Naturalism and Naturalist Poem Study Guide

1832-1900

• Beginning of the modern period and realism.
• Reaction to Romanticism
• REALITY SUCKS.
• ROSE COLORED GLASSES have fallen off

• Alfred Lord Tennyson: Poet Laureat
• "Best Poet of the Land"
• Functions as a transition between Romanticism and Realism.

• The Lady of Shalott

• Shalott: Island, surrounded by water, in the center of a river, lady is stranded on it.

• There is a rivers all around it. Camelot is at the end of it.

• Shalott: unable to look directly at Camelot because there is a curse upon her.

• Farms are on the banks of the river.

• Colorless, somber, dank is the island.
• Casement window: one where you turn it and it cranks outward.
• "Tis the Fairy Lady of Shalott" = is she supernatural?

• Sheaves: bundles of grain.

• To see Camelot, she uses a mirror to indirectly see Camelot; sees a "shadow" of Camelot, a vicarious experience,  not the reality.

• Lady in lonesome solitude.

• She makes notes upon wat she sees in her mirror.

• Lancelot comes. Famous knight of the Round Table.

• Notice how bright it is with Lancelot and how gray it is with the Lady of Shalott.

• Lancelot is the antithesis of the Lady of Shalott's dreary, gray life.

• SHE LOOKS DOWN TO CAMELOT (624)
• Pathetic Fallacy occurs.
• Mirror cracks from side to side.
• The Wind howls, and storms come.
• SHE DIES singing in her song, looking at Camelot.

• She descended the tower and left Shalott because of Lancelott: irony of this, he has no way of knowing that she  left the tower because of him.

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Crossing the Bar

(Sand Bar)

• First time water represents death.
• Water usually represents rejuvenation/rebirth/forgiveness.

• In the morning, you are at your height; in the evening and at night, you are in death.
• Pilot: guide=GOD.
• A year represents man's entire life cycle as well: Born in the spring, dies in the winter.
• AUTUMN again reinforces death.

• Dispirited, sad, melancholic because of his general memories of the past which evoke tears.
• Memories are like a ship that he once saw but now no longer sees.
• It sinks with everything; suggests lost friends that he once had.
• Idle, not thing specific.

Break, Break, Break

• The breaking of the waves on the shore, something that will happen for all eternity.
• Narrator sadly addresses the sea.
• Views the sea differently because of the loss of the experience (of the 2 kids).

Ulysses

• Hero of Odyssey.
• Very adventurous man.
• Cannot be idle.

• Lives in Ithaca.
• Wife's name: Penelope, who while he is gone is courted by many suitors.
• He says: "I will drink life to the lees," i.e. all the way down to the bottom, never stop learning, going on adventures, etc.
• Son's name: Telemachus.
• He's a softer man, who rules with prudence (wisdom).

• He does not condemn his son for being different than me and is not adventuresome.
• Burnish: to make metal polish.

My Last Duchess

• Dramatic monologue.
• When a character is having a conversation with himself but you know they are two characters.

• Duchess very sociable, affable person.
• The narrator is very arrogant; proclaims his superiority over Duchess, who he is disgusted with...despite her congeniality.
• Narrator: Duck of Ferrara: PSYCHO.
• Orders the Duchess to death because she was as nice to him as she was to everyone else.
• "How dare she equate my name with all these common and pedestrian plebeians!" (because she thanked everyone the same way she thanked me.)

Porphyria's Lover

• Again, 2 people, 1 speaker.

• Pathetic Fallacy right in the beginning of the poem.

• "Porphyria" is a disease that affects your intestines, but is also the name of the narrator's girlfriend.

• Victorian Smut.
• Girls starts to undress.

• He kills her at the moment she proclaims her love for him to "preserve" her love.

Home Thoughts, from Abroad

• Notice short sentence structure; suggests the narrator is breathless because he climbing a mountain.

• Tone: warlike and courageous.
• Many consider greatest poem of Victorian Age.

• He will meet his wife after he dies, and thus death is a glorious victory.

Dover Beach

• Functions as a spring board for the 20th century because of its ideas.

• "Where is God?"

• Calls it the Sea of Faith, and as the tide goes out, so does mankind's faith in God.

• As science advances, it dispels, dismisses, or negates religious thoughts.
• Now in scientific evolution (1850s).
• Thus: Man's faith representative by the tide, which ebbs and flows.

• Matthew Arnold (the author)  is very distraught.

• Strand=BEACH.

• Cadence: a beat.

• All the imagery is imagery of sadness.
• BECAUSE man is losing his faith.

• Aegean Sea: on the east.

• Turbid: dirty, muddy.

• Sea of Faith: faith of mankind.

• Lines 30-37: life is beautiful and new, but the world has no joy, no love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…
• WHY: from 1850-1917: 4 Wars take place, including WWI.

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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928

• Naturalism
• Nature has no intellect;
• Romanticists exalted nature, while naturalists are all "nature can kill you!"

• Nature is indifferent; can both kill and give life equally, without thought to who is dying or living.

The Man He Killed:

• Perfect example of Thomas Hardy's naturalism.
• Bad things happened simply because he was in wrong place, wrong time.

• Very colloquial language.

• Had the narrator met the man he killed someplace else, he would have bought him a drink.

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?

• Goes from boyfriend --> family --> enemy.
• None of them give a shit about her.
• Her dog is digging on her grave, man's best friend.
• The dog even forgets that he's digging on her resting place, and is only digging there to bury a bone.
• WHEN YOUR DEAD=you are forgotten forever.

In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

• Protagonists are all famers who are oblivious to the war going on (WWI) in Europe; their lives move on just the same as ever, ignorant of the annuls of war.

Is My Team Ploughing

• Speaker is again a dead man.

• Life goes on..
• His friends, who he use to play soccer with, continue to play soccer without him.
• Is my girlfriend still crying because I died?
• Nope, she's contented.
• In fact, his friend is fucking his girlfriend.

To an Athlete Dying Young

• Your lucky to die young; it means you die innocent, and you do not become corrupted.

• You died before your honor died.

• Dying young= you’re a hero.

When I was One-and-Twenty

• Crowns and pounds and guineas: European currency.

• Basically, when you are young, you do not believe the advice of elders/older ppl, and you believe you are right/know everything; then when you reach the status of "elder," you realize they were right.

With Rue My Heart Is Laden

• All my friends are dead, and I hate this.

• I DON'T WANT REALITY.

Dulce et Decorum Est

• It is sweet to die for your country.
• SATIRE

• The soldiers are fatigued, tired, bloody, beat, blind, etc.
• One of the men was unable to get his gas mask on in time and all the blood in his lungs started seeping out through his mouth and nose.

• Duche et decorum est Pro patria mori: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country (Horace)."