ENGLAND IN Percy Bysshe Shelley

							               Writing About Poetry

•Poetry captures our mood, conveys feelings and
communicates a message by using rhythm and sound.

•Poets use various literary techniques to convey the
sense or meaning of a poem.
•Techniques are:
    •Selection of speaker
    •Sound
    •Imagery
    •Figurative language.

•There is a connection between the techniques of the
poem and its meaning.
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               Writing About Poetry
              Concepts to remember

•Speaker:
It can be the poet himself, or a character, a thing.

•Sound:
Alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme, rhythm..

•Images:
Appeal to one or more of the senses.

•Figurative language:
•Metaphor, simile, personification
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              Writing About Poetry
             Definitions of Concepts

                            Sound
•Alliteration: A poetic or literary effect achieved by using
several words that begin with the same or similar
consonants, as in "Whither wilt thou wander, wayfarer?“
•Assonance: The similarity of two or more vowel sounds
or the repetition of two or more consonant sounds.
•Onomatopoeia: The formation or use of words that
imitate the sound associated with something, e.g. "hiss"
and "buzz“.
•Rhyme: A similarity in the sound of word endings,
especially in poetry
•Rhythm: in poetry, the pattern formed by stressed and
unstressed syllables
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             Writing About Poetry
            Definitions of Concepts

                     Figurative language
•Metaphor: the use to describe somebody or something
of a word or phrase that is not meant literally but by
means of a vivid comparison expresses something about
him, her, or it, e.g. saying that somebody is a snake
•Simile: A figure of speech that draws a comparison
between two different things, especially a phrase
containing the word "like" or "as," e.g. "as white as a
sheet"
•Personification: The attribution of human qualities to
objects or abstract notions, e.g.
“This City now doth like a garment wear”.
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              writing About Poetry
            Typical essay questions

•When you are asked to write about poetry, you are often
answering an assignment like the following:

• What is the meaning of the poem?

• What techniques used by the poet to reveal
meaning?

•Techniques include the selection of the speaker,
sound devices, imagery and the use of figurative
language.

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                  ENGLAND IN 1819
                 Percy Bysshe Shelley


    An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--       a
    Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow       b
    Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,-- a
    Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,           b
    But leech-like to their fainting country cling,       a
    Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--     b
    A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,-- c
    An army which liberticide and prey                    d
    Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--        c
    Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; d
    Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,--        c
    A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--          c
    Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may          d
    Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.                d
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                 writing About Poetry
             England in 1819, P. B. Shelley

    Selection of       Sound             Imagery            Figurative
    speaker                                                 language
    The poet himself   Rhythm: iambic    Images paint a     Simile: “leech-
                       pentameter        grim, pathetic     like”
                       Rhyme:            picture “leech-    Personification:
                       abababcdcdccdd    like to their      “fainting country”
                       Alliteration:     fainting country   Metaphor: “mud
                       blind in blood,   cling”             from a muddy
                       without a blow                       spring”
                       Sound
                       contributes to
                       angry mood



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                ENGLAND IN 1819
               Percy Bysshe Shelley

• England in 1819" is a sonnet (14 lines)
• Liberal ideals of its poet P.B. Shelley
• Composed in 1819, but not published until 1839.
• Iambic pentameter (5 beat poetic lines)
• Angry tone, uncompromising vocabulary: mad,
despised, dregs, scorn..
• Last couplet: change of tone, reminiscent of Gogol’s
The Overcoat
• King, princes, army, religion, the senate are all tombs
from which a resurrection will spring to supplant the
existing corrupted regime.
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               ENGLAND IN 1819
              Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Cross reference from Gogol’s The Overcoat :
• “And, in fact, one watchman in Kolomna saw with his
own eyes the apparition come from behind a house; but
being rather weak of body… He dared not arrest him, but
followed him in the dark, until, at length, the apparition
looked round, paused, and inquired, “What do you
want?” and showed such a fist as you never see on living
men. The watchman said, “It’s of no consequence,” and
turned back instantly. But the apparition was much too
tall, wore huge mustaches, and, directing its steps
apparently towards the Obukhoff Bridge, disappeared in
the darkness of the night.”
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               ENGLAND IN 1819
              Percy Bysshe Shelley

•The poem passionately attacks England's decadent,
oppressive ruling class.
•King George III is "old, mad, blind, despised, and
dying." The "leech-like" nobility ("princes")
metaphorically suck the blood from the people, who are
oppressed, hungry, and hopeless, their fields untilled.
•Meanwhile, the army is corrupt and dangerous to
liberty, the laws are harsh and useless, religion has lost
its morality, and Parliament (the "Senate") is a relic
("Time's worst statute unrepealed").
•In a startling burst of optimism, the last two lines
express the hope that a "glorious Phantom" may spring
from this decay and "illumine our tempestuous day."
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              Upon Westminster Bridge
                  William Wordsworth
•EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
•Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
• A sight so touching in its majesty:
•This City now doth like a garment wear
                                                        Octet
•The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
•Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
•Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
•All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
•Never did sun more beautifully steep
•In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
•Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
•The river glideth at his own sweet will:        Sestet
•Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
•And all that mighty heart is lying still!

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       Upon Westminster Bridge

•William Wordsworth praises Westminster bridge
through different angles using his surroundings,
accumulating every element of minor beauty
extending them with some exaggeration, eg:
"never did the sun more beautifully steep“, or
"This City now doth like a garment wear”.
Note the use of personification and simile:
" The river glideth at his own sweet will:".


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                           London
                       by William Blake
     I wandered through each chartered street,                    a
     Near where the chartered Thames does flow,                   b
     And mark in every face I meet,                               c
     Marks of weakness, marks of woe.                             d

     In every cry of every man,                                   c
     In every infant's cry of fear,                               d
     In every voice, in every ban,                                c
     The mind-forged manacles I hear:                             d

     How the chimney-sweeper's cry                                e
     Every blackening church appals,                              f
     And the hapless soldier's sigh                               e
     Runs in blood down palace-walls.                             f

     But most, through midnight streets I hear                    g
     How the youthful harlot's curse                              h
     Blasts the new-born infant's tear,                           g
     And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.   (Oxymoron)   h
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                     London
• Blake’s“London”:difficult and hard life
•The streets and the Thames are very dirty.
• The poor people suffer hopelessly. Poverty prevails.
•Dark, dull and tiring atmosphere.

Whereas ‘Wordsworth’s “Upon Westminster’s Bridge”:
the tone is positive, calm and romantic.

The poet is overcome by the beauty of the view from
Westminster’s Bridge.


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                London
•London is a horrible, grotty place.
•The people in London live in fear and
misery.
•For example ‘every cry of every man’.
This suggests that everyone is upset and
as a result of this they are crying and also
the repetition of ‘every’ emphasizes
everyone of London.

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           The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! --
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
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           The Chimney Sweeper
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and let them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and
warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
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            The Chimney Sweeper
•Blake chooses to employ a narrator who is of a
more experienced mind, somehow aware of the
deception and false hope that is being fed to Little
Tom Dacre by the angel of the poem.

•"if all do their duty, they need not fear harm",
•reflects Blake's bitter indignation at the church's
willingness to collude with other forms of tyranny to bring
about the dire consequence of children being made
victim to their own innocence.




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               The Chimney Sweeper

•One of the appealing points of The Chimney Sweeper
is that it contains many universal themes that a wide
audience can relate to. These are youth and inherent
innocence, death, freedom and religion. To
adequately portray these themes, Blake utilizes many
literary techniques.

• Illustrate




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