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Love theme in romantic poetry
Love as a poetry theme
Love theme in poetry
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Known as the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen had started a war because of this. She was forcefully married to King Menelaus which made her Queen of Sparta. She was miserable and lonely until a visit from the people of Troy brought her and the handsome prince named Paris together. They fell in love and ran away together to Troy, this made Menelaus furious, so he assembled an army of Greek soldiers and declared war on Troy known as the Trojan War which lasted ten years long. In this poetry analysis I will talk about the two poems called “To Helen” by Edgar Allan Poe and “Helen” by Hilda Doolittle. Both poems are about Helen of Troy but Poe’s poem is romantic and H.D.’s poem is hateful.
The author of “To Helen” is known for his writing on weird and creepy subjects but Poe changed it up in this poem. The reason this poem is different, is because his first love died and this poem was like a tribute to her but if you really think about it, this poem found a way to be weird because his first love was his friend’s mom and he was only 14 years old. Poe uses similes, alliteration, and symbolism in this poem. In the first stanza Poe writes “Helen, thy beauty is to me; Like those Nicean barks of yore”, he is referring that his feelings at the sight of Helen’s beauty is the same feeling you get when you see victory ships. He also writes “The
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Poe focuses more on her outer beauty, that's all he talks about, which is kind of shallow if you think about it. H.D. based her poem on the consequences of Helen’s actions, she focuses more on Helen’s inner personality. Another thing you might notice is one poem is written by a man and the other by a woman, so it’s ok that H.D. talked bad about Helen, if Poe did, he would get crap for it. Poe’s poem often rhymes and H.D.’s rhymed at least one time in each stanza. The only comparison between the two poems is they know she is beautiful and the cause of the Trojan
Homer’s Iliad has been a European myth for many millennia , the long poetic narrative written in the 8th century B.C. recounts a fearsome war fought over a beautiful woman. The reliability of Homers Iliad as a true historical document has been challenged for hundreds of years and only through archaeological studies can the truth be deciphered. The Iliad was written five centuries after the war, where the stories had been passed down through the oral tradition, therefore the type of society reflected within the poems resemble much more the time of Homer . The fact and fiction of the Iliad has been uncovered through archaeology. Archaeologist found a site in which they thought to have been ‘Troy’ destroyed by the powerful country of Mycenae in the late Bronze Age. They found large amount of material culture from where they could reconstruct the society, this included pottery, engravings, murals and clay tablets. A reason for the Trojan War has always inspired great controversy. The Trojan War according to Homer was fought over the abduction of a beautiful women but this theory appears improbable. Other causes which could have sparked a war is Troy’s geographical positioning. This made it extremely opulent, where other countries of the Aegean would trade there goods and use its harbour. The Mycenaean’s being an extremely imperial, violent and militaristic country would have seen Troy as a great opportunity to gain territory and wealth, on this motive the war took place.
Similar to other classic literature, Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey exhibits the human struggle against a greater power, which each person must use their intellect, courage, and morals to overcome. These factors, which can be seen by the epithets and rhetorical questions, are posed to Penelope during the book. The poem is an exultation of man over the glory of the Gods because despite man’s limitations his achievements are obtained through the combination of his intelligence, fortitude and skills not supernatural powers.
Edgar Allan Poe's view on poetry is that all poems must be a "rhythmical creation of beauty". In his eyes, melancholy and sadness is beautful. He thinks that the death of a young beautiful woman is itself full of beauty. In both "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven", Poe writes about this so-called beauty.
Poe’s child and she died so Poe made the poem about her. The character in “To Helen” is Jane Stith. Jane was like Poe’s second mother. Poe wrote “To Helen” in memory of her. The setting of “The City in the Sea” takes place in an old, deserted city about to sink in the sea.
Many of Poe’s stories and poems can be tied to events that have happened in his life. A lot of the hard times that he had had gone through in his life he used as motivation to write his poems and stories. For example the story “The Masque of the Red Death” is thought of to be related to the consumption (aka tuberculosis), which took the life of many of the women he loved. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the dying old man good be seen as Poe’s adoptive father on his death bed, and how the old mans eye made the murderer uncomfortable could be an analogy for how Poe’s father made him feel uncomfortable because he knew that his father did not love him.
This essay explores the role of women in Homer's Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Derrick Walcott's Omeros (1990), epics written in very different historical periods. Common to all three epics are women as the transforming figure in a man's life, both in the capacity of a harlot and as wife.
The Iliad by Homer and the Women of Troy by Euripides are both Greek works of literature that look at the Trojan War from different perspectives. Book 6 of the Iliad illustrates that the ultimate glory is to fight for the city with no regard to the impact on the family. The Women of Troy focuses on the negatives that war causes, especially towards the soldier’s wives and children. Whereas the Iliad focuses on the battle itself and centers on the warriors, the Women of Troy focuses on the wrath the war brings upon the families left behind. The central theme in both the works is the Trojan War and they both offer perspectives of the duty of a person, the role of predetermined fate, and the role of women.
Edgar Allan Poe primarily authored stories dealing with Gothic literature; the stories were often quite dreary. Poe possessed a very sorrowful view of the world and he expressed this throughout his literary works. His goal was to leave an impression with every detail that he included in his stories. Although Poe’s stories seem very wretched and lackluster they all convey a certain idea. A trademark of Poe’s is his use of very long complex sentences. For instance, in his work The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tried to ensure that every detail was as relevant as possible by integrating a wide variety of emotion. In the third paragraph, of page two hundred ninety-seven, Poe wrote, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around…” This sentence illustrates the descriptiveness and complexity that Edgar Allan Poe’s works consisted of. The tormented cognizance of Poe led him to use a very gloomy diction throughout his writing. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of symbols and the way he conveyed his writing expr...
In the poem “To Helen” by Edgar Allan Poe, the author describes the lustful platonic admiration for a woman possibly refereeing to Helen of Troy. The fanciful tone is clearly illustrated through the diction of the speaker. The connotation behind the specific word usage the author uses helps the reader make these assumptions through his use of “beauty”, “perfumed sea” and even comparing this spiritual essence of woman to that “Psyche.”
During her time, Sappho was unique because her stories chose to focus on love while most other stories focused on wars. An example of this is shown as Sappho starts poem 16 with an optimistic approach to love as she argues that "some men say an army of horses…is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love". This personal approach on love's allure is much more relatable for an audience than war, as most people will experience these powerful emotions in their lifetime but not all will experience war directly. Sappho's even compares her own life experiences with that of Helen, who left her entire family for Paris of Troy. She states that the story "reminded me now of Anaktoria" but most importantly that she "would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians". Sappho says much more with this line than just of love's power, she is also alluding to the loss of someone she loved. This unusual first-person incorporation to a well-known part of history gives the audience an idea of just how painful love can be, as the idea of getting it back overcomes the excitement of war for
Poe’s life is reflected through Poe utilises the device of trochaic octameter meaning that the trochee begins with a syllable that is stressed followed by a weak (unstressed) syllable (Study Institution, 2013). The overall aim of using trochaic octameter is to exaggerate the stressed words, creating hyperbole. Using the first two lines of the first stanza as an example, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…” it is evident that every pair of words is a trochee, a set of stressed and unstressed syllables (Dictionary.com, 2015). When hyperbole is apparent, it also allows the alliteration to be enhanced. In the fourteenth stanza, the first two lines exhibit these two devices working together, “Then methought the air grew denser, perfume from an unseen censer, Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted For Poe, the hyperbole of his life was that his father abandoned him and that his mother died when he was just two years old.
First of all, the poems contrast with each other because they show different perspectives, Hilda Doolittle writes in her poem “All Greece hates/the still eyes in the white face,” this is from the perspective of the Greeks after Helen left them. They were too bitter to think clearly, and started only looking at Helen’s flaws, ignoring all of her flawless traits. Though in Poe’s poem, he’s focusing on only Helen’s flawless traits, he says in his poem, “Helen, thy beauty is to me/Like those Nicean barks of yore,” Poe in writing from the perspective of the someone in modern time, admiring Helen. This is shown when he writes, “To the glory that was Greece/And the
Homer, Iliad is the narration of the Trojan war. The Trojan war was one of the most important and significant wars of Greek mythology, Homer described how the war was triggered by the abduction of the most beautiful women known as Helen. This paper will argue how the traditional view of this poem is accurate because it indeed was Helens beauty and her selfishness that sparked the Trojan war. Although Helen was not happy about the outcomes of her mistakes. This paper will present how Helen faced many forms of self judgment, how she created many relationships with significant characters, such as Paris, Priam and Aphrodite. Homers portrayal of this significant women was remarkable as we were able to feel her pain and anguish, the readers were
Poe equates it to Helen’s endless love for Paris, the Prince of Troy, for whom she left Greece behind and continued to stand beside during the treachery of battle. Poe creates a tone of awe towards Helen’s perpetual beauty and devotion, creating that feeling in his word choice and allusions to Helen. On the contrary, H.D. uses a harsh tone, condemning Helen with bitter hatred. In the second stanza of “Helen”, she tells of “past enchantments” suggesting Helen’s endless loyalty to Paris was a frivolous fling, extending her anger to Paris and Troy for their protection of an immature and unfaithful woman simply because of how she looked. In the third stanza, H.D talks of “past ills” where she displays her bitterness at Helen’s decisions and choices. Helen chose to leave her husband, her duty as Queen, and chose to have the blood of thousands on her hands all for the pleasure of a pretty man. H.D finds these “past ills” evidence towards Helen’s treachery and betrayal of Greece, and finds no point in her prominent worship by people like Poe despite Helen’s beauty. These statements create an air of betrayal from H.D., who’s allusions to Helen’s relationships as idle and immature things show how this horrible cause of a 10-year war created
Both Poe and Doolittle's poems portrays Helen in divergent ways. Poe portrays Helen as if she was the god of beauty. While Doolittle displays Helen to have a lust personality. Doolittle feels as if Helen