URL for Research Done for Last Post

http://www.awrsd.org/oak/Library/greek_and_latin_root_words.htm

Lucentio's Role

Of all of Bianca's suitors, Lucentio is the most intelligent. His name even hints at this. "Luc" is a Greek and a Latin root word meaning "light" (Mr. Hanno's Greek and Latin Prefixes/ Suffixes/ Root Words Table- URL below). Light as part of the meaning of Lucentio's name can be taken in the context of the play to mean knowledge or intelligence. As soon as Lucentio sees Bianca and expresses a desire to marry her, Tranio suggests that he come up with a plan to wed her. His plan is much more effective than either Gremio's or Hortensio's. Gremio simply wants to "purchase" Bianca's hand in marriage from her father. Though this was probably the traditional way to marry in the play's society, it more than likely would lead to an unhappy and unstable marriage between Bianca and Gremio; Bianca's love for the Gremio, and even Gremio's love for the Bianca, would not be guaranteed. Hortensio courts Bianca using the exact methods that Gremio does not use; he interacts with her as her tutor with the intent of gaining her love. The flaw with this plan, of course, is that it does not take into account the lawful necessity of "purchasing" Bianca's hand in marriage; Baptista would not let a man who has not offered any wealth or material possessions marry his daughter. Lucentio's plan is the use of both Gremio's and Hortensio's methods. He has Tranio pose as himself (Lucentio) in order to "purchase" Bianca's hand, and he himself poses as one of Bianca's tutors in order to gain her love so that he can be sure his marriage to her will be consensual, and, thus, happy. As the play progresses, Lucentio comes closer to gaining Bianca's hand in marriage than do either Gremio or Hortensio. In fact, Lucentio/ Tranio-Lucentio (they work toward the same goal) both outbid Gremio for Bianca's hand and seem to win Bianca's love instead of Hortensio. As a result, Lucentio does not need to use both methods in order to actually marry Bianca. Up until Act 5, Lucentio seems clearly above the other suitors in winning Bianca's hand.

Lucentio is a flat character, but he is a foil to three other characters. Because he competes with Gremio and Hortensio for the same woman's (Bianca's) hand in marriage, he is a rival and a peer to both of them. As a result, he is a foil to both of them. He is also a foil to Petruchio, as he seems to be the closest to gaining Bianca's love while Petruchio seems to gain Katherine's love. Lucentio's actions in compound with Hortensio's and Gremio's move the subplot of the play, the quest for Bianca's love, forward.

As readers of Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew, we are only reading the actors' script. We are obviously given much less information than we would be if we were an audience to a performance of the play. In fact, we are even given less information than we would be if we were reading the play's story as a novel. Not only can we not see or hear any physical scenes of the play, but we do not have a narrator to constantly describe them for us. As a result, other than the short parenthetical descriptions of characters entering and exiting the scenes or performing actions crucial to the understanding of the dialogue (ex.: "(Biondello comes forward with the gifts)" Act 2, Scene 1, Between Lines 105 and 106), we have no descriptions of the setting of the play except for the hints the dialogue gives us.

In Scene 1 of Act 2, the time of day is revealed twice through the dialogue. The scene is very long, and readers may come to think that it is taking place throughout the course of a day. It becomes clear, however, that this is not the case. At the beginning, when Gremio, the two men disguised as tutors, Petruchio, Tranio, and Biondello enter, Gremio greets Baptista by saying, "Good morrow, neighbor Baptista" (42). This reveals that the time of day is morning. Later, Petruchio greets Kate as she appears by saying "Good morrow, Kate, for that's your name, I hear" (190). This tells the reader that the time of day is still morning. The remainder of the scene consists of Petruchio's and Kate's witty argument and, immediately following that, Gremio's and Tranio's bidding for Bianca. The physical setting of part of the scene is possibly revealed when Baptista says, "We will go walk a little in the orchard" (118). The reader is still not sure that any of the scene truly takes place in the orchard. After Baptista says this, Petruchio immediately begins to inquire about Kate. Not much later, Hortensio, disguised as Litio, arrives and tells Baptista that Katherine refuses to be patient with his teachings. If Petruchio and Baptista had been talking in the orchard, it would not have been easy for Hortensio to find them. It is possible that Petruchio and Katherine have their argument in the orchard; after Baptista says he will lead Hortensio to his lesson with Bianca, he asks Petruchio, "Signior Petruchio, will you go with us,/ Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?" (174-175). Petruchio replies, "I pray you do. I'll attend her here" (176). Baptista proceeds to send Katherine to Petruchio, who is presumably still in the orchard. The dialogue hints at a character's mood and physical appearance at one point in the scene. When Hortensio, disguised as Litio, approaches Baptista to tell him of Katherine's impatience in her lesson, Baptista asks, "How now, my friend, why dost thou look so pale?" (149) Hortensio replies, "For fear, I promise you, if I look pale" (150). This reveals that Hortensio is pale out of fear. The parenthetical declaration of Hortensio's entrance into the scene says that his head is "Broke" (Between lines 148 and 149). As a result, when he says, "And with that word she hath struck me on the head" (161), the reader knows that his head is injured because it was hit with the lute. Also, Hortensio's description of what happened during the lesson puts the picture in the reader's mind that he is very frustrated. He says, "I think she'll (Katherine will) sooner prove a soldier!/ Iron may hold with her, but never lutes" (152-153). This shows the reader his desperation and possibly his astonishment.

The Paralysis and Following Epiphany in "Araby"

The events at the end of Araby somewhat foreshadow the Joycean epiphany that comes at the very end. First, the narrator's uncle arrives very late at home the night the narrator is supposed to go to Araby. His uncle does not even remember to give the narrator money for Araby upon his arrival. Later, after the narrator has taken the train to the bazaar, he sees that it will only be open for ten more minutes. He has trouble finding a sixpence entrance, so he settles for an entrance that costs twice as much out of fear that the bazaar would close before he could enter. He has rushed to accomplish the task of purchasing something for Mangan's sister up to this point; however, once he is inside the bazaar, all of his actions show paralysis,

I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly... (34)
Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the stalls and
examined porcelain vases and tea-sets... (35)
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in
her wares seem more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle
of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket.
(35)

He shows no need of urgency to accomplish his goal once he has entered the bazaar. He seems to approach the stall with little or no idea of what his next action will be. As he looks at the vases and tea-sets in the stall, he does not contemplate what he will purchase. This becomes clear when he tells the woman who runs the stall that he has no desire to purchase anything. He already begins to feel a sense of hopelessness as he remains in the stall pretending to have a purpose there. When the lights of the bazaar turn off, he fully experiences the epiphany that his coming to Araby was useless because he could not bring himself to purchase anything. With this epiphany comes feelings of "anger and anguish." However, all of his hesitance from the point he entered Araby to the moment the lights turned out gradually foreshadows his ultimate epiphany and makes it more unavoidable. Like other Joycean epiphanies, this epiphany is followed by the narrator's return to the mundane parts of his life that are school and inability to interact with Mangan's sister.

Audience's Lack of Pity for Gregor Despite his Being Alienated

Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," like may other modernist works, has a major theme of alienation. Gregor is the subject of alienation from everyone else in his life. However, Kafka does not want his readers to feel pity for Gregor. Before he becomes a bug, he lives at a distance from the people with whom he works. Because he is a traveling salesman, he rarely sees those people who work in the offices at his firm. He cannot keep relationships with those whom he meets on his travels, as he only interacts with them for short periods of time for business purposes. He also lives at a distance from his family; he locks the door every night before retiring to his room. The tension between him and his father is evident in the beginning of the story as his father shows little patience for Gregor's failure to present himself to the chief clerk. Once Gregor has become a bug, the alienation he experiences is magnified and, thus, made more obvious to the reader. His mother expresses concern for him in the face of the chief clerk, saying that he is ill in hopes that she can help excuse his tardiness. However, once she knows that he is a bug, she refuses to address him even once. His father aggressively forces him back into his room after he has caused the flight of the chief clerk.

Despite all of this alienation, Kafka does not want the reader to sympathize with Gregor. Throughout the story, from when Gregor apparently spontaneously has become a bug to when he dies, Kafka's narration remains objective. He never adopts enough of Gregor's persona in his narration to show any of Gregor's long-term thoughts about his being a bug. Even when he is narrating from Gregor's point of view, Kafka still only shows Gregor's thoughts and plans of how he can make the best out of his being a bug. This entails how he can get out of bed, get dressed, and make the eight o'clock train in time all as a bug at the beginning of the story, and how he can get food and attention toward the end of the story. Kafka never reveals Gregor's thoughts, if Gregor does have any, about how his lifestyle will entirely dramatically change now that he is a bug. Especially at the beginning of the story, when Gregor has discovered his metamorphosis, the reader would expect detailed description of Gregor's thoughts on how he possibly came to be a bug. However, Kafka provides little of such description. This subjective narration (ignoring Gregor's deep thoughts and only focusing on his thoughts that cause his actions and his actions themselves) generally does not create a strong feeling of pity for Gregor in the reader. If Kafka had wanted to give the reader a stronger feeling of pity, he could have added in his narration more of Gregor's thoughts of general desperation about his being a bug. Also, the fact that Gregor transformed into and lived miserably as a bug rather than any other animal shows Kafka's lack of intention to create a feeling of pity,

One side of his body rose up, he was tilted at an angle in the doorway, his flank was quite
bruised, horrid blotches stained the white door, soon he was struck fast and, left to himself,
could not have moved at all, his legs on one side fluttered trembling in the air, those on the
other were crushed painfully to the floor-... (104-105)

Bugs are generally among the most disgusting animals in humans' eyes, and they are certainly some of the most despised. Descriptions of Gregor's pain as a bug will more likely evoke feelings of disgust in the reader rather than feelings of pity. This is because Gregor's "blotchy" blood is described to stain the wall and his many legs are described to be "trembling in the air." It is hard for a reader to feel pity for a creature that disgusts them; if Kafka had wanted the reader to be more likely to pity Gregor, he would have had Gregor transform into and suffer as a more likable animal, such as a rabbit or a dog. It is possible that Kafka wants his audience to alienate Gregor just as those in Gregor's life alienate him.

Kafka Citations- The Nature of the metamorphoses in "The Metamorphosis"

In Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", the protagonist's great transformation, often the pivotal moment in a work of fiction, gets plopped unceremoniously on our lap in the story's first sentence. In other words, it begins with what should be its climax. "The Metamorphosis" opens with the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, discovering that he has turned into a giant cockroach. Surprisingly, Gregor’s bizarre new state is not the central transformation in the novel. Gregor’s love and devotion towards his family remain unchanged throughout the story, the only constant left in his rapidly deteriorating life. As his physical needs and abilities shift from human to animal, it is his family who forces him to adapt to his new identity: they remove the furniture from his room, begin feeding him leftovers, and gradually help strip away everything that had identified him as a human being. It is no surprise, then, that they’re able to exclude Gregor from their lives, and ultimately cause his death. By the end of the story, Gregor’s parents and sister have themselves metamorphosed.

Gregor's metamorphosis calls into question all the assumptions of our daily lives: that success and appearance and social position matter; that a productive life was characterized by a steadily improving standard of living and a socially acceptable appearance. These considerations produce even further questions: if we once appeared socially acceptable and now have ceased to do so, are we still in fact ourselves? Was the socially acceptable persona in fact ourselves, or is there more essential selfness in the being we have now become? Or have we, in fact, been nobody in the first place, and are we nobody still? "The Metamorphosis" is a story about alienation. Gregor's life is dictated by his dead-end job and family responsibilities to the extent that even when he travels to different towns, he prefers to stay in his hotel room studying train timetables rather than experience what the new location has to offer. When Gregor wakes up as an insect, his essential identity has not changed. Curiously, his condition does not arouse a sense of surprise or incredulity in the eyes of his family, who merely despise it as an indication of impending burden. Gregor's earlier sentiment is reciprocated when his family begins locking and bolting the door shut behind him in his room.

The Dual Identities of Evil in "Young Goodman Brown"

In"Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, evil is a large theme. However, the true identity of evil is questioned through a reversal of evil's identity during the story. At first, when Young Goodman Brown is going through the forest, evil is presented as anything that is non-Christian in that it goes against Christian teachings. Young Goodman Brown explains to his guide that he comes from a family with repeated generations of good moral Christian men and fathers. By the time Young Goodman Brown is running through the forest toward the demonic congregation, that he is not evil is seriously being questioned by the reader. He carelessly runs through the forest screaming taunts at the evil sounds around him. While that in itself is not evil, Hawthorne describes him at the time as (the following are not exact quotes, but are citings of the wording used in the story at different places) "the most frightful figure throughout the haunted forest." He also calls Young Goodman Brown a "demoniac" and says that his actions are a result of "the fiend raging in the breast of a man." At the end of the story, he is not described as evil (like he was when he was running through the forest), but as "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful" man. He does not have any friendly interactions with people and he always seems to be suspicious that the evil of the devil is present among the townspeople. Overall, he has changed from a normal, friendly moral Christian to a Christian who is extreme in his beliefs about the presence of evil among everyday townspeople (he became a "demoniac" in between). He is a Christian throughout the story, but his Christian morality demonstrated through his kindness fades away at the end. Through this, Hawthorne is likely trying to say that Christianity can cause immorality in a person as well as morality. This trend is also seen in the contrasting views Hawthorne has of the townspeople. They are revealed to be sinful at the evil congregation in the forest, but Hawthorne describes many of them, especially Goody Cloyse, as good Christians throughout the story. (Hawthorne uses verbal and situational irony when he continues to describe the townspeople as good Christians even when they are seen as members of the evil congregation).

Romanticism Essay Body Paragraph Original Version and Revision

Original Paragraph

The Romantic notion of transcendentalism is highly evident in John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Keats wishes to transcend human reality on Earth just as the nightingale does in order to escape human suffering, “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,/ And with thee (the nightingale) fade away into the forest dim (19-20).” Once he sees beyond reality, he will be able to understand what those involved only in human society can never understand, the part of the world that is beyond the realms of both science and imagination. In fact, it is beyond human comprehension. When he gains this divine understanding of the world, he will be able to look past his relatively insignificant human suffering. He knows that the nightingale escapes Earthly suffering because of its eternal joyful song,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain (57-59)…
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs (22-25)

The nightingale sees beyond the problems with the world because it has a divine understanding that perhaps allows it to see the reasons for the problems. As a result, nothing is stopping it from forever singing in joy. Keats’ notion of transcendentalism in this poem is one of the most fundamental concepts of Romanticism.

Revision

The Romantic notion of transcendentalism is highly evident in John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Keats wishes to transcend human reality on Earth just as the nightingale does in order to escape human suffering, “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,/ And with thee (the nightingale) fade away into the forest dim (19-20).” Once he sees beyond reality, he will be able to understand what those involved only in human society can never understand, the part of the world that is beyond the realms of both science and imagination. In fact, it is beyond human comprehension. When he gains this divine understanding of the world, he will be able to look past his relatively insignificant human suffering. He knows that the nightingale escapes Earthly suffering because of its eternal joyful song,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain (57-59)…
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs (22-25)

The nightingale sees beyond the problems with the world because it has a divine understanding that allows it to see the reasons for the problems. As a result, nothing is stopping it from forever singing in joy. Keats wants to have the same experience of divine realization and understanding that the nightingale does so that he can see the reasons for his natural suffering as a human being. Once he understands the reasons why humans must suffer and why he in particular must suffer, he will accept his role as a human being; he will know the end result that is meant to come from his suffering. Transcendentalism is a large part of many Romantic works. In "Ode to a Nightingale," John Keats uses a standout example of it.

Reasons for Revisions

In the new version fo the paragraph, I added more to the warrant for the second quotation. I tied the nightingale's experience back to Keats' experience in order to better prove the claim. I made it so that the explanations I added at the end finally tied back to the end of the claim. In other words, everything after the claim excpet for the concluding sentence broke down its parts and essentially restated them through explanation. I first broke down the general concept of transcendentalism as it applies to this poem, and then broke down Keats' reasons for using it.

The Purpose of Andrew Hudgins' Parody

Andrew Hudgins' parody "The Wild Swans Skip School" is a clever use of free association to relate two unlike poems for the purpose of comedy; it has no underlying message, negative or positive, about either William Butler Yeats' "The Wild Swans at Coole" or Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool."

A Child's Interpretation of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"

Like most Latin American countries and former Spanish colonies, Colombia has long been largely Catholic. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a native Colombian author, often follows the theme of magical realism in his writing (like many other Latin American writers). His "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," having been published in 1968, surely would have given the Colombian children for whom it was written a different view of clergy people, and even Catholicism, than they were taught in school.

Before 1973, Catholicism was not only stated as Colombia's official religion (over 95 percent of the population was Catholic), but the Catholic Church had a significant place in Colombian society. It, rather than the Colombian government, controlled all schools and many other social services such as health care (Library of Congress Country Studies). Being in Catholic School at a young age, especially in a society of some of the most devout Catholics in the world, children would come to trust clergy figures, especially their local priests, as infallible with regards to the Catholic faith. In "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," Father Gonzaga's refusal to recognize the old man as an angel would perplex the children, as they would have the preconception that he is indeed an angel. This is because the children would believe the first definite interpretation of the old man that is presented in the story, the neighbor woman's proclamation that he is an angel. As a child is read a story, certain sentences, phrases, or words would stand out to that child. "He's an angel (452)" would certainly be something that a child hears above almost everything else when being read the story. As a result, the child would accept it as a truth throughout the rest of the story. When the child would hear of Father Gonzaga's denying the "angel's" identity and that he does not stand up for the "angel's" rights (the angel is kept in a chicken coop, food is thrown at him, and he is branded) simply as another living being, the child would most likely see that not all priests are "good," or respectful to their religion. In a Catholic child's mind, angels are a significant part of the Catholic Faith. This is because of the imagery they evoke in a child's imaginative mind. When the child would hear of Pelayo's mistreating of the old man, "...he (Pelayo) dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the chicken coop (452)," the child would wonder why people would mistreat a being that, according to their faith, is to be respected. Father Gonzaga's and Pelayo's negative treatments of the "angel" would allow them to see that not everyone who claims to be Catholic behaves like a Catholic.


http://www.photius.com/countries/colombia/society/colombia_society religion.html.
Revised 10-Nov-04. Copyright © 2004 Photius Coutsoukis (all rights reserved). October 27, 2008

All human thought can be put on a spectrum ranging from logic and reasoning to creativity and expression. It has always been in man's nature to study his environment through some form of observation and reasoning. Man has also always felt the need to create in order to express himself. The result of this is that all of the modern day societal obligations can be fit somewhere along the spectrum ranging from science and art. For example, salesmanship requires skills with logic and numbers, but it also requires persuasion of customers, for which there is no formulaic method. There is a third category of thought, however, and it encompasses all that is not only beyond our scientific knowledge, but beyond our human comprehension entirely; it can never be grasped by humans entirely. It represents all that is divine and understood only by God. Religion is a human attempt to understand some of it. Another attempt can be seen in the Romatic literature movement. The works and lives of Romantic authors John Keats and Henry David Thoreau show a yearning to understand what is beyond human senses and thought capability.

John Keats, in "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," shows a desire to escape from his reality. In "Ode to a Nightingale," he expresses a desire to leave the world and go into the world beyond human reality, as the nightingale does, "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen/ And with thee fade away into the forest dim (19-20)." In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the fact that Keats' speaker is speaking to an urn shows desire to go beyond reality (It is not that he creates stories for the pictures on the urn that shows his yearning for the world beyond human reality. While his stories require much imagination, imagination is part of human understanding. It is his speaking to the urn that shows his connection to the world beyond human reality). When newborn infants come into the world, they have just taken up a form with human limitations. Before they come into the world, they are (according to Romantic ideals) still among the divine and have divine understanding. As soon as newborns begin the process of learning the facts of human reality and society, they lose their divine knowledge. Someone who would speak to the urn expecting to accomplish something would have no knowledge of the reality that inanimate objects do not speak. It can be inferred as a result that that person has not been in human form for very long, so he still has divine knowledge. No one other than Keats himself can possibly be the speaker in his poem due to the absence of personal pronouns, so Keats himself is talking to the urn. In talking to the urn, he is using negative capability to try to make himself forget the reality that he will accomplish nothing. By doing this, he is trying to see divine knowledge beyond human comprehension. It is easy to see why Keats wants to escape reality; his entire immediate family died during his lifetime.

Henry David Thoreau decided to live in nature away from the society that man expects everyone to follow. In doing this, he was attempting to let go of the human reality that is society so that he may regain the divine understanding he had when he first came into the world. He would attempt to live in a way that was as close as possible to purely instinctive by a human who had no influence from other humans. To do this, he had to forget everything society had taught him about man's reality and limitations.

Hudgins' Jovial Poem Inspired by Two Famous Poems

Hudgens' poem "The Wild Swans Skip School" shows use of much free association and imagination. Some commonality between Yeats' "The Wild Swans at Coole" and Brooks' "We Real Cool" probably prompted Hudgens to write his poem. It is most apparent that the words "Cool" and "Coole" in the titles of Brooks' and Yeats' poems respectively gave Hudgens the idea of mixing the poems together in a single parody. Because the subject matter of Brooks' and Yeats' poems are completely different and because the words "Cool" and "Coole" have completely different meanings, Hudgens had to be thinking very abstractly to relate the two poems in any way. To mix the poems, he uses the form and simple language of Brooks' poem with the content of Yeats' poem. Also, the poem is "spoken" from the swans' point of view, just as Brooks' poem is "spoken" from the pool players' point of view. The swans speak with the same boastful tone as do the pool players, but they are speaking about their actions in Yeats' poem.

Hudgins' parody is little more than the mixing of two relatively famous poems together in a clever manner. It is meant to be comical, and it has little or no underlying message about the other two poets or their poems. At most, Hudgins' message is one of paying respect to the other two poems by recognizing them in one of his poems. He certainly has no ill intention toward the poems. The title of his poem, "The Wild Swans Skip School," sounds too childish and unrealistic to be a legitimiate attack on the other two poems. The swans themselves are the speakers of the poem, giving the poem a light fable tone. Also, though his poem makes a juvenile yet clever joke about the other two, the premise of the joke- mixing two unlike poems of very different subject matter- brings out no problems with them that he may have. The joke itself is a way of paying homage to Brooks and Yeats and their respective poems.

The poem has a deeper meaning that does not involve either of the two poems by which it was inspired. It compares the carefree pool players in Brooks' poem to the swan. The simple structure and carefree mood of Brooks' poem is repeated in Hudgins' parody,

Brooks: We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We (1-4)

Hudgins: We beat wings. We
fly rings. We
scorn Yeats. We
have mates. We (1-4)

This shows that, like the pool players, the swans are detached from society in that they do not care how they affect it. Also, the structure in both poems shows that, like the pool players, the swans are proud of their rebelliousness. This is because the structure gives a haughty mood to the pool players' and the swans' words. Just as the pool players do not care whether or not their lifestyle fits society and whether or not they are draining society's resources without giving back, the swans do not care if they flaunt their lovers in front of the lonely Yeats. Hudgins possibly is trying to say that the swan are no more empathetic toward others than the pool players (Of course, the swan feel no empathy toward other humans because they are animals. However, because Yeats' and Hudgins' poems personify the swans to a certain degree, Hudgins is trying to say that the swans are no more empathetic than the pool players even in their personified form).

The Trend toward less Flowery, more Scientific Art Work over Time

Imagist poetry, when compared to such classic poetry as Shakespearean , seems like unimaginative prose. One is even tempted to ask if imagism is even qualified as poetry. Imagism lacks many of the characteristics that make traditional poetry unique. "The Red Wheel Barrow," by William Carlos Williams, can be argued to have a meter, but it does not have other poetic qualities, "so much depends/ upon/ a red wheel/ barrow (1-4)." It lacks a rhyme scheme and a reasonably poetic line structure; every couplet consists of a line with three words followed by a line with one. Rather than using a metaphor, the poem, like all imagism, tries to paint a concrete picture in the reader's head by using exact wording to describe what it directly means. Concrete and direct description is always desirable in such prose as an essay, but metaphors are seen as much more dignified in poetry. Also, whether or not Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73" truly has a meter (emphasis on different syllables), "Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang, (3-4)" more obvious than that of a "The Red Wheel Barrow," it seems to have a rhythmic quality that makes it roll off of the tongue more easily.

Imagism is the far more modern genre of poetry than Shakespearean, and how it compares to Shakespearean poetry parallels how modern painting compares to classic painting. Many argue over whether or not Jackson Pollock's paintings are even art; they depict dots, while Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel depict Bible stories with much detail. Like imagist poems, it seems that Pollock is trying to express the basics of his art with as little work as possible. One of poetry's main purposes is to create an image in the reader's head, which is all that imagist poems strive to do. The characteristics that make a good painting are indeed expressed in Pollock's paintings; the placing of every dot and speck shows use of perspective. This trend toward more scientific (single-purposed) art work over time from flowery art work that does more than just show the characteristics of its trade shows how our society has progressed. Technology and science are now much more important than they used to be.

The Irony of the Victorian Era

In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the irony of the customs of the Victorian Era becomes evident. The Duke's true lifestyle contradicts the ideals and the initially apparent lifestyles of the Victorian Era. The standard of the Era dictates that women are to be kept physically concealed to all except for their husbands, and that men are judged based on their societal class, wealth, and mental stability. Relative to these standards, scandal would occur very frequently among both women and men.

The Duke, with his wealth and renowned name, is the image of perfection in Victorian Society. However, when one sees into his true life through the poem, one quickly realizes that he is certainly morally flawed and that he does not find true happiness with his lifestyle. He repeatedly mentions his collection of material possessions, showing his burden to appear as if there is no material possession he does not have. It is also evident through his tone that he feels a need to appear stable and happy. It is clear, of course, that he has non Christian-like problems: he envies his wife's happiness, he manipulates marriage to gain a dowry, and he eventually has his wife killed. There is also irony in the fact that he talks about having his wife killed as if it is normal. He is not self-conscious of that, but rather of his appearance as being stable or unstable. His views in this way most likely reflect the views of all of his class throughout the Victorian Era. The society itself is upside-down because these aristocrats see it normal to have their wives killed because they are being understandably flirtatious, yet they see it as wrong if an aristocrat is not sure of his place in the world and happy with himself during his lifetime. The scandal in this poem, according to the rest of the Victorian society, is not that he had his wife killed for being flirtatious (the flirtatiousness is considered scandalous), but that he was unhappy with his aristocratic lifestyle.

Study of First Octet in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument'

Written in prose, the first octet of Rossetti's "A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument" read something like the following:

A sonnet is the documentation of a moment of inspiration and insight. It is a representation of the soul of the poet who created it. While the moment of its creation is very fleeting and temporary, it is also kept alive through the sonnet. Whether the sonnet is written for the reconciliation of its authors sins or for the foretelling of something serious and/or ominous to come, or whether it is written in ink, ebony, or ivory, it will stand the test of time. Whether or not it recognizes its significance and brilliance at the hard-working hands of the author, it will live on through day and night.

First of all, it is obvious that the poem, when turned into prose, loses much of its brevity. The idea of a sonnet making an inevitably fleeting moment eternal can be expressed much more quickly through poetry than through the science of prose. Poetry can abruptly state an abstract idea, as it is acceptable in poetry if the wording is left open to interpretation. In the above prose, it was ideal to be much more concrete. Another notable difference between the poetry and the prose is that the paradox "To one dead deathless hour." ("A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument," Line 2) is lost. When one tries to describe the moment of genius a poet experiences when he/she writes a sonnet as both temporary and eternal, a simple paradox created by the combination of two opposite adjectives is satisfactory in a poem. In prose, however, one must explain that a moment by nature is temporary, and a sonnet cannot literally keep the moment alive, but a sonnet can keep alive the feeling of brilliance of the moment. When explained scientifically like this, the concept loses its paradoxical nature, as a paradox is by nature not scientifically possible. Other literary elements that the poem uses that its prose form would not include alliteration "Moment's Monument" ("A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument," Line 1), a rough Petrarchan rhyme scheme, and sense-related imagery that is too vague to use in prose.

I am Keegan Groot. The url for my blog is http://KMGroot.blogspot.com.