In class: I'm handing back your essays and comma assessments. If I do not hand back work, it is because I have not received it....and you know the outcome.
vocabulary handout. Test Friday, as usual: 10 matching and 10 contextual sentences. Copy below.
A Victorian Poetry
Interlude.
Defining Victorian literature in any
satisfactory and comprehensive manner has proven troublesome for critics ever
since the nineteenth century came to a close. The movement roughly comprises
the years from 1830 to 1900, though there is ample disagreement regarding even
this simple point. The name given to the period is borrowed from the royal matriarch* of England, Queen Victoria,
who sat on throne from 1837 to 1901. One has difficulty determining with any
accuracy where the Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century leaves off
and the Victorian Period begins because these traditions have so many aspects
in common. Likewise, identifying the point where Victorianism gives way
completely to Modernism is no easy task. Literary periods are never the discrete*, self-contained realms which
the anthologies so suggest. Rather, a literary period more closely resembles a
rope that is frayed at both ends. Many threads make up the rope and work
together to form the whole artistic and cultural milieu*. The Victorian writers exhibited some well-established
habits from previous eras, while at the same time pushing arts and letters in
new and interesting directions. ( by Joseph Rand)
*matriarch-a
woman who controls a family, group, or government
*discrete-separate
and different from each other
* milieu-the
physical or social setting in which people live or in which something happens
or develops
We are
looking at two transitional poems this week: Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach and Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess.
Concept to
know:
Nihilism
a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs
are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast
the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of
England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the
tranquil bay. 5
Come to the window, sweet is the
night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched
land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back,
and fling, 10
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again
begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
15
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern
sea. 20
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round
earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle
furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing
roar, 25
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges
drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which
seems 30
To lie before us like a land of
dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor
light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain 35
Swept with confused alarms of struggle
and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
|
1.
Underline all unfamiliar
words.
2.
How many
stanzas has the poem?__________
3.
What do we call
a poem with no rhyme scheme? ________________________
4.
Look at stanza
three. What are the repeated open vowels?_________________________
5.
What is the
tone of the poem; that is what feeling is evoked?
_________________________________________
6.
The Romantic
idea of pathetic fallacy' is when the poet attributes or rather projects a
human feeling onto an inanimate object. How does Arnold employ the literary
technique of pathetic fallacy? ________________________
_____________________________________
___________________________________________
7.
What verb is
repeated in lines 1-4 to emphasize the scene?
__________________________________________
8.
In stanza 4,
what words are repeated to emphasize the denial of basic human values?
__________________________________________
_________________________________________
9.
What is the dramatic
pledge that the speaker is asking?
_________________________________________
10.
To whom is the
narrator speaking?
________________________________________
|
11. How is Arnold’s “Dover Beach” reflective
of the transition from Romanticism to Modernism?
My Last
Duchess” by Robert Browning
vocabulary test
Friday, May 3
This will
consist of 10 matching and 10 contextual sentences.
1. countenance
(noun)- a person’s face or facial expression
2. mantle (noun)-
a loose sleeveless cloak or shawl, worn especially by women.
3. bough (noun)- a
main branch of a tree.
4. trifling (noun
or adjective)- unimportant or trivial.
5. officious (adjective)-
assertive of authority in an annoyingly domineering way, especially with regard
to petty or trivial matters.
6. munificence
(noun)- the quality or action of being lavishly generous; great generosity.
7. dowry (noun)- the
money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage
8. to avow (verb)- to declare or state (something) in an open and public
way
9. dramatic monologue- (noun) -a literary work (as a poem) in which a speaker's character is
revealed in a monologue usually addressed to a second person
10.
earnest-(adjective)- a serious and intent
mental state
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