The Contrast of Pre-Twentieth Century Love Poetry

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The Contrast of Pre-Twentieth Century Love Poetry

In the pre-twentieth century societies there were different views and

approaches to love, for example contrasting approaches to virginity.

In this essay I will compare and contrast four pre-1914 essays.

There are some features which may be expected to he found in

pre-twentieth century poetry. For example, imagery was mainly

nature-based, evolving around things such as time, weather, with

religion being a popular choice as it played a much more significant

part of people's lives then compared to now. With romantic poets other

themes/imagery are likely to be the cosmos, dreams, heart and soul

etc. I expect the poems to be metrical, with pre-twentieth century

poetry often having an iambic pentameter, in particular with love

poetry. An example of a typical poem would be a sonnet used to address

love, with 14 lines, an octet and sestet, iambic pentameter and

nature-based imagery.

One way in which the poems differ is in their use of imagery. A good

example of this is how 'To Autumn' (written by John Keates, considered

by Tennyson as the 19th century's greatest poet), which although not

strictly a love poem, is still contains many of the features of the

other poems and therefore suitable for comparison. It uses imagery to

do with nature very differently to 'The Sick Rose' (written by Blake,

regarded as a revolutionary and romantic poet). 'To Autumn' shows

nature very positively, using words such as 'mellow fruitfulness';

'rosy hue'; 'soft-lifted by the winnowing wind' to give pleasant, calm

images of the character (autumn). This effectively portrays the

character and feeling of calm, ...

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'quaint honour turn to dust' and 'into ashes all my lust'. 'The Flea'

also has a strange feature, the flea itself being very strange for use

in a love poem.

'The Sick Rose' is extremely different to a usual love poem' It is

very blunt (just 8 lines), to get his blunt powerful point across. It

uses forceful, violent imagery such as 'howling storm' and 'destroy',

which certainly isn't normal for a love poem. Blake doesn't use

rhyming couplets or iambic pentameter in this poem, further separating

it from a typical love poem and emphasizing his message.

These similarities and contrasts in features like imagery and voice

have shown that authors have different views of love and different

ways of showing those views. This difference in views is also shown by

the variation in how the poems fit to their typical genres.

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