How to analyse poetry - where do you begin?

We all know I love my mind maps, so here is a really good one to help you with your poetry.

Have a look at these ideas too:

	ELEMENTS OF ANALYSIS DESCRIPTION SUBJECT-MATTER What event, situation, or experience does the poem describe or record? Who is the speaker? Is the poet speaking in the role of another person, an animal, a thing? To whom is the speaking talking? What is the time setting - hour of day, season, era? What is the place setting? PURPOSE,THEME, OR MESSAGE What seems to be the poet's purpose in writing this - what message, ideas, issues, themes, (etc.) are communicated? EMOTION, MOOD, OR FEELING What is the poet's tone? Watch for shifts in tone especially toward the end of the poem. What is the poet's attitude toward the subject? What is the predominant emotion, or mood, of the poem? Does the mood change during the poem? What emotions or feelings does the poet seek to evoke in the reader / listener? CRAFTSMANSHIP, OR TECHNIQUE (see below) This aspect of the poem deals with specific skills the poet has used in creating his or her work of art: • Structure • Language • Imagery • Movement • Sound SUMMARY Having analysed the poem, it is important to synthesise (pull all the information together) into a summary. What is the impact of the whole poem for you? How successful is it as a work of art? Does it successfully achieve the poet's purpose or is it flawed in some serious way? Looking Closer at Craftsmanship Structure How is the poem structured? Does it have a conventional structure such as a sonnet, or an ode? Does it have stanzas with a regular number of lines, or any other interesting features of structural design? Can you identify the type of poem - sonnet, free verse, ballad, etc.? Is the poem lyric, dramatic, narrative, or a combination? How can you tell? Language How would you describe the poet's use of words - vivid, striking, effective or colourless and predictable? What visual images are brought to mind? What sensations does the poem evoke: sound, touch, smell, taste, movement, etc.? What words are used in surprising or imaginative ways? Look for puns. Are there any inverted word orders or sentences? What would be the usual order? What purpose is served by the inversion? Is the language appropriate to subject and/or theme? What effect does the language have on the poem's achievement? Imagery Are there any striking examples of figurative language used? What things are compared (similes, metaphors, personifications or symbols) in the poem? Are their analogies or conceits? What is their effect? Movement or Rhythm Does the poem have a regular (slow or fast) rhythm? What is the effect of any rhythmic qualities? Sounds Does the poem have any significant sound features? Is it musical? Does the poet use onomatopoeia, alliteration, or assonance? Does the poem rhyme? What are the effects of these features of sound on the achievement of the poem?

Poetry - Getting to grips with the texts

Apart from going through the notes I emailed you on every single poem, I strongly suggest you do some background reading - not just on the text but on the poets themselves. A poet can either reinforce your idea or contradict it (depending on what you're writing about) and you can give you a better insight as to whether the author is dependable and reliable.

Think about how you feel about the poem. Does it make you sad? Does it make  you happy? Read it to yourself and try and identify the places that evoke emotions and try and work out a precise word or phrase that triggers those feelings.

Remember, personal response is very important and you can score really high marks with poetry if you just engage with the material. Look between the lines, look further into the poem, rather than look at it as a bunch of words on the page.

This is quite a good summary of what you should be doing:

The very first step in critical appreciation of a poem is that of determining whether you initially liked or disliked it and to what extent. This is not to say that further readings and thoughts about the poem will not alter your initial opinion. Here are some points to check:

Title - Is it appropriate to the subject, tone and genre? Does it generate interest, and hint at what the poem is about? 

Subject - What does the basic situation appear to be? Who is talking, and under what circumstances? Try writing a paraphrase to identify any gaps or confusions. 

Shape - What is it appealing to: the intellect or emotions of the reader? What structures such as progressions, puns, comparisons, analogies, bald assertions, acrostics, repetitions, etc, have been used? Are these aspects satisfyingly integrated? Does structure support content? 

Tone - What attitude to the subject is expressed? Is it appropriate to content and audience: assured, flexible, sensitive, etc.? 

Word Choice - Are these appropriate and uncontrived, economical, varied and energizing? Can each word be understood properly, considering its common uses and associations? Are there any innovations? List the verbs and see if they truly push the poem along. Are words repeated? Do they set mood, emotional rapport, and distance? 

Personification - Is this striking or persuasive? Does it add to unity and power? 

Metaphor and Simile - Are these fresh and convincing? Do they combine on many levels? 

Rhythm and Metre- Are these natural and inevitable? Do they integrate the poem's structure? 

Rhyme - Is this fresh and pleasurable? Is it unassuming but supportive? 

Dynamics - Is the poetic force pure, unpolluted and unadulterated? 

Weight - Is the poem light, medium or heavy? 

Overall Impression -Is the poem original, honest, coherent, expressive, and significant?

Have a look at this website too

 

PEEing in your essays

Have a look at this guy - try not to get distracted by his fantastic bit of facial hair, I suggest if you can't, just listen and don't look!

Writing an essay becomes far simpler once you get the hang of what you need to achieve within each paragraph. While the detail of this obviously changes between paragraphs and between essays, the broad structure can remain the same. When planning your essay, try basing each paragraph around the simple acronym, PEE -- P - E - E.

P is for Point. Start your paragraph by explaining the idea you are introducing. How does this paragraph develop your work? Try to avoid stating the obvious here, and make sure that your point relates to the plan you outlined in your introduction.

E is for Evidence. Once you have established the point you are making you will need to provide proof. This might be a quote from your primary text, reference to a secondary critic, supporting statistics or even the explanation of a logical progression.

E is also for Explanation. This might be an explanation of your evidence, of how it relates to your point, and/or where it takes your argument. This is where your personal interpretation comes in. The explanation should help to build towards your final conclusion.

So, to write a well-structured paragraph, you simply need to PEE. But it only remains effective if it avoids being formulaic -- be flexible and vary the lengths of your sentences. Also, remember that the separate paragraphs need to work together, so the explanation of one should lead into the point of the next.

This is also another link for explaining the process. The examples are not very helpful as it doesn't deal with English Literature, but you will get the idea of how it should be done. It's very detailed so read it step-by-step and understand it.

The idea is that you interweave the quote into your text. For example,
Lord Goring seems to be the voice of reason at this point, explaining to Lady Chiltern how men and women "love differently"... (I don't think that's a real quote but never mind! You get the picture!)

Victorian Education

Education

"Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught". Daily Life in Victorian England (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996).

This quote by Oscar Wilde shows his distaste for formal education with no self reflection and self thought. Often Wilde is able to express his views through his characters such as in "The Importance of Being Earnest" with a particular exchange between Lady Bracknell and Jack Worthing.

Lady Bracknell: A man who desires to marry should know everything or nothing. Which do you know?

Jack Worthing: I know nothing.

Lady Bracknell: I am pleased. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.

This exchange can be compared to education in that a man who knows nothing would be a man who knows only what he is told through formal education (memorizing languages, learning facts, and rewritting various information). A man who knows everything would be someone who knows both how to take the important information from formal education that he recieves and apply that information to the way he thinks. The fact that Lady Bracknell is pleased that Jack does not know anything is showing that Jack Worthing is someone who relies solely on formal education and Lady Bracknell believes that is all that is important. Oscar Wilde seemes to have made Lady Bracknell exemplify an educated, close-minded individual of the upper class of whom he does not agree with.

Robert Browning agrees with Oscar Wilde in that education is necessary, but individual thinking and coming to realizations through your own experiences and thoughts is not only more rewarding but necessary. In "The Ring and the Book" Robert Browning renders the Pope as handling the morality through the book. Guido is condemned to death by the pope who was considering pardoning him but instead cannot be pardoned. In response to the Pope's decision he says, "There's a new tribunal now higher than God's- the educated man's".

The fact that Robert Browning was indecisive about his belief in Christianity makes this statement in the "The Ring and the Book" fairly ambiguous. It is hard to determine whether this quote is satirizing the fact that no tribunal can be higher than God's, or if Browning is trying to show that through the Victorian Era the ideological shift to man being equal to god becomes prevalent. This quote is also very ambiguous because an educated man could mean that he is self-taught, or formally taught which begs that question, "What is education?" It is tough to be able to see where Robert Browning stands.

Brendon O'Neil article - The campaign to 'Stamp Out Misogyny Online' echoes Victorian efforts to protect women from coarse language

Brendan O'Neill is the editor of spiked, an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. The campaign to 'Stamp Out Misogyny Online' echoes Victorian efforts to protect women from coarse language

By Brendan O'Neill Politics Last updated: November 7th, 2011

The campaign to 'Stamp Out Misogyny Online' echoes Victorian efforts to protect women from coarse language

A Victorian lady faints upon receiving a rude telegram

One of the great curiosities of modern feminism is that the more radical the feminist is, the more likely she is to suffer fits of Victorian-style vapours upon hearing men use coarse language. Andrea Dworkin dedicated her life to stamping out what she called “hate speech” aimed at women. The Slutwalks women campaigned against everything from “verbal degradation” to “come ons”. And now, in another hilarious echo of the 19th-century notion that women need protecting from vulgar and foul speech, a collective of feminist bloggers has decided to “Stamp Out Misogyny Online”. Their deceptively edgy demeanour, their use of the word “stamp”, cannot disguise the fact that they are the 21st-century equivalent of Victorian chaperones, determined to shield women’s eyes and cover their ears lest they see or hear something upsetting.

According to the Guardian, these campaigners want to stamp out “hateful trolling” by men – that is, they want an end to the misogynistic bile and spite that allegedly clogs up their email inboxes and internet discussion boards. Leaving aside the question of who exactly is supposed to do all this “stamping out” of heated speech – The state? Well, who else could do it? – the most striking thing about these fragile feminists’ campaign is the way it elides very different forms of speech. So the Guardian report lumps together “threats of rape”, which are of course serious, with “crude insults” and “unstinting ridicule”, which are not that serious. If I had a penny for every time I was crudely insulted on the internet, labelled a prick, a toad, a shit, a moron, a wide-eyed member of a crazy communist cult, I’d be relatively well-off. For better or worse, crudeness is part of the internet experience, and if you don’t like it you can always read The Lady instead.

The crashing together of threats of violence with ridicule is striking, because it exposes a fairly Orwellian streak to modern feminist campaigns to “stamp out” bad things. There is an attempt here to treat words and violence as the same thing. Indeed, the Guardian report discusses “violent online invective” and quotes a novelist complaining about “violent hate-speech”. Anyone who cares about freedom of speech should sit up and take notice when campaigners start talking about words and violence in the same breath, because to accept the idea that words are as damaging as violent actions is implicitly to invite the policing and curbing of speech by the powers that be. After all, if speech itself is a kind of violence, if ridicule is on a par with threatening behaviour, then why shouldn’t internet trolls and foul-mouthed loners be treated as seriously as the bloke who commits GBH? Muddying the historic philosophical distinction between words and actions, which has informed enlightened thinking for hundreds of years, is too high a price to pay just so some feminist bloggers can surf the web without having their delicate sensibilities riled.

Of course it is true that the standard of discussion on the internet leaves a lot to be desired. There is a remarkable amount of incivility and abusiveness on the web. But that is no excuse for attempting to turn the internet into the online equivalent of a Women’s Institute meeting, where no one ever raises their voice or “unstintingly ridicules” another or is crude. I would rather surf a web that caters for all, from the clever to the cranky, rather than put up with an internet designed according to the needs of a tiny number of peculiarly sensitive female bloggers.

Unmarried Women - Failures of Society

An Unmarried Woman was a Failure

The proper purpose of a Victorian woman’s life, of whatever class, was to marry suitably.

It was not essential for the marriage to be happy, but marriage in itself was, “the crown and joy of a woman’s life – what we were born for.”

Victorian England became concerned about what one charming Victorian gentleman described as the “redundant women” problem for middle or upper class women, for whom education was limited and (respectable) employment almost impossible.

A woman who did not marry became a spinster, old maid or maiden aunt, a figure of fun, pity and derision.

Put simply, a woman who failed to marry was a failure.

The “Surplus Women” in Victorian England

Punch cartoon about spinsters marrying

(Lady, recently married, in answer to congratulations of a visiting lady friend) "Thank you, dear. But I still find it very hard to remember my new name" Friend, "Ah, dear, but of course you had the old one so long!"

The Victorians became particularly exercised about redundant women after the 1851 Census showed that there were nearly 1.5 million spinsters, aged between about 20 and 40, and 350,000 old maids over 40.

In the 1851 Census, there were 104 women for every 100 men in England and Wales.

Victorian England was also about the British Empire. Although, as now, more men wore born than women, boys were more likely to die than girls in childhood, and men more likely than woman to die young.

Men emigrated, to the old and new commonwealth, America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India and other places in the British Empire. For every woman who emigrated, three men did so.

Men also served time abroad either as colonial administrators or as soldiers.

There was an increasing tendency for middle and upper class men to marry later. Between about 1840 and 1870, the average age at marriage for middle and upper class men was 30. At the age of 30, however, a spinster was definitely past her sell-by date.

Life for the Victorian Spinster

About the only respectable forms of employment that any middle or upper class Victorian spinster could undertake were as a teacher, a governess, or a companion.

Many couples with large families liked to keep an unmarried daughter at home to tend to their every whim and care for them in their old age. Although often obliged to do so, the unmarried stay at home daughter was nevertheless incomplete. She’d failed to undertake her primary duty, to be a wife and mother.

Many women who didn’t marry in Victorian England lived first in their parents’ house, and when their parents died, in the house of a brother or nephew. Although such women tended to work extremely hard, provided a useful second mother and unpaid housekeeper, they were undervalued.

Spinsters and old maids in the middle and upper classes were financially dependent in many cases on their fathers, uncles, brothers or nephews. They were economically and socially vulnerable, and faced considerable exploitation.

Of course, very many single Victorian woman lived happy and fulfilled lives in the houses of their relatives. Nevertheless, the lack of power meant there was nothing they could do about it if the life was distinctly unhappy and unfulfilled.

Although until the Married Woman’s Property Act in 1868 a wife had no separate legal existence from her husband, and did not own property unless he chose to allow her to do so, nevertheless a married woman had a social status and respect that her single sister would always struggle to achieve.

How Surplus Women were a Social Evil

The National Review in the 1860s described spinsters in the following terms,

“…a number quite disproportionate and quite abnormal; a number which, positively and relatively, is indicative of an unwholesome social state”

An individual spinster or old maid could be pitied and patronised. As a group, spinsters were damaging to society, and redundant.

Although it was rarely mentioned specifically, there was a general view that celibacy in women was unnatural.

Of course, an old maid or a spinster was according to social norms considered to be a virgin. That was unnatural, and a waste.

Edward Gibbon talked about single English women as, “growing thin, pale, listless and cross”.

Thackeray described Charlotte Brontë as, “a noble heart longing to mate itself and destined to wither away into old maidenhood”.

John Stewart Mill argued against the spinster stereotype and said that the problem was that women were badly educated. A woman who did not marry,

… is felt both by herself and others to be a kind of excrescence on the surface of society, having no use or function or office there.

Forced Emigration?

Many, such as WR Gregg, urged that single women be almost obliged to emigrate. WR Gregg went on to discuss the semi forced emigration of women that he proposed,

..”England must restore by an emigration women that natural proportion between the sexes in the old country and in the new one, which was disturbed by an emigration of men, and the disturbance of which has wrought so much mischief in both lands”

Spinsters and Steroetypes in Victorian Literature

The Spinster got a pretty bad press in Victorian England.

In Charles Dickens’ novels, the spinsters and old maids who appear are usually mad, desiccated, boring or secluded.

Miss Haversham in Great Expectations is an example, a woman who fell in love and was jilted on the day of her wedding.

She lived for the rest of life in her wedding dress, with one shoe on, a wedding cake uneaten on the table, and the clock stopped at the time she found out that her husband-to-be had deserted her.

In Nicholas Nickleby, Fanny Squeers is 23, and ugly, and full of fears that she is about to be left on the shelf.

Then there is Miss Sarah Brass, who in many ways runs the company formerly belonging to her brother. She is referred to as a “dragon” in the book, and rebuffs an attempt by Daniel Quilp to propose to her. And there is the charming Miss Dartle who is extremely thin, has a scar on her lip, and is unpleasant and aggressive.

Thackery

Spinsters were also humiliated and seen as unnatural, dried up, and failures. Jane Osborne in Vanity Fair is a good example. Her sister, who has succeeded in marriage, snubs her, her father is rude to her directly, although she’s acting as her father’s unpaid housekeeper.

The Brontes and other Women Writers

The literary Brontë sisters often wrote about women who did not marry in their books. None of them married, and they were themselves brought up by a spinster aunt, after the early death of their mother.

Charlotte Brontë turned down four separate marriage proposals as she was determined not to live with a man she did not think her intellectual moral equal.

The difficulties that respectable but impoverished women faced in Victorian England is clear from Charlotte Brontë’s second book, Shirley.

In Shirley, one of the main characters, Caroline Helstone, is the daughter of a mother who is missing and a father who is abusive.

Living with her uncle, a clergyman, Caroline is wasting away and is emotionally deprived. Caroline has no respectable way to earn a living, and does not have the sort of money easily to attract a husband.

By the end of the novel, Caroline is fortunate enough to marry her cousin, Robert Moore, but it’s very clear from the book that she has escaped a repressed and oppressed state.

Shirley makes it very clear that the lot of a spinster woman without private means is an extraordinarily difficult one. Caroline, in her spinster life in her uncle’s household, has a miserable time of it. But it was not just the case that women had a difficult time if they did not marry.

Being a spinster did not only involve economic insecurity and precarious dependence on male relatives. But a woman was unable to bring about marriage on her own behalf. As Charlotte Brontë said in Shirley:

A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation: a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self treachery.

In The Professor, Frances is made very aware that being an unmarried woman in England would be a serious mistake for her. She says in the book:

An old maid’s life must doubtless be void and vapid, her heart strained and empty; had I been an old maid I should have spent existence in efforts to fill the void and ease the aching I should have probably failed, and died weary and disappointed, despised and of no account, like other single women

Marry or else!

In summary, being a spinster or an old maid in Victorian England was generally pretty grim.

There were of course the exceptions, such as Octavia Hill or Florence Nightingale.

But they were the exceptions that proved the rule.

For most spinsters, they were failures. They had failed to marry, and were pitied and derided individually, and seen as a social threat, redundant, surplus and unnatural as a group.

Compared with this status, putting oneself into the legal limbo of a married woman could almost seem like a good bet.