"The Flea"

In “the Flea” by John Donne, we are told the story of a flea that has bitten the poem’s speaker, which leads to the issue of whether or not the two characters will take their attractions to the ultimate physical level; premarital sex. The flea was used as an erotic symbol. One of the techniques of “the Flea” is that Donne writes the poem so that it can be read in two ways. One of direct meaning, and the other hidden between the lines about the already mentioned premarital sex.

On line 10 of stanza 2, Donne wrote “three lives in one flea spare.” He is essentially saying that the flea contains the flea’s fluids represent both he, his lover, and the flea itself. To confirm this understanding of that metaphor, we can see on line 12 when Donne wrote “the flea is you and I.” This proves my initial understanding of this poem. Through this poem, we are able to see the powerful use of symbolism in the eyes of the fly. The subject of a “flea” was typically used in these times to represent love, so this is a great insight the past and its reoccurring themes.

January 15th Blog

1) Alliteration- An alliteration is a group of words that start with the same letter within a line of poetry. In Digging, Heaney uses the words "Of soggy peats, the curt cuts of an edge". In this line, "curt cuts" would be an alliteration.

2) End Rhyme- A couplet that rhymes at the end. "...holding up a moth" "...rigid satin cloth" these are end rhymes. Design- Frost

3) Simile- In Design by Frost, he compares the flower holding the spider, comparing it to a piece of "rigid satin cloth"

4) Itailian Sonnet- In Design, it is an Itailian Sonnet, because it is divided into an eight line stanza and a six line stanza.

"A Call"

"A Call" by Seamus Heaney is a poem about death. The overall tone this poem is somber. I believe that Heaney himself is the speaker in the poem. He is telling a story of himself calling his parents, who are now growing old. Heaney uses imagery of his father weeding, which may be a symbol of death. I believe that when he uses the words "frail and leafless" it has reference to his father growing older. The "grave ticking of hall clocks" symbolizes the time that his father has left. I find it interesting that Heaney uses death as a noun as if it were a person.

Thursday, January 15

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney is a great example of the use of imagery. With a line like "When the spade sinks into the gravelly ground," one can recall from memory the feeling sinking a shovel or spade into the earth. Another good use of imagery is when Heaney describes "The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat," because these things also bring about sensory sensory stimulation.
There is also a good use of symbolism in "Digging." In the way Heaney describes his use of a pen, he alludes to the past generations that had to do a great amount of physical labor in order to survive, and in this way his pen is the same in some ways as his father's spade.
"God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins is a Petrarchan sonnet that follows the rhyme scheme of abbaabbacdcdcd. The rhyme scheme of this poem is important because it helps to separate the original octave from the sestet, so one can see the different sections and analyze them separately.
Also interesting in "God's Grandeur" is the use of tone. In the octave, the tone is that of disappointment in mankind for no properly fearing God. However, in the sestet, the tone changes a bit, showing more hope and happiness than negativity that God will, for as long as the Earth is there, bring the sun up every morning and watch over all he created. The tone is important here because it completely changes at different points in the poem, from negative to positive, but ultimately is comforting.

Blog Assignment - Christina Rossetti's "A Birthday"

"My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me."

First of all, I think it's fair to say that there are loads of similies in this poem. In the first stanza alone, every other sentence uses the words 'like a', comparing her heart to a bird, a tree and a shell. I also think that the speaker of the poem is a female. I can't say it is the poet, but it seems like it is about a woman who has finally found someone to make her happy. I get the feeling that it is not an outside factor that has brought all of this joy to her, but some inner peace. She never makes any mention of a man (or woman), so it's difficult to place the cause of her happiness on one thing.

Please bear with me now because I'm going to deviate a little bit and talk about symbols. To be fair, I'm really really bad at analyzing poetry. I'm also just going to ignore the first stanza because I can't find any symbols in this. The first thing to catch my attention was when she talked about fleurs-de-lys. That could be one of two things: the fleurs-de-lys is the symbol of French royalty as well as a flower itself. The flower represents female virtue and spirituality. I think with the way the poem is structured and the diction (words used) works, it's fair to say that she means the flower itself. At least, that would work for the first verse since it deals a lot with nature. The second verse does seem to deal more with rich and material things. All in all, I think the poem is really Rosetti talking about how she doesn't need anyone else to make her happy but herself. I also think it is about her loving herself. But, as I said earlier, I'm really bad at analyzing poetry on my own.

Thurs., 1/15

1.Simile- From "Digging," by Seamus Heaney: "Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."
Heaney uses "like" or "as" (in this case, "as") to compare his the grip he has on his pen to that of a gun. I believe he does this to hint at the potency of the pen being weapon-like, similar to a gun.

2. Figure of Speech- From "Digging": "Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds / Bends low, comes up twenty years away."
Of course, his father does not literally become twenty years older; Heaney uses non-literal language to stress the toll farming takes on one's body.

3. Conventional symbols- From "Digging": "Bends low, comes up twenty years away / Stooping in rhythm through potato drills,"
The book has a footnote for "drills:" small furrows in which seeds are shown. Perhaps unknown to the audience, Heaney is Irish, where the potato is a symbol that represents the country's prosperity and well-being. Without the potato, Ireland went into a deep depression in 1845.

4.Metaphor- From "Digging": "Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests / I'll dig with it."
Heaney describes his pen by making it act as his father's shovel, showing that the pen is his tool.

Blog Assignment

I liked the poem "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Hopkins. It has a lot of feeling and emotion, and it shows where Hopkins was at emotionally at that time in his life. He uses a lot of end rhyme, such as "toil, foil, oil, rod, God, things, springs" and so forth. I feel that this rhyme keeps the reader going, and his repetetiveness wasn't too much when I read it. Well, maybe a little bit, but it still works. The tone of this poem is frustration, maybe even a touch of resentment in the first stanza. The second stanza's tone is a bit more of "looking forward" at what God is actually doing, setting in the west and rising as the Holy Ghost at sunrise. The speaker could be Hopkins, but I picture any man in that state would be able to write a poem like this. He is identifying with the common man, asking questions like "Why do men then now not reck his rod?", showing the same beliefs and questions that many others have.(It says at the bottom of the page that reck is to reckon, like heed his punishment.) He uses a lot of universal symbols, such as "wearing man's smudge", "shares man's smell", and "all is seared with trade". Even talking about the sunset and sunrise is universal. There is a metaphor, or maybe figure of speech, but I don't exactly know what he means. "It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed." Oil can't literally be crushed, it can be pressed, but not crushed from greatness. So it is a figure of speech about how God's greatness, in man's eye, is being crushed, or pressed, like oil. All in all, an angsty poem from a thirty three year old Catholic.

Thursday Blog Assignment

In the poem "Digging" by Seamus Heaney it seems that the pen is both symbol and metaphor. The pen is symbolic of the tools used by the speaker's Irish forefathers. The writer uses his pen in the same way that his father used his spade to dig for the "good turf." Of the three types of symbols mentioned in the introduction I think the pen fits best in the conventional category. A pen itself is a contrivance and therefore would not be a universal symbol. A pen is not "drawn from the natural world that every culture experiences." For instance, if you presented a pen to an aboriginal culture they probably would not regard it as a tool of great importance. However, in western thought the pen is "mightier than the sword" and as the speaker of this poem asserts, as useful as the spade. For us the pen carries connotations of power and influence. The pen is not merely a literary symbol specific to this poem, because in Western culture the pen is understood to have a specific meaning as a source of useful creation. The pen is also a metaphor in that the speaker is comparing the usefulness of the pen to the usefulness of the spade. In the same way that an irish farmer would harvest peat and potatoes from the soil, a writer can harvest insight and influence from the blank page.

In the poem "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost there is an interesting rhyme scheme. The four, three line stanzas carry a structured rhyme scheme. The stanzas can be broken down like this: ABA BCB CDC DAD and finally the rhyming couplet of AA. What's different about this scheme is how one rhyme is carried from the preceding stanza and then disappears in the following stanza. This scheme serves to tie the stanzas together in a rather seamless way. This scheme helps maintain a steady rhythm. I think this poem is impressive because of how Frost uses rhyme scheme to strengthen the poem, rather than distract from it's content.

Oh Yea

Holler

Welcome

Welcome! This is my Textual Analysis Blog! ...There's not much to see...YET!

Amber

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Blog Number One

Welcome to the blog. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nick. I'm very important and my dorm smells of rich... mahogany.

Welcome--please read

Hey welcome to the textual analysis course blog. We will use this blog as a sort of grand central station of the course (along with the course BB site). I will make you all "authors" on this space, so you can post to it, post comments, etc.

You will all create your own blogs for the reading blog element of the course. Your own blogs will be where you "publish" posts on the readings. Sometimes I will specify what to write about, and other times this will be up to you. All of your blogs will be linked to this one. I may "republish" some of your posts to this space to highlight interesting ones.

Obviously this is not your private journal entry type of writing. It's "out there" at least to each other. You can elect to not make your blog available to anyone outside of myself and the class. This blog will be open to the public for reading and commenting, but only we will have authorial rights to create posts.

The blog reading posts must be on your blogs before the class the reading is assigned for. Commenting can happen a bit more leisurely, but keep in mind that too long a lag time may result in unread comments. Feel free to embed videos and post images that you think relate to the texts. I ask that you not post images, messages, and videos that are not related to the course content.

I look forward to our discourse.

Dr R