Literary Concepts
for stylistic analysis of poetry
ENG551
Lecture # 10
1. Symbol
: An object which stand for something else e.g. a dove symbolizes
peace. In a poem/story it is a word which, while signifying something
specific, also signifies something beyond itself.
• Difference between image and symbol: what an image is associated
with is stated in the poem, but with a symbol we have to infer the
meaning and the associations.
e.g. A poet who compares his or her lover to a rose is using a
figurative image associating the lover with something form a different
realm of experience
1. Symbol
• Symbols are only used when a writer wants to express an
apprehension of something which is not directly observable in
everyday world. A poet can start with an objet in the real world and
make it symbolic by loading it with meaning which is not explicitly
stated: e.g. Keats’s nightingale in “Ode to a Nightingale” becomes the
symbol of eternity. It is something that he sees but invests it with
tantalizing significance.
• The danger with symbolism is the poem can lose touch with the
ordinary world.
Example : William Blake
Symbol of sick rose indirectly suggests:
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy
• Something evil destroying
something beautiful.
• Corrupt passion destroying
beauty and innocence.
2. Rhythm
• Rhythm means the flow and movement of a line. Whether it goes fast
or slow, is calm or troubled.
• Rhythm and meaning cannot be separated.
Thus: I faltering forward
Leaves around me falling
Wind oozing thin through the thorn for norward
And the woman calling
Cold images of falling leaves, north wind suggest mood of despair
John Donne
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why does through thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
• Language is colloquial, rhythm chatty, also angry
Lively questioning manner
Rhyme
Identity of sound between two words. Rhyme is usually employed to
the end of word. But poets can make use of internal rhyme. Rhyme
suggest harmony and order:
The poet finds connections between words, if only at the level of
sound, but the connection made suggests broader idea of finding an
order in things.
Solitary Reaper
Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
Rhyme
• Rhyme can link problematic words. Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
begins:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
“Time” and “crime” are troublesome ideas. But here they are
absorbed into a couplet. Rhyme has an ability to unify and connect
disparate entities, finding similarity in dissimilarities.
How the use of rhyme contributes to the overall meaning and effect of
the poem.
3. Speaker/persona and audience
Speaker/persona
Audience
• Poet himself
• A character in the poem
• Implied listener
• The readers
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
When I consider how my light is spent
Looking as if she were alive. I call
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more
bent (On His Blindness Milton
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Robert Browning My Last Duchess
4. Situation/Setting
• Place/location in a poem
• The Real World Setting : Concrete setting : e.g. Country-side, room :
• Imaginary setting : Abstract setting: e.g. a moment. Parting between
lovers
5. Mood & Tone
• The feeling the poem conveys
• Revealed through words, images
• Happy, sad, exasperated, dejected, regretful etc.
• Tone may be sarcastic, ironic, humorous, serious, melancholic etc.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Example for Analysis
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.