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Name______________________
World Literature
Essential Question: How are love relationships and marriage reflected in literature around the
world?
Standards:
3.4
Demonstrate a competency to write analytical essays in response to literature.
4.1.1 Student can analyze in poetry the effectiveness, in terms of literary quality, of the
author's use of literary devices.
4.3.1 Student draws parallels between literary events and personal experience.
5.2.3 Students use discussions with peers as a way of understanding information.
Directions: In this unit, we will study poems from Egypt, China, Japan, Greece and England.
We will analyze (see handout) and discuss these poems in class. Terms and readings quizzes
will be given. For the final evaluation, students will write an analytic essay. (See assignment
handout.)
Questions to consider:
What understanding of human nature (theme) does an author reveal in his poetry?
How does the poetry reveal cultural values?
How does figurative language serve to reveal the deeper meanings of poems?
What does the poetry teach us about ourselves, about others?
Which of these poets writes the most powerful and evocative poetry?
Literary Terms to Know
allusion:
anaphora
antithesis:
apostrophe
chiasmus
connotation:
conceit:
denotation:
hyperbole:
iambic pentameter
imagery:
irony
metaphor
metonymy:
mood:
oxymoron:
paradox
parallel structure
Sound Devices
alliteration:
assonance:
consonance:
caesura:
onomatopoeia:
rhyme
rhythm
personification
rhyme
simile:
sonnet
symbol:
synecdoche:
tone:
understatement
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Egypt
The New Kingdom of ancient Egypt is still quite ancient; it began after the fall of the invading
Hyksos around 1575 BCE and lasted until 1087 BCE. The numerous love poems from this
period illuminate many of the attitudes of the Egyptians and seem to have been powerfully
influential on other peoples, notably the Hebrews, whose own love poetry bears some striking
resemblances to them. As is the case with most ancient verse, none of the authors' names are
known. They lack titles, and are referred to here by their first lines.
Sometimes we think of the Egyptians as a gloomy, death-obsessed people; but that is only
because we interpret them through the distorted lens of their tombs. The nobles among them at
least yearned for an afterlife because they enjoyed this life too much to want to leave it. Their
painting and poetry celebrates the pleasures of food, music, dance, and love.
Your Love, Dear Man, is as Lovely to Me
translated by John L. Foster 1992
Your love, dear man, is as lovely to me
As sweet soothing oil to the limbs of the
restless,
I Think I'll go Home and Lie Very Still
translated by John L. Foster 1992
As clean ritual robes to the flesh of Gods,
As fragrance of incense to one coming home
Hot from the smells of the street.
I think I’ll go home and lie very still,
feigning terminal illness.
It is like nipple-berries ripe in the hand,
Like the tang of grainmeal mingled with
beer,
Like wine to the palate when taken with
white bread.
While unhurried days come and go,
Let us turn to each other in quiet affection,
Walk in peace to the edge of old age.
And I shall be with you each unhurried day,
A woman given her wish: to see
For a lifetime the face of her lord.
Then the neighbors will all troop over to
stare, my love, perhaps, among
them.
How she’ll smile while the specialists
snarl in their teeth!She perfectly knows well what ails me.
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China and Japan
Classical Chinese and Japanese poetry relates human emotions and sensations to images of
nature. These images are prescribed by tradition, and have stereotypical associations which the
reader is expected to know. In addition, complex word and sound play is common, little of it
translatable, and most poems allude to or quote outright from other classic poems which it is
assumed every reader has memorized. The result is that an English rendering of such verse is
always a very distant relative of the original. It is a tribute to the greatness of Chinese and
Japanese verse that it has been so popular and influential in modern times. Note that this poetry,
like most pre-modern poetry, does not have titles, and that the titles provided have been invented
by the translators. The vast majority of early love poetry written by women laments absent
lovers. What do you think this says about women's status and role in society?
China
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Li Po (translated by Ezra Pound)
While my hair was still cut straight across
my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling
flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing
horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of
Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or
suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked
back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of
swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise
overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the
different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow
with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
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Japan
I Loved Her Like the Leaves (Kakinonoto Hitomaro)
I loved her like the leaves,
The lush leaves of spring
That weighed branches of willows
Standing on the jutting bank
Where we two walked together
While she was of this world
I built my life on her;
But man cannot flout the laws of this world.
To the shimmering wide fields
hidden by the white cloud,
White as a white mulberry scarf
She soared away like the morning bird
Hidden from our world like the setting sun.
The child - the gift she left behindWhimpers, cries for food; but always
Finding nothing that I might give,
Like birds that gather rice.
I pick him up and clasp him in my arms.
On the pillows where we lay,
My wife and I, as one,
I pass the daylight lonely 'til the dusk.
The black night I lie, sighing 'til the dawn.
I grieve and know no remedy.
I ache and know no road where I might meet her.
The one I love, men say,
Is in the hills of Hagai,
So I labor my way there,
Smashing rock-roots in my path,
Yet get no joy from it.
For, as I knew her in this world,
I find not the dimmest trace.
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Greece
Sappho (7th Century):
Sappho, born on the Island of Lesbos, is often considered the greatest lyric poet of antiquity.
She was married and had a daughter, celebrated marriage, and wrote love poems to both men and
women. Plato called her "the Tenth Muse," others criticized her shamelessness, but until the
Christian era she was widely read and admired. The Church set itself against her, destroying her
writings when they were found and--more importantly--not recopying them. They exist today
primarily as "fragments": brief quotations in discourses on literature, etc. Some substantial pieces
were recovered in our own time from a papyrus manuscript which had been cut into strips to
wrap an Egyptian mummy. Her modern fame thus rests on a mere handful of poems.
He is More Than a Hero
He is more than a hero
he is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you — he
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing
laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't
speak — my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,
hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body
and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me.
Invocation to Aphrodite
Aphrodite,
daughter of tides, keeper of mirrors,
sun-shaped, salt-swimming,
slipping out of your sea-drenched skin,
leading me into your reflection,
quenching my thirst
with the salt travelling through your sweat,
through your tears,
through the clear generous waters of your
body,
overflowing, awakening the earth,
bringing the river up over its banks,
cradling the living waters that sing your
praises,
self-born, ocean-taught,
lover of all that flows and changes,
daughter of tides, keeper of mirrors,
Aphrodite.
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England
As the Renaissance unfolded, literature and poetry evolved. A more personal style developed,
and poems clearly showed themselves as a way for the poet to reveal his feelings to the one he
loved. In the middle of the sixteenth century a plethora of poetic talent appeared in England,
influenced by the art and literature of the Italian Renaissance a century before.
Sonnet 130
My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun
By William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
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To His Coy Mistress- This carpe diem poem is one of the greatest in English. Basically, the
message is the same old "let's do it now before it's too late;" but the world-ranging sweep of the
imagery and the marvelous language give it an intoxicating power which is fully apparent only
when it is read aloud, especially the conclusion.
To His Coy Mistress
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Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
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But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
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Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
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And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.