Poetry: What to know
What to include in analysis
You will be tested on the following
information
List of terms: Examples to follow
• Speaker: Who did the author
choose to tell the story?
• Intended Audience This is
part of why the author wrote the
poem, an intended message for
an intended audience
• Repetition: What image or
command is the speaker focusing
on? Why this image? Why this
command?
• Alliteration: Poetry is art for
your ears as well as your mind:
What texture does the repeated
consonant sound bring up: rough,
soft, whispery, harsh?
• Structure: What is the speaker
building? Does he give you the big
picture first or last? Does he want
you to see the details and
intricacies or an overview? Or
both?
• TYPE OF POETRY
• Lyric poetry-At Last it’s Come
p 357: expression of personal
thoughts and feelings brief and
songlike
• Ode- Better to Live Licinus p
353 lyric poem with elevated style
and enthusiastic tone
• Narrative poetry
• Epic poetry
Terms Continued
• Rhyme: part of the structure of
the poem, sound repetition can
consist of:
• End rhyme: rhyme in final
•
syllable of verse
Internal rhyme
• Slant rhyme/Half rhyme:
imperfect match: green/fiend
consonance on the final syllable/
end of word ill/shell there/hair
• Allegory Inferno p 812
extended metaphor events,
actions, objects, and persons in a
narrative represent moral
qualities, universal struggles or
abstract ideas: love, fear, virtue
• Theme: central focus of the
poem. Theme is a statement
about man, life, love, death,
religion…
• Imagery: Use of images in the
poem to illicit a reaction from the
reader in the form of a visual
picture, audible sound, smell,
texture to touch or taste
• Figurative language: use of
language to connote an image
that is not literal: simile, metaphor,
personification
• Symbol the use of one object to
represent another object, concept,
idea
Night of Sine Leopold Sedar
Senghor
• What literary devices does Senghor use?
What is his purpose? Who is his
audience? Who is his speaker? Be thorough
in your explanation: this means write several sentences
explaining your point of view
• Listen to its song, listen to our dark blood
beat, listen/ To the deep pulse of Africa
beating in the mist of forgotten villages
• See the tired moon comes down to her
bed on the slack sea/
Explain the structure
• “Love Does Not Know Secrets”
Love knows no secrets/ when it is hidden it
will be discovered
• “Tears of Love”
My beloved/has deserted me/ she has
deserted me,/my darling, comrades!
Explain the image and affect on
reader
• What literary devices are employed by the
speaker? from the Prison Diary “Autumn Night” Ho
Chi Minh
• Using my tears for ink, I turn my thoughts
into verses
• My dream intertwines with sadness like a
skein of a thousand threads
Allegory
• Inferno: What/ who does Dante represent? What
does each level of Hell represent? Hint:
• “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the
right road lost” (I.1–2).
•
•
•
•
•
“it is his fate to enter every door.”
On a literal level, The Divine Comedy portrays Dante’s adventures in the fantastic realms of Hell,
Purgatory, and Heaven, but these adventures allegorically represent a broader subject: the trials
of the human soul to achieve morality and find unity with God. Dante links his own personal
experience to that of all humanity. The dark woods symbolize sinful life on Earth, and the “right
road” refers to the virtuous life that leads to God.
What occurs at the second layer of hell?
“a great whirlwind, which spins within it the souls of the Carnal, whose sin was to abandon
themselves to the tempest of their passions”
Caught up in the whirlwind of life dammed to be kept in a whirlwind for eternity, never finding
happiness they sought on earth
Inferno Facts 9th layer
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
This Circle includes the second class of frauds, those who are traitors by means of complex or treacherous fraud
or malice. The landscape here is the frozen Pool of Cocytus, and is "more like a sheet of glass than frozen water".
The slightest breeze leeches all the warmth from one, and nothing will help one to shelter from the cold. The wind
whips up to sweep those unworthy back to where they belong in Hell, leaving the worthy behind.
This Circle is divided into four Regions, based on different kinds of treachery, and are listed in the order in which
one would encounter them when going down into the very depths of Hell.
CAINA - TRAITORS TO KINDRED
The outermost region of the icy lake of Cocytus is the first division of the circle, and is named Caina, after Cain,
whom performed the first sin of treachery by killing his brother Abel. Here, the traitors to kin are punished. Their
punishment consists of being frozen in the ice with only their faces above the ice to express their pain. Sinners
held here include Mordred, the nephew of King Arthur who also attempted to kill him.
ANTENORA - TRAITORS TO THEIR COUNTRY
This region is named Antenora after the Trojan warrior who betrayed his city to the Greeks. As symbolised by the
region's name, this area contains those who were traitors to their country, city, or political party. Only the heads of
the those imprisoned here project above the ice.
PTOLOMEA - TRAITORS TO THEIR GUESTS OR HOST
Ptolemea is where those who are traitors to guests, hosts or associates are found. The region was named after
the captain of Jericho, Ptolemy, who had Simon, his father-in-law and two of his sons killed while they dined. Here,
the punishment is more severe due to the fact that the sinners, while being frozen flat on their backs in the ice,
also have their heads facing up with their eyes frozen with their tears. Shades will tell travellers about the region if
they break off the veils of ice over their eyes.
The sinners in this region actually have bodies that remain in the living world and continue to live. However, they
are possessed by demons. As soon as one commits a sin against a guest, their shade is sent to this region. An
example of such a sinner is Ser Branca D'Origa, who murdered his father-in-law after serving him dinner.
Inferno Facts layer 9 cont.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
JUDECCA - TRAITORS TO THEIR BENEFACTORS
In this region those who betrayed their Lords and Masters or their benefactors are punished by being entirely
frozen in the ice, with no part of themselves exposed.
As one moves across this region of the Circle, across the ice a faint object becomes visible. It is the King of Dis,
Lucifer. The Dark Angel is as foul as he once was fair. He too is frozen in the ice in the centre of Judecca, but with
half his chest above the ice; even the part projecting above the ice is more than a mile tall. He has bat-like wings.
Lucifer has three faces from which he weeps tears mixed with bloody slaver, a mockery of the Trinity. The forwardfacing face is red, mocking Primal Love with hatred; one is yellow, parodying Diving Omnipotence with impotence;
and one is black, perverting Highest Wisdom with ignorance. Each of the faces has a mouth that is stuffed with
one of the worst traitors of the world, those who are treacherous against their benefactors. The first is Judas
Iscariot, who was a traitor to Christ for thirty pieces of silver. He endures the worst punishment by being chewed
on by the red face and being clawed by his bat-like wings. The second is Marcus Brutus, traitor to Caesar. The
black face is chewing him. The third sinner is Caius Cassius Longinus, who was another member of the
conspiracy against Caesar.
THE EXIT FROM HELL
To exit Hell, one must climb down the body of Lucifer, which is covered in shaggy hair; the ice stops a yard or so
from Lucifer himself. If one climbs down for long enough, one eventually feels as if one is climbing up again. This
marks that one is crossing the centre of the earth, or "the point to which all weight from every part is drawn". One
then makes their way up to a type of hollow tomb, a echoing grotto of dimly lit grey rock, from the floor of which the
hooves of Lucifer project upwards, upside-down from this perspective. A stream of clear, sweet water runs through
this grotto.
This place serves as the exit of Hell and entrance to Purgatory. Its roof goes up thousands of miles, tapering
gradually until the opening into Purgatory is reached. This distance must be climbed, and when it is the travellers
finally make their way to the surface, where they come "out to see once more the stars" on the shore at the base
of Mount Purgatory...
Jones, Tony Hell: The Wailling and Gnashing of Teeth 21, January 2008. 2005.
< http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_dante_hell.html#circ_II >
Images: Which sense is called to
action, affect on the reader
• “I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath;
/imagine for yourself what I
became,/deprived at once of both my life
and death/” (Dante 818 ln 25-27)).
• If he was once as beautiful as now/ he is
hideous and still turned on his Maker,/ well
may he be the source of every woe!
(Dante 818 ln 34-36)
Loreli: Rhyme and Imagery
• “The boatman hears, with an anguish
More wild than was ever known;
He’s blind to the rocks around him
His eyes are for her alone”
• “-At last the waves devoured
The boat, and the boatman’s cry;
And this she did with her singing,
The golden Lorelei”
Rubiyat:
• Look to the Rose that blows about us-”Lo,
Laughing” she says, “into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden
throw.”
• With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labor’d it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d“I came like Water, and like Wind I go”
Speaker
•
•
•
•
““
The speaker is _____________
Proof
The reader
sees/realizes/understands/connects/
• Sympathizes/