Compare & Contrast In this "The Petition" sets in high relief an axiomatic paradox, that the oppositional categories of "masculine" and "feminine" are in fact present to and in each other, and that the toppling of patriarchal authority may best be achieved not simply by reversing the standings of those terms but by a more involved process of poetic "windings" and in a place of "shade" that emphatically contradict masculinist standards of reason, genius, and the pursuit of convention as "enlightened" states of being or mental activities. Jamie Stanesa in Dictionary of Literary Biography weighs in with the comment, "Finch's expression is more immediate and simple, and her versification ultimately exhibits an Augustan rather than a pre-Romantic sensibility." Although it is fifty lines long, there is no period until the very end. In terms of form, "A Nocturnal Reverie" is rooted in two venerated, classically inspired traditions of poetry that both the Augustans and the Romantics admiredthe first of which being, as its title suggests, the nocturne. In the poem, nature is active instead of passive, and relational instead of merely existing. It is written in iambic pentameter, a meter that consists of five feet (or units), each containing an unstressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Wordsworth himself saw something in Finch's work that caught his romantic eye and resonated with him in its depiction of nature. Again, Finch enlivens nature through personification. Having the English military on his country's side would make all the difference. Written in 1713, Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie" is among the works that has garnered serious critical attention for the poet. By manipulating her culture's assumptions about beauty, femininity, and intellect, Finch's work ultimately exposes the insufficiencies of a patriarchal law that reproduces "unfairness" in both its construction of women and its determination of what counts as aesthetically pleasing. A large edifice seems menacing in the darkened setting, and unshaded hills are hidden. There is instead a process of idealization, an exchange of attributes, which transforms the grief-stricken female singer into an exemplary model, one that applies to all poets. The activities in . Mendelson, Sarah, and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England: 1550-1720, Oxford University Press, 2000. In a complicated sense, to doff the ornamentation demanded of women might in itself be linked to the act of writing poetry, which, according to convention, engenders a mannishly unfeminine woman. This assessment of the natural world versus man's world is very much in line with the romantic way of thinking. In the supplement to the preface of his and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1815, the renowned romantic poet William Wordsworth praised "A Nocturnal Reverie" for its imagery in describing nature. The term comes from the rule of Emperor Augustus in Rome, who was known for his love of learning and careful attention to writing. Finch's style in "A Nocturnal Reverie" is also very lush and descriptive, as so much of romantic poetry is, and the experience is described in relation to the speaker's emotional response to it. The other winds are characterized as louder; therefore, the speaker is subtly making a comparison. The speaker prefers this setting to that of her everyday life. A true icon and inspiration passed. 603-23. Analyze Longfellow's poetry and understand his . 1961-62. Posted on February 19, 2021 by JL Admin. XXVI. From the analysis of this essay we can find Lamb's characteristic way of expression. Clouds pass gently overhead, at times allowing the sky to shine through to the speaker. Nature is humanized through extensive use of anthropomorphism and personification, and the effect is that nature is characterized as being friendly, welcoming, and nurturing. Description, a poetic strategy that fuses the eye and its object, seems to overlook the skepticism inherent in "Upon the Death of Sir William Twisden" as well as in "To The Nightingale," both of which presuppose a disjunction between subject and object. Poem Summary c. 1909 "The Bird and the Arras" 3. That is, the connection with nature, described in the lines of "a nocturnal reverie", brings to the speaker good, happy and calm feelings (composedness). But Finch goes further than this, arguing instead for a woman writer to symbolically divest herself of dependence upon the apparel of male-centered literary standards (to make herself "plain") and then to redress herself by following a symbolically "Winding" course that separates her from the domain of men and conducts her to a self-determined place that cannot be seen from without. But at the very same time, such poetic strategies demonstrate the lengths to which she must go to ensure that her work will not be read as "uncorrect" (the "fair" sex may be deemed but "fair," mediocre writers). 445-46. . 42, No. "The Introduction" 4. The novel saw tremendous growth as a literary form, satire was popular, and poetry took on a more personal character. The same word and is repeated. It contains classical allusions to Zephyr and Philomel. These poems, she goes on to argue, are products of their age which do not prefigure Romanticism in any significant way: Finch sees human beings as providing the spiritual continuity and depth to life, even within the context of a natural retreat. Yet this process of idealization necessarily involves a suppression of the gender that enables this model to come into existence. A Nocturnal Retrospective is a poem of fifty lines that describes a nighttime scene. The poet falls into a reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing. Augustan writers were not interested in the kind of rhetoric that seeks to sway readers to the author's point of view, but wrote merely to comment and let the reader decide. By dint of such acknowledgment, however, she exacts her own form of condemnation, utilizing this catalogue of patriarchal insults ("an intruder," "a presumptuous creature") to impugn the culture's construction of a "fair sex" confined to "the dull manage of a servile house" (19) and to the shallow maintenance of beauty. LINE BY LINE ANALYSIS OF THE POEM Stanza One. There's a slight reprieve of misery at the very end of the . Analysis: "Ode to a Nightingale" . Finch, however, opts for the more subtle device of personification, bringing her setting to life through figures of speech that humanize the natural elements. The Introduction. The pleasures of that world, she feels, are pursued but rarely reached. Poetry gave satire another venue, but poetry grew in its purpose in the Augustan Age. Little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. MAJOR WORKS: The wind is not merely a lucky turn of the weather, but an act by the Greek god of the west wind himself. The correct answer to this open question is the following. Furthermore, men of her time tried to convince ladies that writing, reading, and thinking "would cloudbeauty, and exhausttime" (Finch . Ultimately, Finch's use of personification evokes the theme of nature as a living community. GENRE: Poetry All of these elements make it easy to see why so many scholars are anxious to line "A Nocturnal Reverie" up with the classics of romantic poetry. Barbara McGovern devotes two chapters to Finch's use of the pastoral, a genre to which she returned constantly throughout her life and which she adapted to a wide range of styles and themes. The entire scene is a jubilee, a group celebration shared by the elements of nature and witnessed by the speaker. In. These are examples of the more common types of figurative language. Fables became a sizeable part of her writing, comprising nearly one-third of her total work. The result is poetry that is contemplative and insightful without being overly emotional or desperate. 499-513. Pope is not at all associated with the romantic period, and his views on criticism, like his writing, are consistent with the Augustan perspective. In a sense the poem argues that the mind must resist this seduction into illusion and hence must confront the unpleasant fact that "Nature (unconcern'd for our relief) / Persues her settl'd path, her fixt, and steaddy course" (lines 27-28). individualistic perception of the humdrum of life. The moon is given a feminine pronoun in line 6, "She, hollowing clear, directs the wand'rer right" (Finch 6). McGovern, Barbara, "The Spleen: Melancholy, Gender, and Poetic Identity," in Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography, University of Georgia Press, 1992, pp. How does being outside at night make you feel? Although some of Finch's work was published beginning in 1701, it was not until the appearance of her 1713 collection Miscellany Poems that she began to enjoy limited recognition by her contemporaries. Because of her early position in the court and her husband's political career, Finch retained an interest in the throne, religion, and the politics of the day. Many scholars have argued that the seeds of romanticism are in the Augustan Age. INTRODUCTION In An Essay on Criticism Pope was to give canonical formulation to the doctrine that the sound must at least "seem an echo to the sense." It also implies that man really has no idea how alive nature is when he is out of the way. The sea water gushes past these rough stone pieces making a roaring sound. It communicates the idea that she is in the most perfect place on earth. A poet of the early eighteenth century, Anne Finch composed in a variety of contemporary forms, including the verse epistle, the Pindaric ode, the fable, and occasional poetry, exploring issues of . ." Stanza three begins with anguish. They relied on allusion to draw clear comparisons between their society and that of ancient Rome, or to bring to their verse the flavor of classical poetry. Finch was a well-educated woman who took care with her poetry to ensure that it was technically sound.. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet who used narrative poems to memorialize people and events in American history, including Paul Revere. This position is supported by the fact that William Wordsworth, one of the fathers of romantic literature in English, referenced Finch's poem in the supplement to the preface of the second edition of his famous collection Lyrical Ballads (1815), coauthored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In fact, many romantics considered nature to be among their wisest teachers. In the poem, which line represents a tone shift? It brings a glint of laughter on faces and tears in our eyes. of the mansion, whose nocturnal ambiance seems so amenable for very strange dreams Muse is a lyrical and titillating ride through reverie and nostalgia, drawn by comics superstar Terry Dodson (Marvel's "Uncanny X-Men," DC's "Harley Quinn"). Brower, Reuben A., "Lady Winchilsea and the Poetic Tradition of the Seventeenth Century," in Studies in Philology, Vol. The partridge calls out for her young. Pope's essay and Addison and Steele's periodical are two major additions to England's literary history, and "A Nocturnal Reverie" comes on their heels, written by a woman who kept up with such things. Download Citation | Contrasting Nature, Gender, and Genre in Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie" | Anne Finch came to be considered one of the most influential female figures of the Augustan era . She next mentions sheep grazing and cows chewing their cud without being bothered by anyone at all, and then she turns her attention to what the birds are doing. //
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