Alfred, Lord Tennyson was one of the most famous poets of the Victorian era, some of his most famous poems include Ulysses, In Memoriam or Lady of Shalott. This paper will focus on his poem published in 1830 entitled Mariana. Mariana is Tennyson's well known poem, inspired by the charactre of the same name in shakespear's play Measure for Measure. T.S Eliot heard in Mariana 'something new happening in English verse”, and critics such as Carol Christ or Dwight Culler have “commented preceptively on its use of atomistic detail to create a landscape of strangeness appropriate to this sick-spirited maiden”. Mariana is a complex poem it is both a lyrical poem and a pathetic fallacy. This paper will focus on how meter, rhythm, imagery, and metaphor create meaning and establish tone. The poem opens with a quote from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure 'Mariana in the moated grange'. In the play Mariana is deserted by her lover Angleo, and she is spending her days in a solitary grange. The quote gives the reader of the poem the main theme it explores, which is Mariana's longing for her lover to return. It is interesting to note that the quote is lacking a verb, which implies that there is no action in the poem, that there is a sense of stasis or a sense of unending time, isolation and despair, Mariana can therefore be called a lyrical poem, indeed lyric poems as J.S Mill puts it express 'feeling confessing itself to itself in solitude'. It can also be described as a speech overheard, Mariana the poem is in a way a rewriting of Mariana the character of Shakespeare's play. The form of the poem also reinforce this ideas of lyricality, ' lyric poetry may be said to retain most prominently the elements which evidence its origins in musical ... ... middle of paper ... ...undending sense of time “the slow clock ticking” she conscious of the unusual slowness of time. The poem ends by Mariana addressing God 'Oh God, that I were dead', here we have an ironic reference to Measure for Measure, indeed in the play Duke Vincentio diguised as a fiar reunites the two lovers. One question the poem rises is the question of voices, indeed Mariana only said few things and the narrative voice is telling the rest of her story, here we can see the passivness of Mariana, who is only waiting for her lover. She is the center of the poem and yet she is not given a strong voice, she is not the actress of her life but a mere spectator, she is the second character of a play awaiting for her line. Mariana is a complex poem, a poem which is “notable for its portrayal of regression and decay on both the material and the psychological levels”. Indeed
...ion of the situation to the Ancient Mariner. Moreover, the way in which the dialogue is presented, makes the structure seems more of a script of a play. The structure of the poem is a key characteristic in displaying the theme, for by telling the story as a personal experience, it helps the reader understand the moral and theme intended as a warning to people.
The book I read was The Island by Gary Paulsen. It is about a 15 year
From the very first word of the poem, there is a command coming from an unnamed speaker. This establishes a sense of authority and gives the speaker a dominant position where they are dictating the poem to the reader rather than a collaborative interacti...
What is unusual about Pastan?s poem is the way she effectively conveys these sentiments by the
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
The central tension of fleeting versus eternal is vital to One Art, as it assists in using the villanelle’s structure and visual imagery of the poem. This is to illustrate that like this poem, most poetry contains many meanings that can be interpreted in many different ways.
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
The verbose use of imagery in this poem is really what makes everything flow in this poem. As this poem is written in open form, the imagery of this writing is what makes this poem poetic and stand out to you. Marisa de los Santos begins her poem with “Its here in a student’s journal, a blue confession in smudged, erasable ink: ‘I can’t stop hoping/ I’ll wake up, suddenly beautiful’” (1-3). Even from the first lines of this story you can already picture this young girl sitting at her desk, doodling on her college ruled paper. It automatically hooks you into the poem, delving deeper and deeper as she goes along. She entices you into reading more as she writes, daring you to imagine the most perfect woman in the world, “cobalt-eyed, hair puddling/ like cognac,” (5-6). This may not be the ideal image of every person, but from the inten...
The structure of this poem is not the traditional form of poetry, in that he begins with a first person statement then after an indentation, he elaborates on it almost lik...
This entire poem talk about how beauty fades with time. Thus, like any carpe diem poetry, one is urged to cherish time. In this case, beauty is associated with time and the narrator believes that both should be cherished with the same intensity. There is a tone of urgency to find physical love, as the narrator only addresses physical beauty, which fades. He wants the girl to learn to be "desired" and "admired" while she is still beautiful.
Blunden, Edmund and Heinemann, Eds. “Tennyson.” Selected Poems. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1960. p.1. print.
The poem consists of seven Spenserian stanzas; the Spenserian stanza is composed of “nine iambic lines where the first eight are iambic pentameters and the ninth is an iambic hexameter; its rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc” (Spenserian stanzas). Thus, this work has a rather complicated form. Following this form, every stanza includes deep and thorough meanings that subsequently convey the author’s notions.
...ues. The body of symbolism indicates Thomas’s changing view between the writer and his environment and outward look of the relationship with his own children. The use of surrealism provides a vivid image of his life’s despair. Though the poem can be analyze and evaluated from all of the different methods of criticism. The text within the verses indicates that the evaluation of the author is indicative to the psychological critical approach.
This piece of the poem is full of the images of nature. The image of sun and the moon can be find throughout the whole work, but in this part it probably poses as a symbol of rationality and intellect. Its function differs from the function of the moon and its light shines its rays of light on things to make them clearer, more comprehensible and earthly. T...