English Poetry

'The Outcast'

Themes

• Death
• Nature
• Isolation
• Family/Relationships

Structure/Form

• Lyrical narrative - women don't get a say in a typical Tennyson lyric (not mentioned in this poem)
• Rhyme scheme - a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,e
• 'I will not seek' at the start of each stanza - not moving on - entrapment - anaphora'
• First poem in the collection - sets out ideas isolation and allows for some evolution of ideas though the collection

Key Quotations

• 'shade' - death - reference to death twice in the first stanza - suggests his father is dead, not just gone
• 'wet moss crusts', 'hollowed hawthorn' - nature is rotting around him - isolation? - condemned?
• 'broken stile', wavy path' - isolation - routes in and out are decaying - he cannot get out -others cannot get in
• 'father's' - family - rememebering his father

Language Techniques

• 'dim and dark and dead' - alliteration, plosives - spiteful, cold, unnatural
• 'Memory' - capitalisation suggests it is importance to narrator - importance of memory - the past, looking back

Links

• 'Mariana' - moss imagery (decay) and isolation
• 'Lady of Shalott' - isolation
• 'Ulysses' - inheritance

'Mariana'

Themes

• Isolation
• Nature
• Death
• The past

Structure/Form

• Character from Shakespeare's 'Measure for Measure'
• Repetition of 'I would that I were dead' then 'Oh God that I were dead' in the final stanza - depression - turns into a desperate plea for the release of death - irony that she yearns for death but it never comes
• 'She only said' repeated
• 3rd person - distant author - woman don't get their say - could be criticism of women, or criticism of society not letting women speak
• Regular rhythm - no change - isolation
• Rhyme scheme - a,b,a,b,c,d,d,c,e,f,e,f - the 'd's are trapped - highlights the trapping of Mariana
• Lyrical narrative - women don't get a say in a typical Tennyson lyric - Mariana never really gets her say

Key Quotes

• 'moated grange' - isolation - happy within her isolation? - wants him back, but paradoxically is also stopping him getting in
• 'poplar' - could represent the man - 'fell across her bed' - could be innuendoic - could also be a metaphor for Mariana alone in the wilderness
• 'she could not look on the sweet heaven'
• 'moss' - image of decay

Links

• 'Lady of Shalott' - women trapped
• 'Ulysses' - opposite - he breaks out and embraces death

'The Lady of Shalott'

Themes

• Art - reflection of a reflection of life (sewing web of image from a mirror)
• Nature
• Fate
• The past (personal and historical)
• Death
• Women
• Mythology/Arthurial times

Structure/Form

• Sibilance in stanza 3
• Rhyme scheme - a,a,a,a,b,c,c,c,b - 'c's trapped by 'b's highlights the Lady's entrapment
• Structure quite like song
• 'Shalott' at the end of each stanza shows trapping, but 'Lancelot breaks in at the end - as he breaks into the Lady's life, and breaks her out of her entrapment
• Lyrical narrative - women don't get a say in a typical Tennyson lyric - The Lady is shut away, and never speaks

Key Quotations

• 'Four…