Unit 1 - AAI | Üdvözöljük a DE Angol−Amerikai …ieas.unideb.hu/admin/file_523.doc · Web viewIn his famous Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth

Reading and Teaching Poetry

(István Rácz)

Contents

Unit 1: What is poetry and what is it good for? 2

Unit 2: Rhythm, rhyme and their use in teaching 9

Unit 3: Figures of speech in everyday discourse and in poetry 15

Unit 4: Children in poetry 21

Unit 5: Animals in poetry 26

Unit 1

What is poetry and what is it good for?

1. Introduction

This unit is intended as an introduction to discussing poems, also calling your attention to various possible definitions of poetry. Since poetry and verse can be defined only through contrasts and comparisons, some differences between poetry and matter-of-fact as well as differences between poetry and prose will be explained. As it is relevant to see poetry as a part of our lives (rather than something that is separated from everything else in our world), we will discuss the existence of poetry in various contexts (such as politics) and examine its various functions (e.g. confession and education).

2. Poetry versus matter-of-fact

2.1. Definitions of poetry

2.1.1. Poetry and imaginationA number of poets and theoreticians have defined poetry through its link with imagination. The romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his fundamental essay A Defence of Poetry that “poetry could be defined as the expression of imagination” (1024). Of course, strictly speaking, poetry is not only the expression of imagination (and imagination can be expressed without poetry, too). Nevertheless, Shelley called attention to image making as a central organizing principle in poetry. This throws light on the frequent efforts of poets to distinguish poetry from a world of facts.

2.1.2. Poetry and scienceDuring the age of the Enlightenment (the 18th century), and particularly in the romantic age, poetry and science were often defined in contrast with each other. This was especially true when poetry was also meant as a synecdoche for art in general. Science analyzes the universe (the world of facts, whatever we humans experience in our everyday existence); poetry creates something that is a source of experience itself. Whereas in the hierarchy of the Enlightenment poetry was inferior to science, the Romantics turned this value system upside down. William Blake attacked Isaac Newton for his mechanical view of nature (and anticipated 20th century science). In his famous Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth wrote: “Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge – it is as immortal as the heart of man” (939). One implication of this declaration is that poetry is more powerful than science: the former is limitless, the latter is not. (This echoes Blake’s image of Newton.) In this light, it is not surprising that the inferior position of poets was probably the only idea in Plato that Shelley did not accept. It is important to note, however, that all these poets were interested in science, particularly Shelley. A number of his images reflect or anticipate scientific discoveries (see e.g. Prometheus Unbound). Poets do not usually question the relevance of science, but they deny its superiority over poetry and art.

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2.1.3. Poetry and politicsOne of the recurrent questions about poetry is its relationship with politics. There are a great number of definitions of politics, often contradictory, but it is usually interpreted as a term referring to practicing power. Today it usually “denotes a kind of activity associated with government” (Scruton 361).

All of us know a number of poems that have contributed to political movements. In Hungarian literature Petőfi is the best-known example; in British literature Shelley is one of those who are often seen as political poets. He wrote very few overtly political poems (such as “Song to the Men of England”), but many of his poems can be read as political allegories (e.g. “Ode to the West Wind”). Some critics (mostly representatives of Marxist criticism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism) maintain the view that every poem is political by definition: even if it pretends to be apolitical, eventually it always turns out to be a political utterance. Furthermore, denying the importance of politics in a poem is also making politics.

This is true. On the other hand, one should remember that the meaning of a poem is always constructed in the reader. Therefore, the question is not whether you can read any poem as a political text; of course you can if you want to. But you deprive yourself of many exciting readings if you want to read every poem as a political statement, and only that. For example, “Ode to the West Wind” is also a philosophical poem about pantheism, a musically structured work of art following a five-part pattern, a confession of the poet’s own grief and expectations, etc. You miss the richness of the text if you only see it as a political allegory.

On the other hand, the notion of politics and its meaning in theory has changed significantly in recent decades. Feminism, for example, states not only that the essence of politics is power, but also that it can be grasped in all discourses and texts. The same dictionary that I quoted from above also suggests that “the idea of politics as involving the recognition and conciliation of opposing interests is now widely accepted” (ibid.). This is much broader than the conventional notion of politics (which is based on organized movements), and from our point of view is important, since it confirms that a poem always exists in the context of politics. (You can think of the conventions of European love poetry, in which the inferior and objectified position of women reconstructed in the text reveals the poet’s sexual politics.) To sum up: politics is a significant context of poetry, although not the only context. Therefore, you can always give a political reading to a poem (political in the widest sense of the term), but this still remains one of the possible ways of reading poetry.

2.2. The functions of poetryThe three subchapters below demonstrate three important functions of poetry (but, of course, you could add many more).

2.2.1. Poetry as expression/confessionOne of the best-known features that distinguishes poetry from other forms of discourse is that it focuses on expression. This means that the poet makes the internal external: s/he projects his/her inner world into something textually constructed. Importantly, this also means that the poet always constructs a speaker in the poem, who is never identical with the real poet. The speaker whose voice we hear in the poem is a verbal construct, similarly to a character or a narrator in fiction.

In a great number of poems everything is subordinated to this function: the descriptions in the imagery, the metre, the structure all serve to express the poet’s inner world (his/her

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subjectivity). In many cases this expression can be identified with confession: a poem is a text in which the target of representation is the subject itself (as the French philosopher Michel Foucault defined confession in a different context). This function of poetry has very long traditions in European literature, but became especially important in Romanticism, and lingered on later in Symbolism and even in 20th century Modernism. A number of poets emphasize that confession through writing poetry is a psychological need, which prevents them from mental problems. Lord Byron, for example, wrote: poetry “is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake” (quoted in Rutherford 4).

2.2.2. Poetry as teaching/educationPoetry also has the function of persuasion: the poet aims at persuading the reader of something, that is to educate you. (Please notice that whereas in the expressive function the emphasis is on the subject, here the stress falls on the addressed person: the reader.) M.H. Abrams calls this the pragmatic function of literature, and points out that it is rooted in the classical art of rhetoric: the art of persuasion (The Mirror and the Lamp 15). This function was particularly important in 18th century poetry. In Victorian literature the idea that an artist must minister the ethical state of the reader was also central.

2.2.3. Poetry as mimesisIt is a commonplace to say that literature reflects (or “mirrors”) reality. You can point out this mimetic function in most poems. (The Greek word mimesis means ‘imitation’ and is the central category of Aristotle’s aesthetics.) You can notice this in romantic nature poetry (such as in the imagery of Keats’s “To Autumn”), but also in Modernism. This is a two-liner by Ezra Pound, entitled “In a Station of the Metro”:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :Petals on a wet, black bough :

Grammatically, this is not a complete sentence: there is no verbal predicate in it. (This shows the closeness of poetry to colloquial discourse, in which we often use such “ungrammatical” forms – see 3.1. in this unit). This strictly nominal style represents something in the world as seen through the poet’s eyes. This way, it is both mimetic and expressive.

3. Poetry versus prose

In this section the focus will be on the distinctive elements of poetry in contrast with prose. All handbooks seem to agree that the main feature distinguishing poetry from prose is that it follows patterns of sound: it uses rhythm, rhymes, alliterations, etc. It is a well-known fact that poetry preceded artistic prose in literary history, for the simple reason that it was easier to memorise than prose. This is one function of the sound patterns mentioned above: rhythm, rhyme and some further acoustic effects will stick in the reader’s (or listener’s) memory, and in many cases they also lead the poet’s hand when writing the poem. Please consider that illiterate people (young children, uneducated adults, members of archaic tribes) know more poetry by heart than prose. (If you have doubts, remember that even the most uneducated people will know the words of some popular songs – texts written in verse.) This is also the reason why some people (such as the late Hungarian poet Géza Páskándi) say that citability is an unmistakable feature of good poetry: lines or stanzas from a good poem will stick in your

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mind, even if you do not want to learn them. This seldom happens with prose (even with excellently written prose).

3.1. Should we define poetry or prose?In most definitions of poetry it is taken for granted that everybody knows what prose is. Some scholars, however, think that prose should be distinguished from colloquial discourse. In a long study, Iván Horváth argues that before defining poetry we should define what prose is. According to his theory, prose is definitely not what we use in our everyday communication. Literary prose almost always obeys grammatical rules, whereas colloquial language and poetry often violate these (Szili 77-83). A handbook suggests that prose is “written language generally lying midway between verse and spoken language” (Myers and Simms 244). Although prose is sometimes simply defined as a text written in nonmetric language, in literary studies it usually means a highly organized text that fulfills some of the functions readers expect of literature. Distinguishing prose from poetry is not easy at a theoretical level, since artistic prose is often rhythmic (and a poem not necessarily is). At a practical level, it is usually easy to tell one from the other (Dickens’s David Copperfield is prose, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a poem), but there are borderline cases, such as some translations of the Bible.

3.2. Metre, rhythm and poetryAlthough there are always notable exceptions, in most cases poetry is defined as a text with a regular or irregular rhythm. Once it is applied to poetry we call this rhythm metre.

In spoken language (whether you think of English, Hungarian, or any other language) you always feel a rhythm, that is, “a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in the stream of sound”, as M.H. Abrams has defined it (Glossary 101). Please notice that Abrams only mentions the pattern of beats, that is a regularly arranged order of stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables. There is no quantitative versification (időmértékes verselés) in English; this is the reason why you cannot find Greek hexameters in English, apart from some rare examples in experimental poetry. (Homer’s epics have been translated in a completely different form.) In English you can only find stress-based versification (hangsúlyos verselés).

But please note: although English metre is based on combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables, these form feet (as in Greek verse). An iamb, for example, is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. (In Hungarian quantitative verse it is a short syllable followed by a long one.)

One should also remember the oral origin of all poetry. When people use the rhythm of spoken language to write poetry, they use the natural energy of the spoken word. This is what we always feel when we speak of “engaging rhythm” or “magic power” in a poem.

3.3. The function of linesPoems are usually arranged in lines that do not run from margin to margin. (The notable exception is the form of the prose poem.) The word line is of Latin origin, and the meaning is ‘thread’. This is a significant metaphor, since it suggests that the lines lead our eyes and mind when we want to understand a poem.

When we read a poem we are conscious of lines. What happens is that after reading the title (which is usually an organic part of the text) you read the first line and you understand it in

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the context of the title. Then you read the second line, and understand it in the context of the title and the first line. This goes on until you reach the last line, when you form your own notion and opinion of the whole text. This is the basis of the method called close reading, which is defined as “the detailed and subtle analysis of the complex interrelations and ambiguities (multiple meanings) of the components within a work” (Abrams, Glossary 223, emphasis in the original). Close reading is also applicable to any kind of prose, including non-literary texts. What distinguishes reading poetry from reading other texts is that you can do it “line by line” (in fact, we usually do that instinctively).

For example, you read the title of Yeats’s poem: “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death”. You understand that the poem will be about a pilot who is conscious of his forthcoming death. Then you read the first line:

I know that I shall meet my fate

You immediately notice that this line repeats the statement in the title, with the difference that this is in the first person. You understand that the poem is a monologue, in which the voice you hear is not the poet’s own, but the Irish airman’s: he is the speaker of the text. The second line is:

Somewhere among the clouds above;

The adverb of place suggests that he will be killed on board of his plane. All the time you are aware of what has been said in the title and the first line; you add everything you read in the poem to that. You may also focus on ambiguities (mentioned by Abrams): you can argue, for instance, that meeting someone’s fate does not necessarily mean death.

Lines can coincide with grammatical units. In this case, the end of the line is also the end of a sentence, a clause or another semantic unit. This is called an end-stopped line. You can notice this at the end of Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils”:

They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude.And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

End-stopped lines (as can well be seen from the example above) usually create an atmosphere of harmony and suggest that something has been completed.

Lines can also run on to the next line without a logical stop or a phonetic break. In this case there is a tension between the metre of the line and its grammatical structure (its syntax). This is called a run-on line or an enjambed line (the ending often referred to as an enjambment). You can study this in the first stanza of Philip Larkin’s “Mr Bleaney”:

‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayedThe whole time he was at the Bodies, tillThey moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,Fall to within five inches of the sill,

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Logical stops and line endings do not coincide in run-on lines. This usually suggests the free flow of thoughts, but an enjambment also creates an atmosphere of disharmony, anxiety and inner tension.

3.4. The function of stanzasIn most poems lines form larger units: stanzas (or strophes). Stanza is an Italian word, originally meaning “stopping place” or “room” (Myers 288). This indicates that the primary function of the gap between stanzas is similar to a rest in music. This should not surprise us, since music and poetry existed inseparably for a long time. (Poetry without a tune is a relatively late development; it became widespread only after the Renaissance.) The “room” between two stanzas can have numberless functions, but one can almost always feel the original and very practical reason for such a rest: the performer of the poem needed some time to take a breath.

It would be impossible to make a list even of the most often used strophes. What follows is a description of one particular stanza form, but it also gives you an idea as to how you can analyze the structure of a stanza.

Probably the most popular short stanza in English literature is the ballad stanza. This means four iambic lines in this order:

tetrametertrimetertetrametertrimeter

The rhythm of the ballad stanza is always iambic; a tetrameter means a line of four iambs, a trimeter a line of three iambs. (For further explanation see Unit 2, part 2.) One of the earliest examples is the Scottish ballad “Sir Patrick Spence”. This is the first stanza:

The king sits in Dumferling toune, Drinking the blude-red wine:‘O whar will I get a guid sailor, To sail this schip of mine?

If you try scanning the rhythm, you can notice that neither line 1, nor line 3 forms a perfect iambic tetrameter; the only line that is really iambic is the last one. Still, it is the iambic rhythm that the poem sometimes deviates from and always returns to. This is true of most ballads (including a famous later one, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the poet was liberal even with the number of lines).

4. ConclusionAlthough there have been a great number of efforts taken to define poetry in the history of literature, no fully satisfactory definition can be given. The two most often mentioned distinctive features are that poetry is metric (as opposed to prose), and that it creates images. There are exceptions to both: free verse does not have any regular rhythm, and modern poetry does not always create imagery in the traditional sense. But the idea of creation is almost always represented in poetry; the Greek word poem means a “thing created”. A poem is

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always organized (a feature that poetry and prose share), and puts strong emphasis on linguistic innovations (which range from newly created phrases to ungrammatical and even nonsensical forms). A poem is usually arranged typographically: it consists of lines and stanzas. Good poetry always shows equilibrium between following tradition and introducing innovations. Consequently, when you discuss poetry, you should pay attention to both.

Problematic pointsPerhaps the most often made mistake in discussing poetry is that the analysis becomes mechanical. It is tempting to write about the metre of a poem if you can discover it, but you should write about it only if you can also explain its function: how it contributes to the aesthetic effect of the poem in general. There is no general “recipe” for discussing poetry, but as a rule you should always start with very attentive reading. Whenever in doubt, you should consult a dictionary for checking the meaning of words.

You should always remember that a good poem is an inexhaustible text and be aware that your reading is one of many equally possible interpretations.

References

Abrams. M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Holt, Rinchart and Winston, Inc., 1988.

---. The Mirror and the Lamp. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1958. Myers, Jack and Michael Simms. The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. New York:

Longman, 1989.Rutherford, Andrew. Byron: A Critical Study. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1965.Scruton, Roger. A Dictionary of Political Thought. London: Pan Books, 1983.Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters. London: The Nonesuch Press,

1951.Szili József (ed.). A strukturalizmus után. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1992.Wordsworth, William. The Poems. London: Oxford UP, 1923.

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Unit 2

Rhythm, rhyme and their use in teaching

1. IntroductionAlthough no fully satisfactory definition of poetry can be given, it is widely agreed that poems are rhythmic texts: they apply regular or irregular patterns of sounds. Regular rhythmic patterns have always been used ever since poetry appeared in human culture, and although poetry can also be written without such patterns (see free verse, concrete poetry, etc.), regular metre is no less popular in contemporary poetry than it was ever before. The same applies to rhyme, an acoustic element reinforcing the musical effect of rhythm.

2. Rhythmic patterns2.1. The iambic rhythmAs you must have noticed, English is a language with a great number of monosyllabic words. If you add a particle to a noun, the first syllable of the phrase will usually be unstressed, the second stressed (the girl, by bus, at all). Such phrases are so frequent that they also determine the natural rhythm of the language. A sentence such as The girl is in the pool is a perfect iambic trimeter: a line of three iambs.

An iamb is a two-syllable foot: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. For the reason mentioned in the paragraph above, English is a characteristically iambic language. (Hungarian is the opposite: it is a trochaic language.) Depending on the number of iambic feet, a line in English poetry can be a monometer (one iamb), a dimeter (two feet), a trimeter (three), a tetrameter (four), a pentameter (five), or a hexameter (six). Iambic lines longer than these are rarely used.

Here is an example of the iambic rhythm from John Betjeman’s “Slough”:

And get that man with double chinWho’ll always cheat and always win,Who washes his repulsive skinIn women’s tears.

This is a stanza in which three iambic tetrameters are followed by a dimeter.

The most frequently used line in English poetry is blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameters. This is the basic measure of Shakespeare’s plays, of Milton’s great poems and numberless monologues and descriptive poems later (although less popular in contemporary verse). This is an example from Hamlet:

He may approve our eyes , and speak to it.

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2.2. The trochaic rhythmThe iamb is a rising foot, as it ends in a stressed (accented) syllable. Its opposite is the trochee, a falling foot, ending in an unstressed (unaccented) syllable. Although not as frequent in English as iambic feet, trochees still sound natural: sitting, do it, have some.

A trochee is a foot in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed one. The well-known effect of iambic rhythm is pathos (also the rhythm of Greek tragedies); trochaic rhythm is lighter, often suggesting something idyllic. In this stanza by Philip Larkin you can notice how trochaic tetrameters can be used in English:

So they passed in beards and moleskins,Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,Through the tall gates standing open.

(“The Explosion”)

This is also the metre of the Finnish epic Kalevala.

2.3. The anapaestic rhythmAn anapaest is a trisyllabic foot: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one (understand, to the sea, with a glass). In this stanza from Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” I have marked the ends of each anapaest:

And the wi/dows of A/shur are loud / in their wail,And the i/dols are broke / in the tem/ple of Baal:And the might / of the Gen/tile, unsmote / by the sword,Hath mel/ted like snow / in the glance / of the Lord.

The anapaestic rhythm usually suggests anxiety and dynamism.

2.4. The dactylic rhythmA dactyl, another trisyllabic foot, is the opposite of an anapaest: two unaccented syllables following an accented one. In the example below (by an anonymous poet) I have also demonstrated the feet:

A was an / archer, who / shot at a / frog;B was a / butcher, and / had a great / dog;C was a / captain, all / covered with / lace;D was a / drunkard, and / had a red / face.

If you try scanning Byron’s anapaestic stanza and the dactylic stanza above, you may find that the rhytmic effects are quite similar, although an anapaest is a rising foot and a dactyl is a falling one. The reason in this particular case is that in this stanza there is an extra syllable with a strong stress at the end of each line. This produces a rising effect, even though the feet in the lines are falling. This also demonstrates that the metrical character of a line much depends on the last syllable.

Dactyls are much less used in English than in Hungarian, owing to the difference between the phonetic systems of the two languages.

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2.5. Analyzing metre: an exampleIt rarely happens that the metre of a poem should be based on one kind of foot only. What comes most naturally in English diction is a combination of iambic and anapaestic rhythm. This is the last line of Ted Hughes’s “February 17th”:

And the body lay born, beside the hacked-off head.

What you can first notice is the sharp caesura after the word “born”. (A caesura is a pause in the metre of a line, usually in the middle.) Then you can scan the two parts of the line. Note:

˘ stands for an unstressed syllable, ` for a stressed syllable

˘ ˘ ` / ˘ ˘ ` // ˘ ` / ˘ ` / ˘ `And the body lay born // beside the hacked-off head.

The first part of the line contains two anapaests; the second part three iambs. The question, then, is: what is the function of this metre?

The poem is about a lamb that is born dead. The shepherd had to cut off its head to save its mother’s life. The result is what the last line quoted above tells us. The rhythm of the line, however, adds something to the meaning of the words. The anapaests make the first part of the line sound dynamic; the iambs of the second half suggest something more static. In the context of Hughes’s poetry, one can even risk to say that the body represents life (and also instincts that constitute life in general), and the head (the intellect) stands for death.

Not all lines offer themselves for such a metric analysis (in a number of cases metre proves to be irrelevant), but in many cases following the rhythm helps you understand the whole poem.

Note: If you are interested in music, you can also discover the feet outlined above in some famous pieces. It became a conscious effort to use classic metric feet in music in the romantic age. You can definitely hear iambs in Chopin’s Revolutionary etude, anapaests at the end of Rossini’s overture to Wilhelm Tell, etc. The most famous example of dactylic music is from the baroque age: the last movement of Bach’s Suite in d minor.

3. Rhyme Rhyme means “the harmony or identity of sound values” (Myers and Simms 259); in a narrower sense it is the similar sounding of line endings. Rhyme as we know it today was not used in ancient Greek and Roman poetry or in Anglo-Saxon verse; in the modern sense, it was developed in early Christian poetry, first as a part of church ceremonies. The original (and very practical) function of rhymes was to help people remember texts.

3.1. The main types of rhyme

3.1.1. Consonance and assonance

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Consonance is the repetition of identical or similar consonants of words whose vowels are different. This became a particularly important device in late 19 th and 20th century poetry. Notice this stanza from Dylan Thomas’s poem “Before I Knocked”:

Before I knocked and flesh let enter,With liquid hands tapped on the womb,I who was shapeless as the waterThat shaped the Jordan near my homeWas brother to Mnetha’s daughterAnd sister to the fathering worm.

The rhyme scheme (see 3.2 in this Unit) is a b a b a b. The endings of lines 2, 4, and 6 are womb - home - worm. The vowel is different in each line, but the last consonant is the same: m.

This also means that the identity or similarity of sounds in rhymes is not always reflected in spelling. As a general rule, it is pronunciation rather than spelling that you should notice when identifying rhymes (unless it is an eye-rhyme; see 3.1.2).

Assonance means the rhyming of the vowels in words. It can occur either at the end of lines or within the lines:

‘Twas in November, but I’m not sureAbout the day – the era’s more obscure.(Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, CXXI)

Before the door of God!(Dickinson, poem 49)

Full rhyme (or perfect rhyme) is the rhyming of both the vowels and the consonants in line endings (without the initial consonants):

I rode one evening with Count MaddaloUpon the bank of land which breaks the flowOf Adria towards venice: a bare strandOf hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,Such as from earths’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,(Shelley, “Julian and Maddalo”)

3.1.2. Eye-rhyme (sight-rhyme)Consonance and assonance, as described above, are rhymes for the ear, but there are also rhymes for the eye in English. An eye-rhyme is “a type of rhyme in which words or the final parts of words are spelled alike but not pronounced alike”, such as blood – mood (Myers and Simms 109). This is an important type of rhyme in English because of the large number of homographs and the striking difference between spelling and pronunciation.

A frequent subtype of eye-rhyme is the historical rhyme: “words that once rhymed with each other in a former period of history, but which have come to be pronounced differently” (Myers and Simms 134). These are the last two lines of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”:

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The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

In the early 19th century wind was pronounced as [waind]. Therefore, for Shelley and his contemporary audience the poem ended in a full rhyme (see 3.1.1.), but today we read it as an eye-rhyme.

3.2. Rhyme schemesRhyme scheme means the arrangement of rhymes in a poem or in a stanza. For symbols of rhyme schemes, we usually use the letters of the alphabet (e.g. a a b b); an x means an unrhyming ending.

There are two basic types of rhyme scheme in English: couplet rhyme and interlocking rhyme.

3.2.1. The rhyming coupletThe term couplet means two lines in a poem that belong together. They do not necessarily rhyme, but they often do. The pattern of a couplet rhyme is a a. Shakespeare’s sonnets always end with a couplet rhyme:

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.(Sonnet LXXIII)

The rhyming couplet in which the rhythmic pattern is an iambic pentameter (see 2.1. in this Unit) is called heroic couplet. This form was introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14 th

century, and then became popular for hundreds of years. This is an example from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock:

And now, unveiled, the Toilet stands displayed,Each silver vase in mystic order laid.First, robed in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncovered, the Cosmetic powers.A heavenly Image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;

The heroic couplet has been used both in solemn and in comic poems. Pope even translated Homer’s epics in heroic couplets, since it is difficult to write Greek hexameters in English (although one can find examples, such as some poems by the contemporary British poet Peter Reading).

3.2.2. The interlocking rhymeBesides the couplet rhyme, the other basic pattern is the interlocking rhyme. This means the kind of pattern in which the rhyming line endings do not directly follow each other. The basic interlocking pattern is a b a b, but it can also be more complicated. Interlocking rhymes, as a rule, create larger units in poems than couplet rhymes.

You can notice a simple four-line interlocking pattern in William Cowper’s “Light Shining out of Darkness”:

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Deep in unfathomable mines a Of never failing skill bHe treasures up his bright designs, a And works his sovereign will. b

A special and frequent type of interlocking rhyme is the terza rima: aba bcb cdc ded, etc. This is an invention of the Italian poet Dante; in his Divine Comedy this rhyme scheme creates an atmosphere of infinite flowing. A number of English poets have also used it in various ages and for various purposes. In Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”, for example, the terza rima suggests the endless power of the wind:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, aThou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead bAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, a

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, bPestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, cWho chariotest to their dark wintry bed b

4. ConclusionWhen we read poetry we usually feel the rhythm before we sense anything else about the poem. Rhythm guides our reading. When you start feeling the rhythm, it may recall memories (or distant echoes) of poems, songs or pieces of music that you know. This frequently determines your expectation of the poem. If, for example, the rhythm you hear is similar to a nursery rhyme, you will expect a text with a similar atmosphere or style. (But notice: such expectations are more often unconscious than not.) Rhymes reinforce the effect of rhythm. Consequently, there are many metric poems without rhymes, but there are no rhyming poems without metre. (Using rhymes without metre produces a very awkward-sounding text.)

Problematic pointsIn part 2 I discussed only those feet that are most frequently used in English. There are many more; in case you need to carry out thoroughgoing metrical analysis, you should consult a handbook. (This may be relevant, for example, if you do translation studies.) You should always remember: identifying the metre and rhyme scheme in a poem only makes sense if you also discuss its function. Therefore, writing about rhythm and rhyme is not always important is analyzing poetry, but if you touch upon it, never stop at naming the formal features.

References

Myers, Jack and Michael Simms. The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. New York: Longman, 1989.

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Unit 3

Figures of speech in everyday discourse and poetry

1. IntroductionLiterary language (particularly the language of poetry) is often defined as the opposite of referential language. This latter is the kind of language in which meanings are usually literal; this is the language of natural sciences and (to a certain extent) the language we use in everyday communication. Let me add straightaway: modern literary and cultural studies do not draw a sharp division line between literary and non-literary texts. Instead of literary texts, critics today tend to speak about literariness in texts.

Likewise, the borderline between referential language (in which meanings are literal) and non-literary language (in which meanings are metaphorical) is a theoretical one: you can also find literal meanings in literature, and metaphors in non-literary texts. As we saw earlier on in this course, the language poetry uses is often closer to colloquial language than to literary prose (see Unit 1, 3.1.). On the other hand, poetry still distinguishes itself by using a great number of metaphors, similes, symbols and other figures of speech. Poetry uses figurative language, which the reader usually recognizes as something different from other registers of language. As Richard Taylor puts it: “Figurative language surprises the reader because the statement or idea expressed does not make sense on the surface level, and, since literal meaning is denied, an act of imagination is required before the intended meaning becomes clear” (165).

It is obvious that when we discuss a poem, we usually have to identify figures of speech, but we cannot stop there. Taylor is right in his warning: “Merely defining the figure of speech by name is of no use at all; one must understand the precise idea being emphasised and the purpose for which the figure of speech is being used within the poem” (166). In my understanding, this implies: it is also important that we should explain the difference between the “poetic” and the “non-poetic” representation of the same meaning. What is the difference between the sentence “I love you very much” and the line “O, my luve is like a red, red rose”? We will try to find the answer in the rest of this unit.

2. Figures of comparison: metaphors and similesThe imagery of poems is often constructed through comparisons: something that is supposed to be unknown to the reader is illuminated with something known. The two most frequently used figures of comparison are the metaphor and the simile.

2.1. The metaphor

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Metaphors are used not only in poetry: we often use them in colloquial language and other registers, too. The language of poetry is generally rich in metaphors. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one object is compared with another one either through identification or substitution. The two elements of a metaphor are the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the idea to be explained; the vehicle is the image that is used for the sake of comparison. The relationship between these two is called the ground. For example, Shelley starts his “Ode to the West Wind” with this line:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

In this line the tenor is the wind, the breath is the vehicle, the ground (the relationship between them) is that they both suggest blowing.

In most metaphors the vehicle is substituted for the tenor, that is, the tenor is not a part of the text. In Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils” we read the phrase “a host of golden daffodils”. The word host is the vehicle substituting another word or phrase that would refer to a multitude of flowers (such as “group” or “many”).

2.2. The extended metaphorNotice the metaphors Keats uses in the first four lines of “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”:

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I beenWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

The first metaphor in the poem is travelling. A journey often means exploring something new, something so far unknown to the traveller. The image realms of gold stands for something precious. This is linked to the metaphor of travelling, and also adds a new element to its meaning. The goodly states and kingdoms in line 2 reinforce the previous image, and they are explained in the last lines: these are countries “Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold”. Apollo is the god of poetry in Greek mythology. His name reveals the meaning of the whole extended metaphor: travelling means reading poetry, and the countries stand for poems.

An extended metaphor is also called telescoped metaphor: it is like the rings or tubes of a telescope. Every image in it becomes the tenor for the next metaphor. To put it another way: every metaphor illuminates the previous one.

Extended metaphors mostly occur in poetry and other rhetorical texts. The opposite of the extended metaphor is the dead metaphor: a metaphorical phrase that has been so overused that one does not even recognize it as a metaphor. For example: the head of a cabbage, the leg of a table, or calling your beloved sweet. Such phrases have lost their original quality and are a part of colloquial language rather than that of poetic style.

2.3. The simileThe figure of speech called simile is based upon comparison, too; in a simile one can also distinguish between the tenor and the vehicle, but (unlike in a metaphor) the tenor is always a part of the image. To put the difference between metaphor and simile in a very simple way: the metaphor implies that A is B, while the simile says that A is like B. As Myers and Simms

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put it: the simile “does not attempt to use its vehicle as an identity or substitution, but simply as a comparison”. They add two further differences: simile is “a form of extension while metaphor is a form of compression”, and the tentativeness of similes is in contrast with the certainty suggested by metaphors (278).

3. Figures of contrast: understatement and overstatementConstructing images through similarities is only one way of image making. The opposite is equally frequent in poetry: the target of representation can also be illuminated in terms of contrast. As Richard Taylor has put it: “In the case of overstatement and understatement a discrepancy or contrast is introduced between what is said and what is meant” (180). Or, to use the terms introduced in part 2: the vehicle forms a contrast with the tenor. The tenor in this case is “what is meant”, and the vehicle is “what is said”. I will use two colloquial examples to demonstrate it.

The sentence He was less than sober means that he was completely drunk (tenor). The sentence says less than is meant (understates the meaning).

The sentence I could kill him means that I am very angry with him (tenor). The sentence says more than is meant (overstates the meaning).

3.1. Understatement in poetryUnderstatement is a stylistic device also used in everyday discourse. Beckson and Ganz use the example of someone referring to Shakespeare’s Hamlet as “a play of some interest”. This shows that an understatement is “the device of presenting something as less significant than it really is” (140). The definition in Myers and Simms is almost the same, although sounds more accurate: in an understatement “something of importance or of a serious nature is deliberately treated with a lesser degree of intensity or authority than would usually be appropriate to such a subject” (330). In a wider sense, we use the term understatement when somebody says less than s/he means (see my example above).

You cannot apply this definition to poetry directly, since the meaning of a poem is always constructed in the reader (cf. Unit 1, 2.1.3.). But you can use the term in reference to those gaps in a poem that are particularly important in your reading. To give you an example: in his “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” Thomas Gray contemplates about those unknown people who are buried next to a village church. He suggests that some of them may have been as talented as the best poets and politicians of their time, but they were born here, and remained nameless:

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

This is what the lines openly say. But the last phrase also suggests: perhaps it is better that these people remained unknown. This way they did not commit the crimes Cromwell did. This is an understatement in the poem.

3.1.1. Reading poetry as a “gap-filling exercise”

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Gap-filling is a well known form of grammatical drill: a word or a phrase in a sentence is left out, and the student has to find it. When we read poetry we can follow (and often unconsciously do follow) the same method. There are, however, two differences: a) the poem is a complete text, consequently what you “fill in” will be a part of your interpretation rather than the text itself; b) unlike a grammatical test, the experience of reading poetry always implies numberless solutions in filling the gaps in the text. Nevertheless, you keep on doing gap-filling when you want to interpret the understatements in a poem. I will demonstrate this method through a short poem.

This is A.E. Housman’s “Eight O’Clock”:

He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

Close reading always starts with the title. “Eight O’Clock” suggests that this time is relevant for some reason, perhaps for somebody. The first line starts with the pronoun “he”, which immediately creates a gap: there is a figure in the poem, but in the beginning you only know his gender, nothing else. Then you read: this man listens to the “steeple” doing something. This is a metonymy (a figure in which the name of one object is used for another). A steeple is silent; it is something on the steeple one can listen to. This gap is not difficult to fill: if you imagine the steeple of a church, and try to find something you can listen to, there is hardly any other choice but the clock on the steeple. (In this metonymy the steeple stands for the clock.) If you still remember the title, you realize that the clock on the church steeple shows eight o’clock, and also strikes (as a lot of traditional clocks do).

The man in the poem hears that the clock “sprinkles” something on the town: the speaker of the poem uses a personification. Use your own imagination: it is easy to see a steeple or tower as a giant. The steeple in the poem sprinkles “the quarters” on the town; these are counted in line 3: “One, two, three, four”. This must be the kind of clock that strikes once at a quarter past, twice at half past, three times at a quarter to, and four times on the hour. As it has struck four, it must be eight sharp in the morning (the quarters are sprinkled on the “morning town”).

I am sure you discovered that the pronouns in the last line of stanza 1 stand for the steeple and the quarters, respectively. If you use these nouns in the line, it will sound like this: the steeple tossed the quarters down. The verb toss suggests something aggressive. If you read lines 3 and 4 together, you can feel the implication that the people are also tossed to the market place by some unknown force.

The three participles in stanza 2, line 1, refer to the man previously mentioned in the first line of the poem. These reveal that he is a prisoner who is going to be executed at eight o’clock. The phrase “he counted them and cursed his luck” invites you to go back to stanza 1, line 3, where you heard exactly this counting. This implies that the numbers were the words of the prisoner. He does not have a watch, so he can only have an idea about the passing of time by

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listening to the church clock. Fifteen minutes ago he counted three and knew that he had fifteen minutes to live. Imagine his situation. You may ask: why does he count the quarters now? He should know that it will be four.

This is true, but his will to live is so strong that he hopes something will happen. Perhaps he was wrong last time, and it will be only three this time. Or perhaps time will stand still. But when he says “four” he knows there is no mercy. In the last two lines the clock behaves very much like an executioner. The clock is a symbol of time. The implication is that it is time that kills this man.

I have carried out a close reading of this poem, but there are still some gaps in the interpretation. For example, we still do not know who this man is. Is he young or old? And does he deserve this serious punishment? He may be a cold-blooded murderer, but also an innocent person. This gap in this case suggests that these questions are not important. What is important is that he is a human being. This way, we can have the impression that he represents the general human condition. Hopefully, none of us will be executed, but all of us will die one day. And we will be killed by time.

This is the most important understatement in this poem (in my reading). Housman used understatement in combination with other devices of poetry: the repetition of and represents the monotonous flow of time, the clock is personified (which is a kind of metaphor), etc.

3.2. Overstatement in poetry

An overstatement or hyperbole is “a figure of speech in which emphasis is achieved by deliberate exaggeration” (Beckson and Ganz 102). Most handbooks mention Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” as a well-known example. This device is particularly important in 17th century metaphysical poetry; you can also see this applied to achieve a comic effect in Csokonai’s “Szerelemdal”. Overstatement is the opposite of understatement: in a wider sense, we use the term when somebody repeats the same meaning in various forms, or uses stylistic effects that show something as more significant than it is commonly known.

4. ConclusionWhen we read poetry, we usually see images. In all the examples cited and discussed in this unit, images are central organizing factors. What the poet constructs in the text has to be reconstructed in the reader. This does not mean that you see exactly the same image that the poet did when writing the poem. But it does mean that the image is a medium through which the poet communicates with the reader. Images are constructed through figures of speech, which can be based either on similarity or on difference. The way a poet uses figures of speech also determines the structure of a poem to a large extent. I wish to emphasize that the figures I selected to discuss in this unit do not form any hierarchy of aesthetic values: metaphors, similes, understatements and overstatements (and many other devices I do not have the space to write about) can all contribute to the high artistic value of a poem. Moreover, they are often used in combination with each other.

Problematic points

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Whenever you intend to discuss poetry, always start with an unbiased reading of the text. In other words: read the poem for pleasure; that is what poetry is meant for. Never start discussing a poem before you have read it at least twice. You should feel the musical effects and observe the pictorial elements before you analyse them. Then you can close-read all the elements of the images and their relationship with each other – or, to put it another way: explore how the words of the text make a poem.

ReferencesBeckson, Karl and Arthur Ganz. Literary Terms. A Dictionary. New York: Farrar, Strauss and

Giroux, 1986.Myers, Jack and Michael Simms. The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. New York:

Longman, 1989.Taylor, Richard. Understanding the Elements of Literature. London: Macmillan, 1981.

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Unit 4

Children in poetry1. IntroductionImages of children have always been important in poetry. Needless to say, the function of such images shows a great variety: children can symbolize adults, they can stand for the idea of innocence, and so on. Childhood is often a target of nostalgia: it is remembered as a time of happiness, a symbol of paradise in the individual’s life. But children are also frequently represented as victims, those human beings who are unable to defend themselves against the corruption of an adult society. The interest in children and childhood increased around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly after Sigmund Freud had published his highly influential theory about the unconscious, which he described as infantile in its origin. (This was also the time when both scientists and writers became interested in madness, basically for the same reason: to investigate the unconscious.)

Children also form an audience for poetry: a number of poets have proved to be excellent authors of children’s verse, and in many cases there is no strict borderline between what they have written for children and for adults. (Think of Ted Hughes or Sándor Weöres).

2. Children as imagesWhen images of children are formed, the notion of their bodies and their souls can be equally important, whether they are contrasted or not. The body of a child can be seen as a bud, which will develop to be the blossom of adulthood. The soul of a child is often represented as the period of innocence, often contrasted with the loss of innocence, as one is growing older. It follows from these two notions that the body is frequently shown as a place representing the continuity of the subject (the adult has the same birthmarks as the child s/he used to be), whereas the soul is more often viewed as something discontinuous (you can question whether you are the same character you used to be at the age of three). Importantly, notions of children and childhood are almost always related to notions of adulthood.

In Christian iconography the prototype of the image of the child is the vision of the infant Jesus. He is often associated with other images symbolizing innocence: lambs, white lilies, etc. Angels are also frequently represented as infants, which creates an idealized notion of children as angels. These icons are, of course, challenged and modified from time to time, but as we live in a culture largely determined by Christian symbolism (both in its religious and secularised sense), these are images that poets writing in English often deviate from and return to.

2.1. The image of innocence

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The age of the Enlightenment paid careful attention to children, also as the targets of education. In John Locke’s philosophy the mind of a young child is a tabula rasa, that is a blank sheet; it is education and other social forces that will fill it. Consequently, in the process of education children lose their innocence.

Romanticism is often seen today as a consequence of the Enlightenment; Marshall Brown has defined it as “the fulfilment and awakening of Enlightenment” (Curran 38). Locke’s above-mentioned idea was pursued in the romantic age, although his empiricism was under attack. William Blake rejected the mechanical way he described the development of a human being, but he also represented children as icons of innocence in his early collection of lyric poems entitled Songs of Innocence. As S. Foster Damon puts it, in Blake “children are the State of Innocence, still close to the Eternity from which they came” (81). He also viewed children as the results of human creative forces, as “products”; as Damon summarizes it, for Blake “a man’s children are not only his offspring but everything he produces: his works, his ideas, even his joys” (ibid.). 2.2. Children as victimsChildren are often represented in poems to indicate the victim position, a position that adult people also often find themselves in. Children are victimized by an adult society, and are unable to defend themselves. They are physically weak (their bodies are small in comparison with adults), and their souls are in a state of innocence. This latter in Blake’s texts also implies the lack of experience. Children as victims are small and inexperienced human beings.

Children in Blake’s poetry are constructed in a social context: as victims of their age. This can well be seen in the two poems entitled “The Chimney Sweeper”. In Blake’s age (the late 18 th

and the early 19th century) child labour was generally accepted in Britain. Children (often under the age of ten) were used as chimney sweeps, since with their small bodies they were able to get into the narrow chimneys. As a radical social reformer, Blake often spoke against child labour (and child abuse in general); as a poet he constructed the image of the young chimney sweep also to create a metaphor for the victim position.

2.3. Children as discoverersIt is a well-known fact that children are great discoverers. The process of learning begins right after someone is born. As we often say, children “discover the world” in which they live, they relate themselves to this world, and learn their first language. This is a very complicated process, which has been described in many ways by writers, philosophers, psychologists, etc. When we ask basic questions about human existence, we often go back to the image of childhood in hope of finding the roots of the problems we intend to solve.

3. The child as a part of the selfThe way children are represented in poetry also presents the general problem of identity. To put the question very simply: am I the same person I used to be as a child?

Different people (including philosophers, social psychologists, poets, etc.) have given different answers. The social psychologist Gordon Allport wrote that although we are all aware of the existence of the self, nobody could exactly define what it is we are aware of (124-125). Some other social psychologists suggested that there is no reality behind the

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presentation of the self: the only reality is the presentation itself. People play roles. Some other thinkers make a distinction between the “real” self and the self as it is presented.

Allport offered a summary of the two main trends in the interpretation of identity. According to the first, there is an unchangeable substance in every human being. This core of the personality makes it sure that the life of any human being is continuous from birth to death (or even after death). The other concept suggests that this is an illusion: the notion of continuity is a construct in our consciousness (129).

It follows that images of childhood in its relation to adulthood can also represent the poet’s concept of continuity or discontinuity.

3.1. The image of continuity

3.1.1. The integrity of the subject: Wordsworth’s “My Heart Leaps Up”

The integrity of the subject first of all means wholeness and harmony. For many people this also means that there is no conflict between the childhood self and the adult character of the same person.

This brief text is one of the best-known poems by Wordsworth. Its opening image is that of a rainbow, spelt with a capital initial in line 2, indicating its symbolic value. The vision of the rainbow is a central motif in English romantic verse: it is a phenomenon that can well be described in terms of physics. It is, however, also a biblical symbol and an icon of beauty. This suggests that different people will see it differently: a physicist will see it as the result of light filtered through a multitude of prisms, a priest or a minister is likely to see it as the sign of hope created by God for humankind, a poet will view it as a manifestation of beauty and totality, etc. Children will see it simply as something beautiful, the sight of which makes the viewer happy.

The speaker of this poem, a middle-aged person, uses the image of the rainbow to signify the continuity of his life: he still sees the rainbow the way he did as a child. He also wants to keep the ability of finding happiness in this sight, since the continuity and integrity of his personality give meaning to his life. Line 6 (“Or let me die!”) suggests that he is speaking to God; this is reinforced by the word piety in the last line.

3.2. The image of discontinuitySome poems focus on the difference between the ways children and adults see the world. This difference covers metaphysical questions (children will ask you what we shall be doing in our graves after we are buried), aesthetic views (children will find the frog they see in a pond beautiful), moral problems (you will hear the very honest statement “I love myself” from children), etc. All these create the notion that an adult person shares more views with other adults than with his/her childhood self.

Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” presents a notion of discontinuity between childhood and adulthood, whereas his “Intimations of Immortality” contrasts images of continuity with those of discontinuity in a description of human life.

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4. Poetry for childrenAs I pointed out in Unit 1, the first texts that children memorize are pieces of poetry. Very often the nursery rhymes they learn originate in archaic rhymes used in work or in magic. The British term “nursery rhyme” is an invention of the 19 th century (Opie 1), but rhymes for children are much older. There are a great number of types: counting-out rhymes, riddles, lullabies, etc.

From the types mentioned above you can see that children’s poetry tends to be much more archaic than poetry for adults: instead of being isolated from everyday life, it is a part of it. (In adults’ literature this was also the case for a long time: nobody thought of art and literature as something isolated from everyday existence before the 18th century: they were a part of life.) A counting-out rhyme is a part of a game (as important as moving one’s body), a riddle serves to entertain and educate somebody, a lullaby helps children go to sleep. Another archaic feature of nursery rhymes is that they are a part of oral tradition: it is not very typical to learn such rhymes from books. A third feature is that in many cases they are sung: music and words are not separated.

5. ConclusionChildren and childhood have always been a central subject matter in poetry. When poets write about children they also write about adulthood in a way or another. Children belong both to the past and to the future: to the past of the individual and to the future because they will be the adults of the next generation. They also represent tradition as readers and learners of poetry. All these features increased the interest of the Romantics in children. Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge (to mention just the most important names) admired children and also used their images as central metaphors. Their images of children are not simply signs of nostalgia. Blake’s children are integral parts of his mythology, but in many cases they also protest against inhumanity. Wordsworth’s ambition was to combine the innocence of childhood with the wisdom of adulthood to form a harmonious individual. (This is the reason why George Eliot in the 1860s said that “Mr Wordsworth” would have been the perfect reader of her novel Silas Marner, which is also about this problem.) The 20th century poet Philip Larkin responded to this notion with disillusionment: his poems about childhood offer parodies of nostalgic texts and suggest that the artificially constructed images of a “happy” childhood are self-deception. His anti-romanticism, however, was only one side of his attitude: he was also struggling to achieve the state of mind he no doubt admired in Wordsworth.

Problematic pointsIt is difficult to view childhood without nostalgia. Remembering the days when one was a child often creates an idyll in various texts – not only in literature, but for example in popular songs. (I am sure you have noticed the clichés of childhood as a time sent in paradise: the idyllic and harmonious family, love guiding everyone’s life, the green grass and the blue sky,

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etc.) Such imagery covers the much less idyllic reality of most people’s childhood. We must face the fact that when we speak of our beautiful and happy childhood we are under the influence of texts or misled by our selective memory. To give you a simple example: many people say that “in their childhood” Christmas was always white. If you check the weather records, you will learn that there have been much fewer instances of a white Christmas in this part of the world in the past one hundred years than those of a black Christmas. What do people “remember” then? They remember those few years when Christmas was really white (and forget about the rest). But even more importantly, they remember (we remember) the multitude of tales, films, poems, picture books, etc. creating idyllic pictures of a white Christmas. This is how nostalgia works for something that never happened. Good poetry about children and childhood helps readers to form a more authentic and much more interesting image of their own childhood and young age in general.

ReferencesAllport, Gordon W. A személyiség alakulása. Budapest: Gondolat, 1980.Curran, Stuart. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge

UP, 1993. Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary. Hanover: UP of New England, 1988. Opie, Iona and Peter. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983.

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Unit 5

Animals in poetry

1. IntroductionAnimals have always been an important subject matter in poetry. As we saw in the previous unit, children are always represented in poetry through their relationship with adults. The same is true of animals in poetry. The basic question for the poet always is: how are humans and animals related to each other? Should we emphasize the differences or the similarities? Two fundamental sources for the two notions are the Bible and Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Bible says: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1: 26). Darwin, on the other hand, used the metaphor of the big tree to indicate that animals and humans are branches of the same evolution. Of course, there is no strict borderline between the two concepts; Darwin always identified himself as a Christian believer, since he thought that the Scripture and his theory could be reconciled.

2. Animals as imagesThe beauty of animals has always attracted people, and this is reflected in poetry. Moreover, animals are probably the most ancient targets of representation in art. The earliest cave paintings that we know about represent animals. The Egyptians worshipped animals as deities, and their art kept no strict division line between humans and animals: think of the typical human bodies with animal heads in their art. The opposite can be seen in gigantic Assyrian lions and bulls: they are animal bodies with human heads. They also demonstrate how animals became icons signifying power. We rarely watch animals in pictures or statues without associating them with some abstract idea: we tend to see a lion as a symbol of power, a lamb as a sign of meekness, a bee or an ant as a sign of hard work, etc.

2.1. Animals as Christian iconsAs noted above, animals are also central icons in Christianity. Some of these are particularly important, such as the dove as an icon of the Holy Ghost or the lamb as a sign of Jesus. William Blake also used animal symbolism in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and some of these symbols are derived from Christian tradition.

2.2. Animals as creatures

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As the biblical quotation above shows, animals can be seen as creatures of God, particularly if you see them with a Christian attitude. (Other religions may put even more emphasis on what people and animals share; it is the idea of creaturehood that I am emphasising here as a distinctive feature.)

2.2.1. Blake’s fly The idea that all living beings are equal before God is very much in the centre of Blake’s art and mythology. A fly is also a creature of God. Perhaps the most concise manifestation of this principle can be found in the prophetic book entitled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It ends with “A Song of Liberty”, whose last line is: “For every thing that lives is Holy.” As you probably know, Blake designed his books himself in a peculiar way: text and design (pictures) are not separated from each other. In the facsimile version of this poem you can see the eagle of genius and five small birds flying above the last line. One possible interpretation is that they are allegories of the five senses, which liberate humankind. The implication is that creaturehood and sensation are inseparable.

2.2.2. Blake’s “tyger”This poem is a response to “The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence. Consequently, the lamb stands for innocence (also as an attribute of Jesus), while the tiger represents experience. But one can also add that the forms of the two texts show an important difference. “The Lamb” follows the didactic pattern of question + answer (like in catechism), creating a notion that we live in a universe where questions are answered. “The Tyger” consists of questions only. The questions in stanzas 1-4 and 6 are all variations on the same basic question: who created the tiger? Stanza 5, however, goes further. The question “Did he smile his work to see?” is about the act of divine creation itself. In other words: is it possible that God wanted this? Whenever a question is asked, we know that at least two kinds of answer are possible. Therefore, we must allow the possibility of a negative answer in this case, too. That would imply that something went wrong in the act of divine creation. This question is modified and made even more embarrassing in the last line: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Is it possible that the same God who created the lamb as an icon of innocence also created the animal that will kill it? Can we imagine a God (or god) that created both of these animals?

You can give various answers to this question. One of the best Blake critics, David Erdman suggested: “…the very process of the creation of the tiger brings about the condition of freedom in which his enemies (his prey) become his friends…” (195). It follows from Erdman’s reading that God was able to create the lamb because he was also able to create the tiger. If the lamb is an emblem of innocence, the “tyger” is an emblem of power. Blake’s unusual spelling emphasizes its symbolic quality: the letter “y” makes it look even more robust and metaphysical.

But this is only one reading, and we should not forget about the fact that Blake’s question is not rhetorical (not a statement disguised as a question). It requires the reader’s answer, but the text does not offer any. As opposed to “The Lamb”, this text suggests that answers are not ready-made for us: we must construct them ourselves.

2.3. Animals as icons of paganism

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Although our culture is largely based on Christian symbolism, you can find a great number of poets who reject it and create different images. Ted Hughes, for example, was more interested in oriental religions and paganism. In his volume entitled Crow he constructed an anti-hero using elements of American Indian myths, various creation myths and also offering a grim parody of Christianity. You can see it clearly in “Lineage”:

In the beginning was ScreamWho begat BloodWho begat EyeWho begat FearWho begat WingWho begat BoneWho begat GraniteWho begat VioletWho begat GuitarWho begat SweatWho begat AdamWho begat MaryWho begat GodWho begat NothingWho begat NeverNever Never NeverWho begat Crow

The text follows the pattern of lineage in the Bible. (“Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren” [Matthew 1:2].)You can create links between the lines in your reading (treating it as a “gap-filling activity”). For instance: Mary really gave birth to God (Jesus), even though her sex is changed in this poem (she “begat” the child instead of conceiving him). Jesus begat “Nothing” in the original sense of the word: he had no children. This nothingness started an infinite period of waiting for his second coming, which has “Never” taken place. This “Never” created Crow, a pagan icon, to replace Christianity.

2.4. Animals as icons of civilizationSometimes images of animals refer directly to civilization without being either Christian or pagan. This is a brief poem by D.H. Lawrence, “The Mosquito Knows”:

The mosquito knows full well, small as he ishe’s a beast of prey.But after allhe only takes his bellyful,he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.

How does this funny text work? In the first line the mosquito is humanized: the verb knows suggests that it is treated as a human allegory. (Scientifically speaking, an insect does not know that it is an insect.) This humanized notion is turned upside down in the last line. The understatement is obvious if you put the stress on the pronoun referring to the mosquito: “he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.” That is: people do. The word blood suddenly acquires a simple symbolic meaning: the profit made by using someone else’s hard work. Thus the poem suggests that animals are more sensible than human beings. The poem can be read as a light

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version of Lawrence’s often quoted (and often criticized) statement that the blood is wiser than the intellect.

Lawrence is mainly known as a novelist, but he was also a significant poet. The representation of instincts (closely associated with the notion of innocence) is a central motif both in his verse and in his fiction. Most of his major poems are about animals (“Bat”, “Snake”, etc.). The values that they represent are basically the same as those of the father figure in Sons and Lovers”.

3. The Aesopean tradition: animals as characters3.1. Political allegoriesIt follows from the widely used symbolic meanings of animal imagery that animals often fulfil the function of political allegories. They are often used to signify power and victim position. This is well known from the beast fables of European literature. Since the first representative of this form was the Greek author Aesop, these are also called Aesopean fables. These stories (those of Phaedrus, La Fontaine, Gáspár Heltai, etc.) construct animals as allegories of human characters. This method was also applied by a number of further fiction writers and poets. A peculiar version of animal allegories are those novels in which animals (acting as human beings) are contrasted with human beings proper, such as in Book IV of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, or in Orwell’s Animal Farm.

3.2. The animal as the survivor in Ted Hughes’s “That Moment”Some animals can also be seen as those creatures that survive everything, even humans. This notion, of course, emphasizes the difference between animals and people.

The poem is one long sentence. Its grammatical structure can be demonstrated like this: That moment when … (then) Crow had to start searching for something to eat. The main clause is only one line: the last line of the poem. This creates tension in the text. When you read the word when (or any other word introducing a subordinate clause) you immediately start expecting the main clause, because you know that it will contain the most essential part of the sentence. The longer the subordinate clause is the more you feel the tension. This is further increased in this poem by the arrangement of the images in the when-clause. They are arranged chronologically: they tell a story. In stanza 1 what we see is a pistol lifted and “blue vapour”. This suggests that the weapon has just been used. The first line of stanza 2 explains what happened: “… the only face left in the world / Lay broken …” We understand it as a vision of the end of human history: the last human being has just committed suicide. This is followed by the apocalyptic images in stanza 3, very similar to some images in Pilinszky’s “Apokrif”, a poem that Ted Hughes translated into English.

The apocalypse as described in the last book of the Bible (Revelations) is not only the end of something (namely, of human history), but also the beginning of something else: the new world of God. In Hughes’s text there is no God (or god): what follows the extinction of humankind is the new world of Crow, who is able to survive everything. Human history has come to an end, but life is going on.

In the volume entitled Crow all the texts are about this character. But Crow seems to be different in almost every poem: his only feature that never changes is his ability to change. This is the way he becomes an archetype of the survivor. As Brooks Bouson puts it: “Though

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knowing the loneliness and anguish and guilt of human life, though apprehending that nothingness lies at the center of existence, yet Crow, the cosmic comedian, survives” (30).

4. ConclusionAnimals are as important in poetry as anywhere else in life. It goes without saying that both the poet and the reader understand animals from a human point of view. This is the basis of the allegories in animal imagery as well as those poems that put the emphasis on what distinguishes humans from animals. As you could see from a few examples, there is no sharp borderline between these two kinds of animal imagery. When we read about animals as allegories of human characters, attitudes, or behaviour, we still understand the face value the animals represent out of the context of the poem. The opposite is also true: in a poem constructing an animal as a representative or a part of Nature, we still see the presence of a human element (that of the point of view if nothing else). Therefore, when writing about animals, a poet also writes about human individuals and human societies.

Animals can be seen with detachment (such as the persona of Larkin watching a film about horses) or through involvement. This latter position is constructed in many of Ted Hughes’s poems where the speaker is often constructed as a man living in close contact with animals: as a farmer (somebody who protects animals) or as a hunter (a killer of animals). Both positions signify that the implied poet views himself as a part of Nature, even though he is conscious that there is no way back from civilization.

Problematic pointsWhenever you discuss animal images in poetry, of course, you are not supposed to forget about your own view of animals. On the other hand, you should be open to the way the poet represents them. Remember: not every poem is allegoric or symbolic. Representing a human character or an abstract idea is only one of the many possible functions of animal imagery. In most cases you can also discern the psychic quality the poet discovers in him/herself provoked by an animal: the pleasure at seeing a bird (as in Shelley or Hughes), the uncanny (Poe’s raven), etc. These also contribute to the aesthetic quality of animal poems.

ReferencesBouson, Brooks. “A Reading of Ted Hughes’s Crow”. Concerning Poetry. Fall 1974.Erdman, David V. Blake: Prophet against Empire. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1954.

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