history

?
  • Created by: Anisha999
  • Created on: 22-01-18 12:14
View mindmap
  • History - the speaker tells the reader not to go to a history book but a disused quarry to learn about north Wales. He instructs the reader to take a piece a slate, open it like a book, and 'read' the real story of Wales.
    • The poem is unusual in that it addresses the reader directly. History, the poem seems to argue, is not something you read but something you go out and experience. The narrative could be seen as an act of primary historical research, in which the descriptive and sensuous language gives impression of immersion into a subject,
      • "book of stone" - importance of story telling - resonant of "lat act" - also "inheritance" -
        • "every heart" "every bone" - repetition of every - oneness and untiy between landscape and people. Reiterates message in "Hill Fort"
    • Written as part of Dolwyddelan Project.
    • Free verse - mostly quatrains - interspersed with occasional two line stanzas - have effect of encouraging reader to focus on a detail.
    • "blade of slate" "a book of slate" - this detail occurs at the climax of narrative
      • "leaves" "gently" - soft sounds - tactile - we are meant to relish it as he does . "throughout this valley" - extends metaphor that history is in the landscape
    • "in every head, across every heart" - parallelism and alliteration add a rhetorical ring - "bone" "stone" - sonorous connection between landscape and people.
    • "Don't" - imperative commands reader - not to conform to traditional notions. Strong sense of place and rural image. "disused quarry" - adjective connotes debasement.
    • Free verse, flowing enjambment - relaxed lyrical tone.
    • "where" "chiselling" "drilling its notes" - use of preposition - natural images juxtaposed with industry - sense of one-ness between nature and industry. Past and present?
    • "blade" "pick" "tap" - repetition of imperatives - didactic tone - teachers us and instructs,
      • "prise it apart" - seems mighty and glorious - however it falls apart easily - fragility - contrasting - enjambment and description - wants us to linger over this act. Sense of magic.

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar English Literature resources:

See all English Literature resources »See all Macbeth resources »