater scripts were not regarded as literary works of art, but only the basis for the performance. Plays were a popular form of entertainment for all layers of society in Shakespeare’s time, which perhaps explains why Hamlet feels compelled to instruct the traveling Players on the fine points of acting, urging them not “to split the ears of the groundlings,” nor “speak no more than is set down for them.”

Present copies of Shakespeare’s plays have, in some cases, been reconstructed in part from scripts written down by various members of an acting company who performed particular roles. Shakespeare’s plays, like those of many of the actors who also were playwrights, belonged to the acting company. The performance, rather than the script, was what concerned the author, for that was how his play would become popular—and how the company, in which many actors were shareholders, would make money.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church where he had been baptized exactly 52 years earlier.




وهنا نبذة مختصرة بالعربية

وليام شكسبير

نبذة عنه:
هو أديب وكاتب مسرحي وشاعر إنجليزي ،ولد (تم تعميده) في 26 أبريل 1564م وتوفي في 23 أبريل 1616م بكنيسة سترت فورد بآفون ، بانجلترا و يعتبر أعظم أديب في تاريخ انجلترا وتعتبر مسرحيات وقصائده كلاسيكيات في أقسام الأدب الإنجليزي في جامعات العالم. كما أن أعماله كانت مسرحاً ومادة للدراسات العليا والنقدية وهناك من قرأ أعمال شكسبير قراءات ماركسية أو حتى رومانسية ، بالأضافة إلى أن أعماله تم اقتباسها في الكثير من الأفلام والمسرحيات حول العالم.


سيرته :التحق شكسبير بالمدرسة الابتدائية بقرية سترت فورد في آفون حيث درس مبادئ اللغات اللاتينية واليونانية والفرنسية, ومكنته دراسته هذه من التعمق في التاريخ والأدب الكلاسيكي ، ولم يتمكن شكسبير من إكمال دراسته بسبب الأحوال المادية السيئة لوالده، حيث اضطر للعمل. تزوج من (آن هاثاواي) وهو في الثامنة عشر التي أنجبت له ( هامنت)-ولد و(جوديث) - بنت. كان يحب التمثيل بالإضافة إلى الشعر مما جعله ينتقل إلى لندن ، حيث التحق بأشهر الفرق المسرحية كاتباً لمسرحياتها ،ونشر أول أعماله الشعرية "فينوس وادونيس". ويعتبر من أعظم أدباء عصره تأثر وليم شكسبير في كتاباته عن عصر الملوك والأساطير وفى موضوعاته عن الخيانة والقتل والضمائر القاسية.

تأثر شكسبير في كتاباته بما كتبه المؤرخ القديم بلوتارخ.



أهم أعماله :
هاملت 1600-1601 م.
عطيل 1604-1605 م.
الملك لير 1605-1606 م.
ماكبث 1605-1606 م.
تاجر البندقية 1596-1597 م.
روميو وجولييت 1594-1595م.


أعمال ويليام شكسبير الكاملة :التراجيديات: روميو وجولييت | ماكبث | الملك لير | هاملت | عطيل| تيتوس أندرونيكوس | يوليوس قيصر | أنطونيو وكليوباترا| كريولانس | ترويلوس وكريسيدا | تيمون الأثيني
الكوميديات: حلم ليلة صيف | كل شيء بخير وسينتهي بشكل جيد | كما تحبها| سيمبلين | الحب خسارة للعمل | القياس للقياس | تاجر البندقية | زوجات ويندسور البهيجات | الكثير مما يمكن فعله بشأن لا شيء | بيرسيليس، أمير تير | ترويض النمرة | كوميديا الأخطاء | العاصفة | الليلة الثانية عشرة أو سمها كما تشاء | السيدان الفيرونيان | القريبان النبيلان | حكاية الشتاء
التاريخيات: الملك جون | ريتشارد الثاني | هنري الرابع، الجزء الأول | هنري الرابع، الجزء الثاني | هنري الخامس| هنري السادس، الجزء الثاني| هنري السادس، الجزء الثاني | هنري السادس، الجزء الثالث | ريتشارد الثالث | هنري الثامن
أشعار وسوناتات: السوناتات | فينوس وأدونيس | إغتصاب لوكيريس | الحاج المغرم | العنقاء والسلحفاة | تذمر حبيب
كتابات شكسبير الضائعة: إدوارد الثالث | سير توماس مور | كاردينيو | عمل الحب رابح

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Pride and prejudice ==>Themes, Motifs & Symbols



Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.


Love
Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues. (Of course, one could also say that Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Darcy of pride—the title cuts both ways.) Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s idiocy, and Wickham’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.


Reputation

Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys. Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when Lydia elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming Wickham’s lover without benefit of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family. The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have condemned the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennets’ behalf thus becomes all the more generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If Darcy’s money had failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?

Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist: she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of that structure.



Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.


Courtship

In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two courtships—those between Darcy and Elizabeth and between Bingley and Jane. Within this broad structure appear other, smaller courtships: Mr. Collins’s aborted wooing of Elizabeth, followed by his successful wooing of Charlotte Lucas; Miss Bingley’s unsuccessful attempt to attract Darcy; Wickham’s pursuit first of Elizabeth, then of the never-seen Miss King, and finally of Lydia. Courtship therefore takes on a profound, if often unspoken, importance in the novel. Marriage is the ultimate goal, courtship constitutes the real working-out of love. Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a person’s personality, and each courtship becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as a means to social advancement).
Journeys

Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place indoors, and the action centers around the Bennet home in the small village of Longbourn. Nevertheless, journeys—even short ones—function repeatedly as catalysts for change in the novel. Elizabeth’s first journey, by which she intends simply to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins, brings her into contact with Mr. Darcy, and leads to his first proposal. Her second journey takes her to Derby and Pemberley, where she fans the growing flame of her affection for Darcy. The third journey, meanwhile, sends various people in pursuit of Wickham and Lydia, and the journey ends with Darcy tracking them down and saving the Bennet family honor, in the process demonstrating his continued devotion to Elizabeth.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Pemberley

Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit symbolism, which perhaps has something to do with the novel’s reliance on dialogue over description. Nevertheless, Pemberley, Darcy’s estate, sits at the center of the novel, literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man who owns it. Elizabeth visits it at a time when her feelings toward Darcy are beginning to warm; she is enchanted by its beauty and charm, and by the picturesque countryside, just as she will be charmed, increasingly, by the gifts of its owner. Austen makes the connection explicit when she describes the stream that flows beside the mansion. “In front,” she writes, “a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.” Darcy possesses a “natural importance” that is “swelled” by his arrogance, but which coexists with a genuine honesty and lack of “artificial appearance.” Like the stream, he is neither “formal, nor falsely adorned.” Pemberley even offers a symbol-within-a-symbol for their budding romance: when Elizabeth encounters Darcy on the estate, she is crossing a small bridge, suggesting the broad gulf of misunderstanding and class prejudice that lies between them—and the bridge that their love will build across it.

[ღالبرنسيسةღ]

Analysis of Major Characters

Elizabeth Bennet
The second daughter in the Bennet family, and the most intelligent and quick-witted, Elizabeth is the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice and one of the most well-known female characters in English literature. Her admirable qualities are numerous—she is lovely, clever, and, in a novel defined by dialogue, she converses as brilliantly as anyone. Her honesty, virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad behavior that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society. Nevertheless, her sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments often lead her astray;Pride and Prejudice is essentially the story of how she (and her true love, Darcy) overcome all obstacles—including their own personal failings—to find romantic happiness. Elizabeth must not only cope with a hopeless mother, a distant father, two badly behaved younger siblings, and several snobbish, antagonizing females, she must also overcome her own mistaken impressions of Darcy, which initially lead her to reject his proposals of marriage. Her charms are sufficient to keep him interested, fortunately, while she navigates familial and social turmoil. As she gradually comes to recognize the nobility of Darcy’s character, she realizes the error of her initial prejudice against him.

Fitzwilliam Darcy

The son of a wealthy, well-established family and the master of the great estate of Pemberley, Darcy is Elizabeth’s male counterpart. The narrator relates Elizabeth’s point of view of events more often than Darcy’s, so Elizabeth often seems a more sympathetic figure. The reader eventually realizes, however, that Darcy is her ideal match. Intelligent and forthright, he too has a tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and his high birth and wealth make him overly proud and overly conscious of his social status. Indeed, his haughtiness makes him initially bungle his courtship. When he proposes to her, for instance, he dwells more on how unsuitable a match she is than on her charms, beauty, or anything else complimentary. Her rejection of his advances builds a kind of humility in him. Darcy demonstrates his continued devotion to Elizabeth, in spite of his distaste for her low connections, when he rescues Lydia and the entire Bennet family from disgrace, and when he goes against the wishes of his haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by continuing to pursue Elizabeth. Darcy proves himself worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up repenting her earlier, overly harsh judgment of him.

Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley
Elizabeth’s beautiful elder sister and Darcy’s wealthy best friend, Jane and Bingley engage in a courtship that occupies a central place in the novel. They first meet at the ball in Meryton and enjoy an immediate mutual attraction. They are spoken of as a potential couple throughout the book, long before anyone imagines that Darcy and Elizabeth might marry. Despite their centrality to the narrative, they are vague characters, sketched by Austen rather than carefully drawn. Indeed, they are so similar in nature and behavior that they can be described together: both are cheerful, friendly, and good-natured, always ready to think the best of others; they lack entirely the prickly egotism of Elizabeth and Darcy. Jane’s gentle spirit serves as a foil for her sister’s fiery, contentious nature, while Bingley’s eager friendliness contrasts with Darcy’s stiff pride. Their principal characteristics are goodwill and compatibility, and the contrast of their romance with that of Darcy and Elizabeth is remarkable. Jane and Bingley exhibit to the reader true love unhampered by either pride or prejudice, though in their simple goodness, they also demonstrate that such a love is mildly dull.

Mr. Bennet
Mr. Bennet is the patriarch of the Bennet household—the husband of Mrs. Bennet and the father of Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary. He is a man driven to exasperation by his ridiculous wife and difficult daughters. He reacts by withdrawing from his family and assuming a detached attitude punctuated by bursts of sarcastic humor. He is closest to Elizabeth because they are the two most intelligent Bennets. Initially, his dry wit and self-possession in the face of his wife’s hysteria make him a sympathetic figure, but, though he remains likable throughout, the reader gradually loses respect for him as it becomes clear that the price of his detachment is considerable. Detached from his family, he is a weak father and, at critical moments, fails his family. In particular, his foolish indulgence of Lydia’s immature behavior nearly leads to general disgrace when she elopes withWickham. Further, upon her disappearance, he proves largely ineffective. It is left to Mr. Gardiner and Darcy to track Lydia down and rectify the situation. Ultimately, Mr. Bennet would rather withdraw from the world than cope with it.

Mrs. Bennet
Mrs. Bennet is a miraculously tiresome character. Noisy and foolish, she is a woman consumed by the desire to see her daughters married and seems to care for nothing else in the world. Ironically, her single-minded pursuit of this goal tends to backfire, as her lack of social graces alienates the very people (Darcy and Bingley) whom she tries desperately to attract. Austen uses her continually to highlight the necessity of marriage for young women. Mrs. Bennet also serves as a middle-class counterpoint to such upper-class snobs as Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley, demonstrating that foolishness can be found at every level of society. In the end, however, Mrs. Bennet proves such an unattractive figure, lacking redeeming characteristics of any kind, that some readers have accused Austen of unfairness in portraying her—as if Austen, like Mr. Bennet, took perverse pleasure in poking fun at a woman already scorned as a result of her ill breeding.

[ღالبرنسيسةღ]

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18-with translation and Analysis


<<shall I compare>>


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day

Thou art more lovely and more temperate

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

And summer's lease hath all too short a date

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines

And often is his gold complexion dimmed

And every fair from fair sometimes declines

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade

when in eternal lines to time thou growest

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see

So long lives this. and this gives life to thee


هذه هى القصيدة رقم 18 الشهيرة التى يبدأ فيها شكسبير بعقد

مقارنة بين جمال محبوبته واعتدال الجو فى يوم من أيام الصيف

الأنجليزى ثم ينكر هذه المقارنة لأن الصيف فصل متقلب وينتهى الى

ان محبوبته تكسر حدود الزمن لأن الشاعر قد خلدها فى قصيدته

التى لابد أن يكتب لها الخلود فى رأيه وأن ينشدها الناس على مر الزمان.


ولتلك القصيدة ترجمتان

الترجمة الأولى

..ترجمة : د/ محمد عنانى - جريدة المساء - 1962..

ألا تشبهين صفاء المصيف

بل أنت أحلى وأصفى سماء

ففى الصيف تعصف ريح الذبول

وتعبث فى برعمات الربيع

ولا يلبث الصيف حتى يزول

وفى الصيف تسطع عين السماء

ويحتدم القيظ مثل الأتون

وفى الصيف يحجب عنا السحاب

ضيا السما وجمال ذكاء

وما من جميل يظل جميلا

فشيمة كل البرايا الفناء

ولكن صيفك ذا لن يغيب

ولن تفتقدى فيه نور الجمال

ولن يتباهى الفناء الرهيب

بأنك تمشين بين الظلال

اذا صغت منك قصيد الأبد

فمادام فى الأرض ناس تعيش

ومادام فيها عيون ترى

فسوف يردد شعرى الزمان

وفيه تعيشين بين الورى


..والترجمة الثانية لفطينه النائب- من كتاب فن الترجمة- للدكتور صفاء خلوصى- 1986..


من ذا يقارن حسنك المغرى بصيف قد تجلى

وفنون سحرك قد بدت فى ناظرى أسمى وأغلى

تجنى الرياح العاتيات على البراعم وهى جذلى

والصيف يمضى مسرعا اذ عقده المحدود ولى

كم أشرقت عين السماء بحرها تلتهب

ولكم خبا فى وجهها الذهبى نور يغرب

لابد للحسن البهى عن الجميل سيذهب

فالدهر تغير واطوار الطبيعة قلب

لكن صيفك سرمدى ما اعتراه ذبول

لن يفقد الحسن الذى ملكت فيه بخيل

والموت لن يزهو بظلك فى حماه يجول

ستعاصرين الدهر فى شعرى وفيه أقول:

ما دامت الأنفاس تصعد والعيون تحدق

سيظل شعرى خالداً وعليك عمراً يغدق

theme:
the general theme of this poem
is the greatness og poetry poetery is eternal,it never perishes(dies)

Analysis

William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet when it comes to its formal characteristics. Thus, the sonnet contains three quartets, and a couplet. Furthermore, the sonnet has the characteristic rhyme scheme of English sonnets: AB AB CD CD EF EF GG. The form of English sonnets often encourages the thorough consideration of an argument or idea, which is then wittily illustrated or summed up somehow in the final couplet . In comparison to the typical form of English sonnets, I find the form of Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 to be somewhat different. But, admittedly, sonnet 18 does encourage the thorough consideration of a particular idea. The idea being to compare the poet’s beloved to a summer’s day. However, this idea is not wittily illustrated or summed up in the final couplet. Instead, Shakespeare uses the last lines of the sonnet to go in a new direction towards a surprising conclusion. Until line 8, Shakespeare has compared his object of affection to a summer’s day, whereas in lines 9-14, the attention is shifted towards arguing that poetry is immortal. Consequently, the form in sonnet 18 is not the form of a typical English sonnet. Instead, interestin

[ღالبرنسيسةღ]

The world is too much with us"




The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 4

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 8
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 12
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

Summary
Angrily, the speaker accuses the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and to everything meaningful: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" He says that even when the sea "bares her bosom to the moon" and the winds howl, humanity is still out of tune, and looks on uncaringly at the spectacle of the storm. The speaker wishes that he were a pagan raised according to a different vision of the world, so that, "standing on this pleasant lea," he might see images of ancient gods rising from the waves, a sight that would cheer him greatly. He imagines "Proteus rising from the sea," and Triton "blowing his wreathed horn."


Form

This poem is one of the many excellent sonnets Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s. Sonnets are fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic pentameter. There are several varieties of sonnets; "The world is too much with us" takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, modeled after the work of Petrarch, an Italian poet of the early Renaissance. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts, an octave (the first eight lines of the poem) and a sestet (the final six lines). The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat variable; in this case, the octave follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, and the sestet follows a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD. In most Petrarchan sonnets, the octave proposes a question or an idea that the sestet answers, comments upon, or criticizes.


Commentary
"The world is too much with us" falls in line with a number of sonnets written by Wordsworth in the early 1800s that criticize or admonish what Wordsworth saw as the decadent material cynicism of the time. This relatively simple poem angrily states that human beings are too preoccupied with the material ("The world...getting and spending") and have lost touch with the spiritual and with nature. In the sestet, the speaker dramatically proposes an impossible personal solution to his problem--he wishes he could have been raised as a pagan, so he could still see ancient gods in the actions of nature and thereby gain spiritual solace. His thunderous "Great God!" indicates the extremity of his wish--in Christian England, one did not often wish to be a pagan.

On the whole, this sonnet offers an angry summation of the familiar Wordsworthian theme of communion with nature, and states precisely how far the early nineteenth century was from living out the Wordsworthian ideal. The sonnet is important for its rhetorical force (it shows Wordsworth's increasing confidence with language as an implement of dramatic power, sweeping the wind and the sea up like flowers in a bouquet), and for being representative of other poems in the Wordsworth canon--notably ."London, 1802," in which the speaker dreams of bringing back the dead poet John Milton to save his decadent era.

[Pure]

You are amazing

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You are amazing

Many thanks darling

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Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

religious and educational issues of his day. He has been characterized as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.Arnold's Dover Beach and all his other works had became the poetic forefeather of Modern Sensibility.Arnold's Dover Beach 1867 has the philosophy of Romanticism and its evolution into cyrical Modernism of Industrial Revolution. It holds a great deal of personal meaning to any secular that might feel that the creativity of most poets excludes them from their readership.


Background about the poem,


Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851,the year they married and the year Arnold was believed to had written Dover Beach. Arnold's central message was that the modern wold had shaken the faith of people in God and religion and that the whole christain believe was cast in doubt.He laments the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in Dover Beach






Stanza 1:


The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in


The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the sea side, he came to the window to share the visual beauty of the scene.Here he mentions the world before the war, but now everything is destroyed and religion become weak and this shows Arnold's sad vision on the present life. Then he describes the motion of the sea. The wavest hit the rocks and this make a spray so he doesn't see the sea.he only seea the long lines of spray.When the sea hits the land, the waves draw back the small pebbles. It makes a very deep lou sound like the roar of the lon.the sound of these pebbles began and stop and then began again.This sound cause the emotion of sadness to the poet. The poet finds that the world in which he lives, has no love no peace, no light or joy.This STANZA expresses the human misery which exists as a result to the human faults.It also shows Arnold's ability to predict events.


Figures of Speech:
- The poet uses(tonight-moon-air)to show it is night.
He uses adj like (fair-tranguil-calm)to create a harmonious mood.


He uses(come - listen) to involves his reader.


Here the word (only)can be seen as a caesura.
Verbs like (cease -again -begin) show that the pebbles' motion are a never ending movement.





Stanza 2:


Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

1. The second stanza introduces the Greek author"Sophocles" hearing the same sound in the meditterronean when inspired to write his tragedies such as "Antigone, King Odepius and Electra. Then he reconnects this idea to the present.he uses "Sophocles" to refer to the past and to hold a comparison between the past and the present.Although there is a distance in time and pace, the general feelings prevails.He finds in hearing the sea sound, the retreat of religion and faith.

So he mentions Sophocles to give the reader a sort of sadness which Europe suffered and to say that Sophocles also knows about our misery. the expression" northen sea" is a connecting element between two stanzas. A recent critic connects the two (Arnold and Sophocles) as artists, Arnold the lyric poet and Sophocles the tragedian. each attempting to transform this note of sadness.











To Be continued,,,

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Stanza 3:


The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.





The third stanza reflects the poet's sadness in the sound of the sea. He mentions religion and scepticism as a sort of threat. Here he compares the sea to religion as the sea is vast and deep just as religion which is extending. So the sea is turned into the sea of faith, which is a metaphor for a time when religion could still be experinenced without the doubt that the modern age brought about through Darwinism, The Industrial Revolution, Imperalis and this cause a crisis in religion. When religion was still intact or strong, the world was dressed "like folds of a bright gridle furled". So this sea of faith surronds the world, but now this faith is gone because religion is decline as it has been attacked by doubt and scepticism.As a result, the world lies there stripped, naked and bleak. So without faith, the whole world seems to have a skin disease. The first 3 lines creat feeling of hope but the last lines sound sad and hopeless."But now" is a caesura







Stanza 4:


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.




The fourth and final stanza begins with a dramatic pledge by the lyrical self and with an appeal to love. He doesn't mean love between man and women but between conutries. In this stanza he speakes about the first time of faith and how it was strong and powerful. then he turns to his beloved asking her to be "true", meaning faithful to him and not to be changeable like the world. Then he move to compare the world to"a land of dreams" which is 'various, beautiful and new". He doesn't see Europe as the land of dreams after losing faith, love and peace between countries

Ib these emotionally lines Arnold says that the beautiful world, world of romantic is a lie. There is only the modern world which is devoid of answered hopes or prayers.












Figures of Speech:

The poem is writen in the blank verse, irregular rhymes (Iambic pentametre)

Anaphora like in (gleams - glimmering) line 4, 5

Personification (sea meets) line 8

Metaphor: Sea of faith Line12 to show that humanity was more religious"

bright gridle furled line 23 emphasizes that faith inseparable to earth.

The waves draw back : Compares waves to intelligent person

land of dreams: Compares world to land of dreams"

Breath of night : compares night to person who breathes.



Paradox: roar of pebbles

Simile: the last line in the last stanza(Where ignorant armies clash by night) allusion to a passage.

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ON HIS BLINDNESS



When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."



Lines 1-8:
Milton gets rather impatient at the thought of his blindness. He is blind in the middle age. Blindness prevents him from using his poetic talent by writing something great to glorify God. He has a keen desire to serve God by using his poetic talent, because he knows that God wants man to use his God-given power or he may be punished. In an impatient mood Milton
doubts if God would be just in demanding work from a blind man like him.



Lines 8-14:
Milton’s attitude of doubt passes off in a moment. His inner conscience rises up with its faith in God’s justice. He realizes that God does not need man’s work by way of service to him; nor does he care whether man uses His gifts. He is the King of kings; His dominion is over the universe. He has thousands of angels doing His biddings at all times flying over land and sea. He has thousands of others who stand by His throne and sing His praise. The latter too are as good as beloved as the active angels. So, patient submission to His will is the best service to Him.


To be continued