... and is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. "No one knows who composed Beowulf , or why. A single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV) managed to survive Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, and the destruction of their great libraries; since his name is written on one of the folios, Lawrence Nowell, the sixteenth-century scholar, may have been responsible for Beowulf's preservation."(Raffel ix) An interesting fact that is unique about the poem is that "it is the sole survivor of what may have been a thriving epic tradition, and it is great poetry."(Raffel ix) The poem was composed and performed orally. "Old English bards, or scops, mo ...
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... see the need for man to be aware of both his earthly and spiritual worlds and to achieve a balance between the two that elevates and defines him as a creature of God. Robert Frost and Wilbur Richard rely on good word choice to exemplify their common theme. Frost's "Take Something Like a Star" sticks with the word star to represent God. All of the adjectives that Frost uses to describe the star also go hand in hand with God. In the Poem "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World", Wilbur uses laundry on a clothesline to characterize the human spirit. Wilbur uses more nouns to describe the spiritual soul than Frost's usage of adjectives. Both Frost an ...
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... thoughts penetrate their mind Finally, reality is clinched! ...
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... - in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, it is the perfection of beauty as art - transfixed and transfigured forever in the Grecian Urn - and in the Ode to Autumn it is the exquisiteness of the season - idealised and immortalised as part of the natural cycle - which symbolise eternal and idealistic images of profound beauty. In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats uses the central symbol of a bird to exemplify the perfect beauty in nature. The nightingale sings to the poet's senses whose ardour for it's song makes the bird eternal and thus reminds him of how his own mortality separates him from this beauty. The poem begins: "My heart aches, and a drowsey numbness pains" ...
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... that is included in many other poems. In the poem, "No Loser, No Weeper," Maya describes how she just hates to lose something, whether is small like a watch or a toy. Moreover this poem is directed towards another female trying to steal her lover. Maya wants to make it clear to the woman not touch her "lover-boy." She explains her warning by stating that she hates to lose something "even a dime, I wish I was dead." We gather from that statement that losing something so small and worthless as a dime would make Maya wish she was dead is very serious and very threatening. This remark can be traced back to her background to when the trauma in her life made her thi ...
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... him with jewels, gold, helmets, swords, etc. The importance of material goods are one of the cardinal characteristics of the Pagan's beliefs. Hrothgar and his counselors make useless attempts to appease Grendel in Verse 2. They can't offer him gold or land, as they might an ordinary enemy. Like most people in a time of crisis they slip back into old ways of thinking. Instead of praying to God for support, they sacrifice to t he stone idols of their pagan past. The Christian motifs that run through the poem contrast with the pagan system of values that underlies the actions of the kings and the warriors. The influence of Christianity was just be ...
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... poem seem to be the speaker talking to an audience of people, w hile the last one looks back and refers to the first two stanzas as a "song." The audience to which this poem was intended is very important because it can drastically change the meaning of the poem, and has therefore been debated among the critics. While most critics believe that the audience changes from men, to women, then to a single woman, or something along those lines, Gregory Machacek believes that the audience remains throughout the poem as "two women who have discovered that they are both lovers of the speaker and have confronted him concerning his infidelity" (1). His strongest argument ...
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... own home, as a civilian. She had not had any first hand experience of war. In fact, it seems that she had absolutely no idea about what war was like. It was poets like her who had a large influence over the public. Her amazing naiveté made her renowned amongst the British during war- time and in my opinion, her recruiting poem; “Who’s for the Game” is irresponsible. It gives young men, and their families who would want to persuade the men to join the army, a completely false image of war. However, it is an army recruitment poem, and for the reason it was written, I believe it is a very powerful and manipulative piece of propaganda . This is down to the way the po ...
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... her better this way; in his complete control. The designer was a monk who perfectly captured her heartfelt expression in but one day, showcasing her for all eternity. He directs his guest to look upon the painting. There is limited access to the art since the duke keeps it covered by a curtain, and only permits those to his liking to look at her. He states that in the past, those he has let see the fresco, have asked where such an expression on her puss originated. He goes on to admit that it was not him alone that provided her with such joy, but perhaps it was flattery from the monk that caused her cheeks to redden. She must have misassumed a statemen ...
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... light, it gives the reader a feeling that the piano is alive, further adding to the effect of personification in this poem. In the last line of the first stanza, there is consonance in "these", "keys", and "melodies". The repeat of the smooth "s" sound in these three consecutive words evokes a feeling of rhythm or harmony - pleasant sounds from the player piano. The next stanza starts with an internal rhyme: "My paper can caper". The simple rhyme suggests that the paper can leap and jump about like a child. The connotation of the word "abandon" adds to this suggestion of unrestrained movement or activity. The words "dint" and "din" are alliterative, and the sugge ...
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