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Poetry British Romanticism
When we analyze poetry, what were going to do is
take a look at the structure of poems and try to
figure out their meanings. Poems are very
compact. They have a lot of information in a
really small space. So, youre going to have to
analyze each line in a poem and really take a
look at all those words and try to figure out
what they mean. I always tell my students there
are lots of correct answers as well as a lot of
wrong answers when analyzing poetry. Your job is
to try to figure out meaning in a poem and then
you have to use lines from that poem to support
your ideas.
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Poem Example A Poison Treeby William Blake

• I was angry with my friendI told my wrath, my
  wrath did end.I was angry with my foeI told it
  not, my wrath did grow.And I waterd it in
  fears,Night and morning with my tearsAnd I
  sunned it with smiles,And with soft deceitful
  wiles.And it grew both day and night,Till it
  bore an apple brightAnd my foe beheld it
  shine,And he knew that it was mine,And into my
  garden stoleWhen the night had veild the
  poleIn the morning glad I seeMy foe
  outstretchd beneath the tree.

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Structure

• Rhyming or Prose not rhyming.
• When we analyze the structure of a poem, we
  usually try to find out if it is a rhyming poem
  where lines rhyme perhaps at the end of the lines
  or sometimes in the middle. We even have sight
  rhymes where the words look like they would rhyme
  on the page even though if we pronounce them, the
  words dont rhyme, and then we have prose and
  what prose essentially means is non-rhyming.
• If we take a look at A Poison Tree, we can see
  that this is a rhyming poem. For example, in the
  first stanza I was angry with my friend / I
  told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry
  with my foe/ I told it not, my wrath did grow.
  We can see that the first and second lines rhyme
  friend / end and the third and fourth lines
  rhyme foe/grow.

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Structure II

• Poems are usually broken into sections separated
  by a space called Stanzas like a paragraph -
  couplet 2 lines, tercet 3, quatrain 4
• A Poison Tree has 4 stanzas and each is made of 4
  lines quatrain
• Why know this structure?
• Sometimes the structure leads to a better
  understanding of the meaning. For example, from A
  Poison Tree, we can see that every stanza kind of
  moves a little bit. The first part talks about
  friends and enemies, the next stanza talks about
  ones wrath growing and how, the next stanza talks
  about the tree bearing fruit, and finally the
  last stanza shows the foes defeat. So you can
  see those stanzas are there to break up time and
  show us movement in the poem.

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Analyzing Poetry

• Speaker
• The person speaking in the poem may not be the
  poet. It may be that the poet has created a
  persona, or a person in the poem.
• In A Poison Tree the speaker is in the poem,
  talking about his/her life. We know this because
  it says I many times. Remember, the speaker is
  not necessarily the same person as the author!
• Audience in the poem
• Theres often an audience thats in the poem. For
  example, the poem may be written to someone
  specific not us.
• The audience in A Poison Tree is not the Foe but
  rather some third party. We know this because in
  the end the speaker says, In the morning glad I
  see / my foe rather than you outstretchd
  beneath the tree
• Audience reading poem there is the intended
  audience when poem was written and of course you
  are the audience too!

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Words 1

• Tone of voice Rhythm
• tells us the mood happy / sad/ angry / excited/
  passionate / etc
• Tells us the message how we should feel about
  the information
• Again in A Poison Tree, if you listen to the
  poem, theres a sing song like rhythm there. It
  is reminiscent of a childrens poem like Roses
  are red / violets are blue / sugar is sweet/ and
  so are you. And yet, the author is contrasting
  this innocent type sound with the killing of
  ones foe through the planned growth of a poison
  tree and poison apple.

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Words 2

• Diction choice of words
• If you describe a car crash and you call it an
  accident thats a very different image then if I
  said two cars smashed into one another.
• Syntax order of words
• If someone says, Hi, how are you doing?, thats
  a regular kind of order of words were used to,
  but if the person says, Doing how are you? -
  that would kind of surprise us because the order
  of words were reversed - so pay attention when
  word orders are different, the author is trying
  to get your attention.
• Denotation literal meaning Connotation
  implied meaning
• If I said Mary had a cow and thats a literal
  meaning or denotation then Mary is probably a
  farmer, and she owns a cow. However, connotation
  is the implied meaning. If I said Mary had a cow,
  I might mean that shes really upset - not that
  she actually owned a cow.
• Poets often make use of both literal and implied
  meanings in poems in fact, he/she may want us
  to see both meanings at the same time!

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Figure of Speech

• Simile (like)
• she has eyes like blue pools
• Metaphor (is/are)
• her eyes are blue pools
• Personification / anthropomorphism
• giving inanimate objects human or living
  characteristics, so your can say the car purred
  happily or the door groaned in pain
• Allusion (reference to another work, historical
  event, art, or person to add depth of meaning)
• An Allusion can be in the title of the poem or
  some line in the poem will refer to another work,
  maybe a piece of art or a person, to add depth of
  meaning. It doesnt mean the poem is about that
  actual thing!! It means its similar. By alluding
  to that other idea, the poet brings greater depth
  to the poem.

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Figures of Speech Cont..

• Metonymy words based on association
• Crown monarchy so when we say he took the
  crown, we dont mean just took the crown like a
  thief. We probably mean that hes taking over the
  monarchy and that hes become king.
• Synecdoche part whole
• Hand whole person so when he takes her hand in
  marriage, he doesnt just marry her hand, he
  marries all of her.
• Hyperbole exaggeration
• I told you a million times to turn down that
  stereo!
• Litote understatement
• Lets say I ate 10 candy bars, and someone asks,
  Did you eat a lot of chocolate today? and I
  reply, Just a tad. opposite of hyperbole
• Paradox and Oxymoron - impossibilities and
  contradictions
• A paradox is two situations that couldnt
  possibly occur at the same time a man could be
  alive and dead in a poem at the same time.
• An oxymoron combines two contradictory terms like
  jumbo shrimp. Shrimp means small and jumbo very
  big, so how you can have jumbo smalls??

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Sound

• Mood (flowing, choppy)
• We can really get the mood from the way things
  sound. I remember a line from the Raven, and the
  silk and sad uncertain rustling of each purple
  curtain thrilled me, as Ive never been thrilled
  before. The sound of that can really give us a
  mood or an idea.
• Onomatopoeia words that sound things they
  represent
• buzz sounds like a bee sound or hiss sounds like
  the actual cat sound
• Alliteration same consonant at beginning of
  each word
• Little lover lacy
• Assonance same vowel sounds close together
• The crook took the book
• Poets use these techniques to get the readers
  attention, so a line where you find this is
  usually important.

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Rhyme Scheme

• Often what will happen in a poem is well have
  very similar rhyme schemes. So if we take a look
  at A Poison Tree the first stanza, ends on the
  sounds from friend sound A, the next line end
  sound A, third line ends with foe and rhymes
  with grow, so that would be Sound B. So our
  rhyme scheme would be a, a, b, b.
• I was angry with my friend sound a
• I told my wrath, my wrath did end. sound a I
  was angry with my foe sound a I told it not,
  my wrath did grow. sound a .
• Rhyme schemes can change - in fact they can be
  very complicated - you can have abc, abc, you
  could have a b c b d b, so only every other line
  rhymes.
• Rhyme schemes can be really complicated. Take a
  look at the rhyme scheme, often there will be a
  change in the poems rhyme scheme and that will
  give us a clue thats an important line we should
  take a look at.

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Impressions

• Imagery sensory impressions
• In A Poison Tree, the second stanza And I
  watered it with fears, and night and morning with
  my tears, so the idea is that because hes not
  sharing his wrath, his fears, tears and sadness
  make it grow. I sun it with smiles, and with
  soft deceitful wiles, and so then he gets an
  idea, soft deceitful wiles, to some trickery that
  he might do. Again, there is some innocence in
  water and sun, but the author is not using them
  innocently. So we want to take a look at those
  sensory impressions because theyre trying to
  make an impact on us and make us feel something.
• Symbolism red rose love
• In A Poison Tree, the tree bore an apple
  bright, and the idea - and when we say we have
  an idea that bears fruit so the speakers
  ideas, soft deceitful wiles, and anger has grown
  until it bears fruit, an apple. The apple has a
  lot of symbolism. We think of Adam and Eve and
  the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Eating from
  the tree of knowledge brings death ultimately,
  and so we have an idea that this fruit is there
  as a temptation. My foe beheld its shine and he
  knew that it was mine, so it was almost like the
  speaker grew this tree and it bore fruit. The foe
  sees the fruit, goes into the garden, steals that
  fruit and in the morning glad I see my foe
  outstretched beneath the tree. And so the foe
  must have taken a bite of that apple, that poison
  fruit from the poison tree, and so hes
  outstretched like it has killed him.

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Irony

• Verbal irony (one thing said, another meaning
  intended)
• You could have a man tell a woman, I love you
  but we cant be sure of the meaning, does he
  really mean I love you, or is he being ironic?
  Is he saying, Yeah, I love you as in of course
  I DONT love you, but because we dont hear tone
  of voice in poems, we have to really look for
  other clues to let us know what the author means.

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British Romanticism

• The great flowering of English Romanticism
  occurred about the middle of the second decade of
  the 19th century when for some ten years England
  became the focus of European Romanticism. Poets
  such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Blake,
  Byron and Keats were the major writers of this
  period. These writers not only wrote poetry, but
  wrote about poetry itself.

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British RomanticismCharacteristics

• The natural and the supernatural an attempt to
  see the unique and beautiful in the simple and
  ordinary. The idea we are still connected to
  nature.
• Poetry is often remembrances of the past, and
  through memories we regain our link to the
  natural.
• It may take a supernatural event to make us
  recognize our link to the natural.
• Imagination was another important theme of
  English Romanticism.
• Imaginative mind can lead to real freedom.
• It is within imagination and emotion that truth
  can be found.
• Reason must be combined with emotion.
• Much of the poetry of this period was lyrical in
  style.
• Some of the distinguishing characteristics
  included emotion, subjectivity, melodiousness,
  imagination, description, and (sometimes)
  meditation.
• Many poems were elegies, odes and sonnets.

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British Romantic Hero

• Often rebellious in nature doesnt wish to
  follow the norms of society
• He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer
  or is in exile of some kind.
• Because he rejects the values and moral codes of
  society, he is often unrepentant by society's
  standards.
• Larger than life intellectual capacity, pride,
  and passion.
• These heightened abilities often make the hero
  arrogant, extremely confident, abnormally
  sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself.
• Moody by nature or passionate about a particular
  issue.
• Often plagued by a guilty memory of some terrible
  unnamed crime.
• With the possibility greatness, yet seriously
  flawed in some manner, our hero usually meets
  with sad a end.
• Due to these characteristics, the hero is often a
  figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.