Romanticism

INTRODUCTION
The word Romantics comes from the French word romance, a literary kind in mediaeval
times which in poetry narrated about kings, queens and knights.

Romance is something else, it’s a poetic form that belonged to Mediaeval time. Love and
ghting were its recurring themes. Its aspects were retained in Romanticism, with the
addition of new aspects.

Di erences between Italian and English and German Romanticism?

The rst one started later. England and Germany had political independence, while Italy
was occupied by the Austrians. 

How would you describe this painting by John Constable? 

The painting by Constable expresses fear, threats,

blood colours merging into one and another. You
may guess there’s some water, some greenery,
and heath according to the title. Instead of the
clear idea or the description of the landscape he
wanted to impress and invoke emotions in who
was looking at his painting. Individuality was
important, everyone saw the painting di erently.

Imagination is a speci c quality the romantic

artist owns, and it doesn’t belong to normal
people. Imagination is peculiar to the artist, and it
John Constable, Hampstead Heath, creates works of art: paintings, poems, etc.

Looking towards Harrow, 1821.

THE FIGURE OF THE CHILD

Who, among the people, is the one who feels free to use their imagination?
A child. Compared to the adult he’s less instinctive, less restrained  by rules, regulations
that you learn growing up. Romantics appreciated their instinctiveness, their purity of
souls, their capability to express their feelings and emotions without restraints to the point
that they said that the child age was the closest to God, compared to adulthood, that has
lost its innocence, its sensitivity, and its purity of soul. Wordsworth himself also thought
so. 

Children are characters that we nd in romantic productions, just like common, modest
people and peasants. In the past the main characters were from the nobility.

Why is it that now people who work lands, peasants, or children, became characters of
Romantic literature that preferred poems rather than long novels (like Marry Shelley that
wrote romantic novels)? 
If you express feelings, emotions, it means that the individual sensitivity is under the
focus of the romantic poem. The poet expresses his own feelings through its characters,
as if they were his alter-egos. They tended to prefer, in accordance to what Wordsworth
has stated, to talk about terror, fear, threats, the darkness and its colors, feeling
connected with mistery, etc, because they were more powerful, whereas joy,
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 satisfaction, delight, pleasure were felt less strong than fear. This is why this painting by
Constable is so confusing.

Unclearness follows a feeling of insecurity, it makes you wonder, it makes you aware of a
possible danger and this lead to the introduction of exotic places among the romantics’
works, like oceans, far away countries, that might have represented danger, whatever was
far away in time, like the Mediaeval age, a period of violence, inquisitions,
persecutions… These aspects fascinated the romantics.   

Sometimes when they wrote their poems, they also inserted archaic language,
archaisms, nouns used by Shakespeare, 19th century poetry, not so much in prose, even
though they did use prose sometimes.

The importance of nature, more than towns, buildings, castles. It could be trees, owers,
seeds, birds, every natural element is elevated to a level of divine, they were targets of
worshipping, worshipped as Gods (Pantheism was introduced, a cult or faith that
worships nature). 

MEDIAEVAL BALLADS
As for the technique, they favoured ballads as they were very old, especially because
they were mediaeval. The ballad was very appreciated by romantic poets, but they also
occurred to other types of compositions, such as sonnets. 

The ballad was dark, mysterious, superstitious, and with it came with all the series of
gures of speech, such as repetitions, enjambements, rhymes, alliterations, all the
typical features of a poem that originally was orally transmitted, these gures helped with
the memorization. Now the ballad was written, nonetheless they kept its original
features. 

CHRONOLOGICAL BEGINNING OF ROMANTICISM

There’s a pre-romantic poet, called William Blake, as he was born before the o cial date
of Romanticism, that in England was 1798.

There are two poets of the rst generation, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and they
published together a collection of poems called the Lyrical Ballads. They consisted of a
series of ballads about their emotions, landscapes and nature. They published the rst
edition in 1798, with a preface. The Preface is the introduction, it’s relevant as it explains
the poetic choices and topics made by the poets. They decided that Wordsworth would
write about everyday natural elements, owers, da odils (yellow owers that you see in
spring), very common things you see in spring. The two were friends other than being
colleagues, and they participated in a project together. They took long walks together in
the Lake District, a place full of greenery and its beauty was described in their poems,
they found it really relaxing. Wordsworth said that what he found in nature was solace
(relief from everyday stress, troubles, when you feel down), so you don’t nd feelings of
fear in Wordsworth. The poets of the rst generation distinguished themselves for the
topics. 

Coleridge decided to dedicate his poetry mainly to supernatural events, something more
mysterious, improbable events narrated in a simple style and language. Whereas,
Wordsworth thought his topics had to be embellished and grooved by a more poetic and
elaborated style, full of gures of speeches. 

The Preface issued as the introduction of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 was considered the
Manifesto of Romanticism, it set the lines for English Romanticism. Wordsworth was
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acknowledged for his work, he was recognized and even received a title, while
Coleridge’s poems were more di cult and mysterious, he wasn’t that appreciated for his
improbable topics as he wasn’t always understood.

The second generation of poets included Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley (who married Mary
Shelley, who wrote Frankestein) and John Keats. They were born after the rst
generation of poets, and they were more interested in the recent political issues, as
England didn’t resolve the economical problems of the country, and people were still
angry and unhappy, the condition of the workers worsened, they were exploited  (used
wrongfully) and underpaid, plus they were being replaced by machines. They had
something in common: they died very young in some tragic situations. Shelley drowned in
the Ligurian Sea during a storm, Byron died in the Greek War ghting for independence,
Keats was penniless and never became very famous in his life, and died of consumption,
an illness that a ects the lungs as you have an unhealthy life (even his brother died for the
same cause). The topics about nature and the gure of the child were still present. 

PAGE 259-260
THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, English
Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, which best suited the need to give expression
to emotional experience and individual feelings. Imagination gained a primary role in the
process of poetic composition. Thanks to the eye of the imagination Romantic poets
could see beyond surface reality and discover a truth beyond the powers of reason. The
poet was seen as a visionary or as a teacher whose task was to point out the evils of
society, to give voice to the ideals of freedom, beauty and truth.

THE FIGURE OF THE CHILD

There was serious interest about the experience and insights of childhood. To the
Augustan Age, a child was important only in so far as he would become an adult and
civilised being. Childhood was considered a temporary state, a necessary stage in the
process leading to adulthood. To a Romantic, a child was purer than an adult because he
was unspoiled by civilization. His uncorrupted sensitivity meant he was even closer to
God and the sources of creation, therefore childhood was a state to be admired and
cultivated.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

There was new emphasis on the signi cance of the individual. The Augustans had seen
man as a social animal, in his relationship with his fellows. The Romantics, instead, saw
him essentially in a solitary state.

They exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. The current of thought represented by
Rousseau stated that the conventions of civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on
the individual personality and produced every kind of corruption and evil. Therefore
“natural”  behaviour, unrestrained and impulsive, is good, in contrast to behaviour
which is governed by reason and by the rules and customs of society. The savage may
appear primitive, but actually he has an instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world
often superior to the knowledge which has been acquired by civilised man.

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 THE CULT OF THE EXOTIC
Rousseau's theories also in uenced the cult of the exotic, that is, the veneration of what
is far away both in space and in time. Not only did the Romantic poets welcome the
picturesque in scenery, but also the remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social
outlook. 

THE VIEW OF NATURE

The Romantic poets also regarded nature as a living force and, in a pantheistic vein, as
the expression of God in the universe. Nature became a main source of inspiration, a
stimulus to thought, a source of comfort and joy, and a means to convey moral truths.

POETIC TECHNIQUE
As regards poetic technique, breaking free from models and rules, the Romantic poets
searched for a new, individual style through the choice of a language and subject
suitable to poetry. 

Symbols and images lost their decorative function to assume a vital role as the vehicles of
the inner visionary perceptions.

TWO GENERATIONS OF POETS

The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations. The poets of
the rst generation, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were
characterised by the attempt to theorise about poetry. While planning the Lyrical Ballads,
they agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things with
the aim of making them interesting for the reader; Coleridge, instead, should deal with
visionary topics, the supernatural and mystery. 

The poets of the second generation, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and
John Keats, experienced political disillusionment which is re ected in their poetry, in the
clash between the ideal and the real. Individualism and escapism, as well as the alienation
of the artist from society, were stronger in this generation and found expression in the
di erent attitudes of the three poets: the anti-conformist, rebellious and cynical attitude of
the “Byronic hero”; the revolutionary spirit and stubborn hope of Shelley's Prometheus,
and nally, Keats's escape into the world of classical beauty. The poets of the second
generation all died very young and away from home, in Mediterranean countries.

THE TERM ROMANTICISM

The term “Romanticism” comes from the French word romance, which referred to the
vernacular languages derived from Latin and to the works written in those languages. 

The adjective “Romantic” rst appeared in English in the second half of the 17th century,
meaning fabulous, extravagant or unreal. Throughout the 17 century, “Romantic” was
used to describe the picturesque in the landscape. 

Gradually the term came to be applied to the feeling the landscape created in the
observer and to the evocation of subjective emotions. 

In the literary eld, Sehnsucht ('eternal restlessness') was opposed to Stille (‘the profound
quietness of the soul’), poetry was always new and spontaneous, no longer the imitation
of the classics. 

Romanticism in Europe developed in di erent ways and times according to the cultural,
social and political situations of each country. In Germany, anticipated by the Sturm und
Drang (‘Storm and Stress’) movement of the late 18th century in 1798. 

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 In the same year, in England, the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge were published. The second edition of 1800 contained a “Preface” by
Wordsworth which is usually regarded as the Manifesto of English Romantic poetry. 

De l'Allemagne by Madame De Staël spread the Romantic principles in France, and the
Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo al suo gliolo by Berchet marked the o cial beginning of
the Romantic movement in Italy.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He belongs to the rst generation of romantic poets, together with Wordsworth, he
published the Lyrical Ballad.

Not all the ballads are based on supernatural facts, it wouldn’t have been very believable,
and the stylists are less elaborated, a bit simpler. They wanted to balance style or poetic
ction with their topics. O cially Romanticism is considered to be born in 1798 when
they published the rst edition of the Lyrical Ballads. 

PAGE 288
During the university years he was heavily in uenced by French revolutionary ideals,
which made him an enthusiastic republican. After his disillusionment with the French
Revolution, he planned to move to America and to establish a utopian community in
Pennsylvania, where every economic activity would be done as a community, and private
ownership would not exist. This project, however, came to nothing.

In 1795 Coleridge met the poet William Wordsworth and in 1800 he settled in the Lake
District. An important collaboration between the two poets started and most of
Coleridge's best poetry was written in these years:

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, his masterpiece, written in 1798; it is the rst
poem of the collection Lyrical Ballads, that became, along with the 'Preface' to its
second edition, the Manifesto of the English Romantic movement.

In contrast to Wordsworth's preoccupation with subjects from ordinary life, his own task
was to write about extraordinary events in a credible way. 

The Rime of e Ancient M iner

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PLOT AND SETTING
The ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is made up of seven parts and is set in the
wide sea with days of hot sun and nights lit by the moon. It is introduced by an Argument
containing a short summary of the whole poem and consists of two narratives: one is
made up of the captions, which constitute the framework of the whole poem, the other is
the poem itself.

ATMOSPHERE AND CHARACTERS

The atmosphere of the whole poem is full of mystery because of the combination of the
supernatural and the real, of dream-like, nightmarish elements and visual realism. In fact
natural elements are turned into supernatural pictures, common colours have a magic
e ect on the reader.

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 The Mariner and his fellow shipmates are hardly characters in any dramatic sense. They
are more stereotypes than human beings and their agonies are simply universally human.
The Mariner does not speak as a moral agent, he is passive in guilt and remorse. When
he acts, he does so blindly, under compulsion. From his paralysis of conscience the
Mariner succeeds in gaining his authority, though he pays for it by remaining in the
condition of an outcast. Coleridge makes him spectator as well as actor in the drama, so
that he can tell even about his worst terrors with the calm of lucid retrospection.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NATURE

Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge did not view nature as a moral guide or a source of
consolation and happiness. His contemplation of nature was always accompanied by the
awareness of the presence of the ideal in the real. His strong Christian faith, however,
did not allow him to identify nature with the divine, in that form of pantheism which
Wordsworth adopted. For Coleridge nature had an essential role in poetic creativity
because it stimulated the poet to nd natural symbols that could re ect his emotions
and feelings. Therefore the shapes and colours of nature were used to represent and
symbolise emotional and mental states.

THE RIME AND TRADITIONAL BALLADS

The Rime contains many of the features traditionally associated with ballads. that is:
the combination of dialogue and narration; the four-line stanza; the archaic language, rich
in alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia; the theme of travel and wandering and
supernatural elements. But the presence of a moral at the end makes The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner a Romantic ballad.

INTERPRETATIONS
This poem has been interpreted in many ways. It may be the description of a dream,
which allows the poet to relate the supernatural and the less conscious part of his psyche
to a familiar experience. In fact it moves through stages, each with its own single,
dominating character. Its visual impressions are brilliant and things move indeed in a
mysterious way. Coleridge's poem may also be an allegory of the life of the soul in its
passage from sin, through punishment, to redemption. The interpretation that seems most
relevant, however, is the one which sees the poem as a description of the poetic
journey of Romanticism. The Mariner is the poet, enchanted by a song that derives from
guilt. This guilt is the actual origin of the poetry: it is the regret for a state of lost
innocence caused by the Industrial Revolution, or an attempt to re-discover it by telling a
symbolic story of its loss. Poetry coincides with this sense of loss and, at the same time,
tries to ll it.

PAGE 289
EXERCISE 1
LISTEN to an extract from a radio programme about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
ll in the missing words or phrases.
In the rst part the ancient Mariner stops a (1) wedding guest just to tell him his dreadful
tale. He narrates how he and his fellow mariners reached the equator and the (2) polar
regions after a violent storm. After several days an albatross appeared

through the fog and (3) was killed by the Mariner. The shooting of a bird may seem a
matter of little moment (not very important) but Coleridge makes it signi cant in two ways.
First of all, he does not say why the Mariner kills the Albatross and what matters is
precisely the uncertainty of the Mariner's (4) motives, which suggests the essential (5)
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 irrationality of the crime. Secondly, this action is against nature and breaks a (6) sacred
law of life.

In the second part the Mariner begins to su er (7) punishment for what he has done, and
Coleridge transfers the corruption and the helplessness which are the common attributes
of guilt to the physical world. The world which faces the Mariner after his crime is (8)
dead and terrible; the ship has ceased to move and the sailors are tortured by (9) thirst,
and the only moving things are slimy (10) creatures in the sea at night. 

The third part shows how the Mariner's (11) guilty soul becomes conscious of what he
has done and of his isolation in the world. A (12) phantom ship comes closer to the crew
and is identi ed as a skeleton ship. On board (13) death and Life-in-Death cast dice; the
former wins the Mariner's fellows, who all die, and the latter wins the (14) mariner’s life.

In the fourth part this sense of (15) solitude is stressed. Then the Mariner, unaware,
blesses the (16) water snakes and begins to re-establish a relationship with the world of
nature. 

The fth part continues the process of the soul's revival. The ship begins to (17) move
and celestial spirits stand by the corpses of the dead mariners.

In the sixth part the process of puri cation seems to be (18) impeted (stopped/forbidden/
prevented).

In the last stanzas of the seventh part the Mariner gains the (19) wedding guest’s
sympathy. Coleridge does not tell us the end of the story, but lets the reader suppose that
the Mariner's sense of guilt will end only with his death.

ANALYSIS
What is the di erence between a wedding and a marriage? Di erence between marriage
and wedding is that the wedding indicates the day of celebration of the new relationship. 

There were three wedding guests heading to a wedding, this service. But they are stuck in
an unexpected way, they can’t move (there’s no rational reason) from the spot where the
ancient Mariner is, they are obliged to listen to the Mariner’s story. The Mariner has sort of
hypnotised them with his glittering eyes.  The Mariner is old, skinny and gives the
impression he has been around for a long time, he seems unusually old.

• The long title creates a sense of estrangement, the e ect of confusion and puzzlement
you create in someone, in this case in the reader, who by seeing the title misspelt nds
himself lost.

• Rime is not spelled correctly as rhyme, it causes a sense of confusion.

• Mariners is written using the latin from marinarum (latinism). What you read confuses
you, you perceive from the title that something won’t be ordinary in the ballad. Ancient
is written with a y. It gives out a weird atmosphere, you are surprised yet confused. You
perceive there won’t be something completely ordinary in this Ballad.

• Dreadful means horrible, scary.

• Much more than relaxing beautiful scenery, there is a storm.

What is an  Albatross? It’s the name of a species of bird. Used by Budelaire in the French
symbolism. The albatross in this ballad is the symbol of two aspects:

- Creative imagination, artistic, because it ies high, and by being killed, without a
logical explanation, it might signify all the damages that human reason or whatever is
unreasonable in humans can do to imagination;

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 - Symbol of nature, humans commit sins against it and kill it, nature is seen as God,
holy. There’s a religiousness concerning nature, a new religion is identi ed, it’s called
pantheism. Any action against nature is considered a huge sin, as nature is sacred
and should be worshipped. By killing the Albatross, the Mariner commits a sin. Life is
holy. 

There’s a punishment for the sailor. The sailor has to leave all his life and has to retell his
story to everyone he encounters. 

• Thirst is related to hunger, they need water, ironically there’s a whole ocean around
them but it’s salt water, so they can’t drink it and reach to it hoping to survive.

• Phantom is a more formal way to say ghost. It is also called a Skeleton ship. Why is
it called this way? it’s a ship in bad conditions, almost not capable of sailing
anymore. Another reason why it’s called so is that the only two passengers are
called Death and Life-in-Death. Death can have all the sailors dead. They cast dice,
as if they gamble (play) with the lives of the sailors and Death wins the Ancient
Mariner’s shipmates, while Mariner survives because Life-in-Death saves his life.
There’s a supernatural atmosphere.

• The former and the latter (irregular form of late): when there are only two subjects,
you can refer to them this way to speak about the rst and the second one later.
Former also means previous.

Wordsworth and Coleridge had di erent poetic ideas. Wordsworth was more inspired by
ordinary nature, Coleridge decided to talk more about extraordinary events, like skeleton
ships.

• The title is unusual, and the fact that they decided to write ballads is consistent (the
Mediaeval Ages appealed to the Romantics because of the inquisition, the superstition
and violent time, etc). 

MEDIAEVAL BALLADS
Italy and Spain are the usual settings for gothic ballads, because they represented the
dark and superstitious area during the Mediaeval period. Mediaeval ballads were just oral,
they were never written, until the 16th, while romantic ballads are written literature only. 

The rhythmic scheme of the mediaeval ballad was ABCB. The usual stanza is composed
of 4 lines, but there’s an exception in this ballad (vv 45).

• Frankenstein was inspired by the gothic novels.

What did Coleridge mean by a Skeleton ship was approaching them?

The skeleton ship is another ship in very bad conditions approaching them, the only two
passengers were Death and Life-and-Death. They are playing a game of dice. Death wins
the ancient Mariner’s mates’ lives, while the one who wins the Mariner’s life is Life-in-
Death, he survived while all the other sailors died... but is his life really a life? That’s why
he is also referred to as walking dead, he’s not really living as he pleases, he is trapped,
he’s being punished because he killed the albatross. He was to repeat his story over and
over again. He may not be able to die, they’re all propositions, prophesies. He may have
been around for who knows how many years, this fact is noticeable just by how he is
described physically. 
- It’s a very long ballad composed of seven parts. 

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An example of an improbable description is Death wins the sailors life, because it’s said
that the ancient mariner saw his mates’ souls leaving their bodies physically, leaving onto
the sky, while he was alive. At the end he went back to England and continued his journey
alone. 

THE KILLING OF THE ALBATROSS

The passage you are going to read is full of suspense from the very rst line: an old, lonely Mariner
appears from nowhere and forces one in a group of three people, on their way to a wedding party,
to listen to his story. The Mariner's tale is about a sea voyage, which soon turns out to be a voyage
with no return because of the uncontrollable powers of nature.

ARGUMENT 
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South
Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Paci c
Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the ancyent Marinere came
back to his own Country.

From the argument (as in topic, not ght as it is used nowadays in modern English) we
can read the three lined summary to anticipate the topics the reader will read. The topic is
about a Ship, feminine noun, and not masculine (it’s referred to as in she).
- Thence: is archaic for there.  
- Befell: archaic for what happened.
- Ancyent is spelled with a y. Why? It’s another archaism.

So this ballad is going to be about a ship that passed the Equator, went down to the
South Pole, where strange and eventual events took place. At the end the journey
concludes with the Mariner that nds himself back in England, to his country.

ANALYSIS
PART 1
It is an ancient Mariner, 
And he stoppeth one of three. 
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, 
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

LINE 2: The th called the third person singular, like Shakespeare used to. The ancient
Mariner doesn’t grab him by the hand, or by the arm, but he hypnotises one of the three
wedding guests through his glittering eyes. The wedding guest reacts surprised as to why
the ancient Mariner stopped him.
LINE 3: the glittering eye suggests he’s mentally unbalanced, but we don’t know for sure. 

The rhyme scheme is ABCB, rhyming in the second and fourth lines.

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 

And I am next of kin; 
The guests are met, the feast is set: 
May'st hear the merry din.'

These are still the wedding guest’s lines. He says that the doors where the groom (soon-
to-be husband) is awaiting him, through the doors of this ceremony as he is a relative. He

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 wants to attend the wedding, the guests are already gathered there and the feast is all
set. He can hear the wedding ceremony.
LINE 3: it’s a half-rhyme. 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 

'There was a ship,' quoth he. 
'Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' 
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

A few concrete details are provided to create practical and credible circumstances
together with improbable and surprising events. 
LINE 1: the Ancient Mariner holds the wedding guest with his very skinny hands, this
adjective suggests that the ancient Mariner is very slim/thin.
LINE 2: the Ancient Mariner begins telling his tale to the wedding guest. There was a ship,
he said (quoth is archaic for said).
LINES 2-4: the inversion of the subject lets the rhyme he and he happen.
The young man reacts and tells the Mariner to let him go and to take his hand o him,
referring to him as an old lunatic, a mad man. 
Line 4: Eftsoons means immediately. The Ancient Mariner immediately lets go of the
wedding guest’s hand. Dropt, he used a di erent version of the simple past for that time
(now we use dropped).

The Wedding-Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear
his tale.

- Spellbound: hypnotised, as if the Mariner had cast a spell on the young man through
his eyes. 
- Seafaring: a synonym for sailor.
He’s keeping the wedding guest there with the glittering eye.

He holds him with his glittering eye— 

The Wedding-Guest stood still, 
And listens like a three years' child: 
The Mariner hath his will.

He no longer holds him with his hands, but with his glittering eyes. The wedding guest
was motionless, he couldn’t move and had to listen like a three years old child because
the Mariner is in control of his will. 

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: 

He cannot choose but hear; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed Mariner.

We have another concrete detail, the wedding guest sat on a stone and couldn’t go
anywhere else. 
LINE 2: the only choice he can do is to hear.
LINE 3: thus means as a consequence
  spake is an archaism of the simple past of the verb to speak, now it’s spoke.

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 The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, 
Merrily did we drop 
Below the kirk, below the hill, 
Below the lighthouse top. 

The ancient Mariner continues his tale.

LINE 1: There were people saying goodbye to the sailors and the ancient Mariner.
LINE 2: did and drop is an alliteration. If the poet had used the simple past instead of the
auxiliary he wouldn’t have been able to create the rhyme. Using a simple past allowed
him to do the rhyme drop and top. 
LINE 3: kirk is an archaism, originated from the Anglo-Saxon german spoken in that area.
It means church. The impression is that the ship disappears under the Horizon, behind
the coast. 
LINE 4: a lighthouse is a structure that warns the ships that there’s land there.

The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached
the line.

The line is the Equator. The next few stanzas tell how the ship was accompanied by good
weather while it was heading southwards. 

The Sun came up upon the left, 

Out of the sea came he! 
And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the sea.

LINE 2: personi cation of the Sun. Natural elements were highly respected by the
Romantics, to the point of being highly divine in a pantheistic point of view. We have an
astrological element. The sun comes up to your left and sets to your right. 
LINE 3: it’s the direction where the ship was going.

Higher and higher every day, 

Till over the mast at noon—' 
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, 
For he heard the loud bassoon.

LINE 1: What’s the subject? The Sun. The sun was higher and higher everyday till it was
over the wooden pole on the ship deck at midday.
LINE 2: the mast is the wooden pole on the ship deck. Noon means it’s midday. Once you
reach the perpendicular position between you and the Sun, the Zenith, you are in the
Equator. Coleridge was very passionate about astronomy. 
LINE 3: there’s a ashforward. The Wedding-Guest is desperate, he beats his chest as an
act of frustration. Beat and breast is an alliteration. 

The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.

The wedding-guest hears the music of the ceremony, he wants to go but he cannot move.

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 The bride hath paced into the hall, 

Red as a rose is she; 
Nodding their heads before her goes 
The merry minstrelsy. 

LINE 1: The poet is telling what’s happening in the hall, where the wedding is taking place
in the church or already in the party. The bride has entered the hall of the church, or
wherever they are celebrating.
LINE 2: the bride is red (we don’t know why).
LINE 3: goes or go, as heads is plural. The musicians nod their head in the rhythm of the
music.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, 

Yet he cannot choose but hear; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed Mariner.

LINE 1: repetition. Originally Mediaeval Ballads were orally transmitted, they were
accompanied by music as well (very similar to songs). But is used as “except”. These
repetition function as a refrain in songs. 
LINE 4: again there’s a repetition.

The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.

Past the Equator the weather changes, after all they are heading to the south pole. There
was no longer sunshine or good wind, but a storm. What better way to entertain the
reader, for the Romantic, as a background to mirror human feelings and emotions. If a
storm is approaching, it’s not just the weather changing, it’s a hint that some relevant
events are going to take place. The moment of danger is represented by the arrival of the
storm.

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he 

Was tyrannous and strong: 
He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 
And chased us south along.

LINE 1: to attract the reader Coleridge uses natural elements, like storms, which keeps
the story interesting. The storm is personi ed. It was very overwhelming. 
LINE 4: the storm is chasing them, it’s another metaphor, the storm is seen as a bird who
followed the ship southwards.

There’s a long stanza from line 45 to 50, it’s composed of 6 lines instead of 4.

With sloping masts and dipping prow, 

As who pursued with yell and blow 
Still treads the shadow of his foe, 
And forward bends his head, 
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 
And southward aye we ed.

- The rhyme is di erent: prow, blow and foe; head, ed.

- The subject is the ship, mentioned in line 49. And she was sailing fast. 
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 LINE 1: a slop is the side of a hill or a mountain. Sloping means tilted, inclined. The front
of the ship is called prow. 
LINE 2: this wind created very strong noises. Gales are these types of strong winds. You
need sunshine to project a shadow, it’s a way of saying that the ship continued sailing in
the same direction of the storm, trying to surpass it by getting through it. 
LINE 3: the ship nonetheless continues to sail towards the enemy, the storm.
Probably this is just to say that the ship is going towards the storm, “chasing” it. It’s very
di cult to have a shadow during a storm. 
LINE 4: the storm is so strong that it seems to be yelling, roaring very strong sounds from
gales (strong winds). 
LINE 5: fast and blast, it’s an internal rhyme. The blast is the loud roaring of the storm. 
LINE 6: At line 50 there’s a full stop. 

The storm chases the ship and the weather has dramatically changed past the Equator, it
became bad and freezing cold weather while they were heading towards the South Pole. 

And now there came both mist and snow, 

And it grew wondrous cold: 
And ice, mast-high, came oating by, 
As green as emerald.

LINE 1: mist is a bit lighter than fog, it’s when there’s humidity and the sky isn’t very clear. 
LINE 2: wondrous cold means it became terribly cold. 
LINE 3: the ice as high as the ship’s mast came oating near them, it means it came near
travelling on water surfaces. 
LINE 4: he’s referring to an iceberg as green as emerald. It might be green because of the
re ection of the sea. Usually an iceberg is white or blue shaded.

The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.

They reached the South Pole, where no one and nothing can survive. They’re all alone
there. There are terrifying sounds produced by the breaking of the ice, but nothing else.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts 

Did send a dismal sheen: 
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— 
The ice was all between.

LINE 1: the drifting is the turning movement of the snow cli s, the sides of the iceberg
re ecting this green shiny colour, it doesn’t give them good vibes. 
LINE 2: a sheen is a glimmering, a shine coming from the snow. The shiny iceberg is very
ominous, it’s a sign of terrible events soon to take place there, it’s as if it were the only
presence there, a bad omen. 

The ice was here, the ice was there, 

The ice was all around: 
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, 
Like noises in a swound!

Coleridge uses repetitions, to emphasise the presence of ice only around them.  
LINE 1: All around them was nothing but ice, no form of life was visible. 
LINE 2: the ice and the wind are producing such sounds. 
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LINE 3: four onomatopoeic verbs, cracked, growled, and roared and howled. They’re
onomatopoeic as they echo the sounds of the actions taking place. The ice is collapsing
one on top of the other. The roar is the sound the wind makes. 
LINE 4: swound is when you faint, you lose consciousness. Coleridge is comparing the
sounds made by the natural elements, the wind, the storm, the sea, to the confusing
sounds someone hears when they’re about to faint. 

Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross came through the snow-fog, and was received with great
joy and hospitality.

In the middle of the snow and the fog, they see an approaching bird, an Albatross coming
through the fog. It is welcomed by the mariners, it was perceived as a good omen (a good
sign that brings luck) especially when later the weather changes, their expectations went
up as they saw a sign of life in the Albatross. 

At length did cross an Albatross, 

Thorough the fog it came; 
As if it had been a Christian soul, 
We hailed it in God's name.

After a while an Albatross came through the fog.

The mariners welcomed the albatross in God’s name, as if it was christian, a human.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat, 

And round and round it ew. 
The ice did split with a thunder- t; 
The helmsman steered us through! 

Very gently they gave him food, the albatross ate food it had never eaten before, it never
had the opportunity to be fed European food, that wasn’t very common in the South Pole.
And the bird ew round and round the ship, it continued drawing circles as if it were
performing a ritual (creating a sort of defence circle).
After the bird kept ying around the ship, the ice split and broke, producing a very loud
noise, as if it were a thunder. 
LINE 4: the helmsman is the man that directs the ship through the broken ice. 

And lo! The Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward
through fog and oating ice.

There was a way to get out of the oating ice. Surprisingly the albatross reveals to be a
good omen and follows the ship while it was getting back towards north through the fog
and ice. 

And a good south wind sprung up behind; 

The Albatross did follow, 
And every day, for food or play, 
Came to the mariner's hollo!

Unexpectedly there was good south wind behind them pushing them towards the north.
The albatross followed them everyday for food, it approached the sailors and they always
welcomed it.
LINE 4: hollo it’s hello. They are welcoming the Albatross whenever it comes by.
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 In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 

It perched for vespers nine; 
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, 
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'

The Albatross perched (it’s how the bird was staying on the ship, on one of its branches),
it approached the ship at vespers nine. 
LINE 1: a shroud is a cotton textile material used to wrap up corpses, and Jesus Christ
had a very particular one. It’s a reference to death. 
LINE 2: Vespers nine is the 3 o’ clock in the afternoon, the time when Jesus Christ died,
the atmosphere is becoming ominous as if something tragic was going to happen. It (the
albatross) approached the ship at that time. 
During the night there was some fog that appeared to be similar to white smoke and
through this fog there was moonshine. The romantics really favoured night landscapes,
possibly with the moon that casts light, but even with clouds. The night was somehow
darkish but with a bit of light. 
LINE 4: the moon-shine glimmered the sea. 

The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.

This pious (religious connotation) bird, creation of God must be respected, who had
always been there for the mariners, was killed for no rational reason. He commited a
crime, a sin. 

'God save thee, ancient Mariner! 

From the ends, that plague thee thus!— 
Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow 
I shot the ALBATROSS.

He confesses to his crime, he shot the albatross with his crossbow. The sailors realise he
has done something bad by looking at his expression, he seemed upset and had such a
demonic look. 
LINE 2: the ancient mariner seems as if he was obsessed by some demons.
This is the end of the rst part. 

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A SADDER AND WISER MAN

What follows are the concluding stanzas of the ballad, which contain the moral of the whole poem.
It’s the last extract of this very long ballad. It contains the religious moral of the ballad.

• Some say that Coleridge was not a religious type, but it’s not completely true, just
‘cause he ambitions an idea of society where private property does not exist. He wrote
a book about this utopian society, it sounds like a comunist one.  Even if he had a
political view of society, he also had some religious faith, he might have not been a
traditional believer, but he certainly worshipped nature and God’s creations. 

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest,
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
 
LINE 1: Farewell is formal for goodbye. 
Who is the ancient mariner saying goodbye to? To the wedding guest. He had nished
listening to the whole story of the Mariner, so he can go back to his relative’s wedding.
The Mariner tells the wedding guest that the one who prays well, better than everybody
else, is the one who loves both humans and animals, in general God’s creations the
most. 
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear Good who loveth us
He made and loveth all.»

The one who prays better than anyone, is the one who loves all the objects.
Like we God loves us all, he has made us creatures so that we can also love everything.
God loves us, so we should show the same love towards everything he has created. 
LINE 3: for means because.
 
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridgeroom’s door.
 
The mariner might suggest that he had hypnotised the wedding guest. 
LINE 2: it’s another repetition of a previous line.
Now the wedding guest turns towards the room of the groom, where the husband is
being celebrated.

He went like one that hath been stunned,

And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

After hearing such an improbable and weird story/tale, he was very surprised, puzzled
and astonished, so much that he was lost in his thoughts, he wasn’t really perceiving
what was going around him.

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 LINE 2: Forlorn is a synonym of desperate, it's archaic and means abandoned. Sense is
referred either to common sense or as in senses, in both cases he’s not able to perceive
the reality around him. He was shocked by this experience.
LINES 3-4: He got up the next morning a sadder man as the story wasn’t exactly cheerful
(it was about killing the albatross), but also wiser as he knew better, he had been taught a
moral, to love everything that is in the world.

John Keats
INTRODUCTION
John Keats is a second generation poet, unlike Coleridge, who belonged to the rst one.
The di erence resigned in the chronological order. He died young because of
consumption, tuberculosis, a disease a ecting the lungs. His brother died of the same
illness as well.
Keats wasn’t very popular at his time as some of his poems were considered a bit
obscure in the topic or in the language he used. He was romantic as well, so he did write
about nature,  love and passion, the style was sometimes very elaborated, sanctious to
describe the sensations he felt. His fascination with beauty (which is  typically a
neoclassical theme, more than romantic) also represents the other side of this romantic
poet. What kind of beauty? Beauty in arts, nature and the beauty of truth, which is a
philosophical concept. He dedicated a poem to a Greek Urn (vase where people usually
place ashes).
He was very poor and sadly no one read his poems when he was alive. He became
famous after his death. He’s a Londoner and his family was plagued by death,
consumption, their hygiene condition wasn’t good, they had an unhealthy lifestyle and all
this contributed to the appearance of tuberculosis. He died in Rome and he’s buried in
the Protestant Cemetery. He came to Italy in search of a better climate, some of his
friends supported his journey, as he couldn't a ord it himself.

FANNY BRAWNE
The only joy in his life was his love, Fanny Brawne, a woman of french origin.
Fanny Brawne, belonged to an upper social class (middle class), so their love was
doomed, he didn’t have the money to marry her, even though they were in love with each
other. He dedicated a poem, “Bright Star” to her. Her family never allowed the story, so
they didn't have the chance of getting engaged.

LITERARY PRODUCTIONS
The literary in uences he had were very noticeable. He wrote Odes, dedicated to nature
but in neoclassical style. 
Main work:
• Endymion, a long mythological poem, it progresses his fascination for the Greek
world;

• The Eve of St. Agnes, characterised by Romantic features;

• La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the title is very unusual as it’s in french, it’s a ballad
which displayed the Romantic taste for the Middle Age;

• The Great Odes:

◦ Ode to a Nightingale, it’s dedicated to a bird, the Nightingale;

◦ Ode on the Greek Urn;

◦ Ode to Autumn, it’s a celebration of autumn smells and colours;

◦ Ode on melancholy;

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 ◦ Ode on Indolence;

◦ Ode to Psyche;

• Hyperion.

THE NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

The green eye is a poem by Keats connected to an aspect of his poetry called “negative
capability”, it’s a concept theorised by Keats himself that suggests the capability of the
poet to disappear in his poetry. The eye of the poet, his personality is not the protagonist,
it’s present in the perception of emotions, of smells, of sounds, but the protagonist
essentially is something else, it’s nature, the Earth, the beauty of a woman as a re ection
the poet has. The poet is never the real protagonist in the poems, he prefers to be
partially hidden. The negative capability is the capability of the poet to negate himself, to
hide himself in poems, not to be the protagonist, but his emotions are there, but just as
reactions of nature. 

THEMES
Like any romantic, he valued imagination, the capability of a poet to create a unique work
of art. Even though beauty is a well known neoclassical theme, but it is perceived through
human senses, the sight… ecc
Another important theme in Keats is the beauty of the truth. 

Bright St
INTRODUCTION
The title is the rst two words of the sonnet, it’s a Shakespearean sonnet consisting in 14
lines organised in 3 quatrains and the nal couplet. The quatrain have an alternating
ABAB CDCD EFEF rhyme scheme, and the nal couplet corresponds to GG.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

Would I were it’s an archaic way to express a conditional sentence, it means I wish i were.
From the beginning he is addressing a very bright, a very shiny star, he’s addressing to a
real star, later we’ll discover he’s referring to his love, his woman.
Stedfast means fixed, still there, not going anywhere. Stars are fixed, they don’t go
anywhere as they don’t move.
The first sentence expresses the wish of the poet to be a steady presence like the star in
the sky.
The second line instead expresses the poet’s negative desire. He doesn’t want to be
hanging in the night in lonely splendour, he doesn’t want to shine all alone in the sky, his
impression is that stars are all alone. He likes its constant presence, but not the star’s
loneliness.
The lids as in eyelids. And watching from the Earth, the star appears always with its eyes
open. A star isn’t eternal, but it certainly lives more than us.
The star always watches with open eyes, it's never to be asleep, like a very sleepless
Eremite of nature. Who’s an eremite? Somebody who lives alone, in this case the star is
compared to an eremite.

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 The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

The star is very patient as it’s always there watching the moving waters on Earth, our
oceans and rivers busy in their religious task of purification. It sees the waters as purifying
our coasts and lands. These two lines remind the readers of the Christian baptism. The
water purifies the shores.
Another view from the sky, the star can see the snow fallen on the mountains or on the
moors. The moorland is a typical countryside in northern Europe that is dominated by the
cold weather and it’s lacking in vegetation. The star admires the recently fallen snow which
is similar to a sort of musk.

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

The third quatrain starts with a negation of the poet, he doesn’t want to be all alone like an
eremite. Yet he wants to be steady and unchangeable. This second part of the sonnet is
less platonic and religious, it’s much more sanctious in the description of his love. He
wants to stay where he is laying his head on his beautiful love’s flourishing chest, her
breast, her bosoms as if it were a pillow. The idea of continuity, of constant presence with
his woman is what he wishes for. He wants to stay like this forever, hear her woman’s
breath and swelling coming up as he is laying on her breast. Like a star he wants to stay
awake forever and never sleep even if he was resting his head on her as if she were his
own pillow. His state is of sleeplessness (unrest), it’s what he wants.

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

The repetition of still emphasises the continuity of the action forever, he wants to hear her
breath over and over again. They are very tender, sweet. And if this isn’t possible, he’d
rather surrender to death.

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 L a Belle Dame sans Merci

INTRODUCTION
This is a Romantic ballad where the meeting between a knight and a beautiful lady becomes a
metaphor of illness and love consummation. The title comes from an old French court poem by
Alain Chartier (1385-1433).

It talks about the human love between a woman and a man.

Coleridge’s ballad has a tragic ending with the punishment for the ancient Mariner for
God only knows for how long he’s been around the Earth. 

The themes of love and death are present in Keats’ ballads as well. The rhyme scheme is
ABCB, the second and fourth line of the stanza rhyme.

The french title is unusual in an english text. The in uence probably came from Alain
Chartier, a french poet who wrote a poem with the same title before Keats, it was about
courtly love.  As Coleridge in the Rime of the ancient Mariner aimed at puzzling the reader
with unusual choices of words and uncommon spellings in the title, Keats also wanted to
surprise and puzzle the reader with a french title. 

The characters are a lady and a knight in a mediaeval environment that was familiar to the
french cycle, chanson de Roland. The title in french might echo the love the French had
for courtly love and in their cycle of poems. 

The language can sometimes be very archaic, and as it was typical of the ballad  we
have the dramatic form of the dialogue, but the adjective dramatic doesn’t necessarily
mean tragic. Very often dramatic is used to refer to the presence of the dialogue, because
drama is based on dialogue. 

It’s a dialogue between the poet and a knight he meets. Initially, the poet asks some
questions to the knight he meets in an unexplained way, that’s typical of the ballads of
romantic poets as they don’t provide a background, they just plunge into the plot, the
present events. 

The rst three stanzas are uttered (spoken) by the poet.  There’s no introduction, it
immediately starts with words uttered by the poet.

To sum it up, the knight and the lady fall in love in the middle of nature, the presence of
nature mirrors the emotions of the two lovers. There are some supernatural elements, the
lady herself belongs to the supernatural, world of magic, in the fairy world. Whereas the
knight belongs to the human world.

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 ANALYSIS
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
       Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
       And no birds sing.

LINE 1: thee is archaic for you.

LINE 2: loitering means walking around. 

The text is understandable, not so di cult in the general understanding. The core (gist) of
what is communicated here is clear. 

There’s an armoured knight, walking around all alone pale (as he is su ering). 

The question the poet asks is about what might the su ering condition the knight
expresses be caused by, he asks him what bothers him, what is the reason for his
su ering.

You would expect an answer from the knight or another question or comment on the
knight, instead there’s a complete change of perspective. It’s as if the camera moved from
the lonely pale knight to what’s around him. It seems like the nature in the background is
not so ourishing, blossoming and as if it mirrors his sad heart. The plant is dying from
the lake. It seems like the lake is killing this plant, which sounds unusual. It’s usually salty
water that damages plants. You can’t really explain why the plant is dying because of the
lake water. And no birds are singing, it is a very silent, very desolate landscape.

Nature empathises with the knight’s bad heath. He is pale and all alone, so is nature as
the plant is dying and there isn’t a single bird singing. According to the romantic view of
Nature there was a sort of empathy between man and Nature. It’s as if nature was in
sintony with the knight. 

If the knight was happy, relieved and cheerful, and nature was dying, that would be a
contrast. But the knight and nature have two things in common: loneliness and they're
both in bad physical condition, both in the knight and in the plant.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

       So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
       And the harvest’s done.

LINE 1: repetition. It’s an incremental repetition as they’re a variation. The beginning it’s
like the previous sentence, but the two questions di er by the second line. Nonetheless,
he repeats the same concepts, ideas.

LINE 2: woe is a poetic word that means pain and su ering.

The knight is su ering. 

The second stanza functions the same way. In the rst half there’s a question to the
knight asking him why he looks so su ering and in pain, the second half, on the other
hand, is dedicated to nature.

LINE 3: the granary is the squirrel’s nest.

There’s a squirrel collecting nuts to prepare for its harvest, so winter is coming. It’s almost
autumn.

I see a lily on thy brow,

       With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
       Fast withereth too.
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 This stanza also combines the physical description of the knight with colours of owers.
LINE 1: The poet sees a lily on the (brow) forehead of the knight and is also wet. The lily is
metaphorical for his paleness. Usually we think of the lily as white, the colour white
suggests the knight’s sickness. Usually lilies are symbols of pureness, but not in this
case.
LINE 2: moist as in humid, with something related to anguish, su ering, and fever, so he’s
physically sick, he’s got a temperature but he is also su ering. The dew is what you nd
in the morning, the humidity. There are some drops of sweat on his forehead, because he
is su ering, he’s not well. 
LINE 3: Also the pink (metaphor for the rose), that should be the colour of your cheeks,
has faded (fading is an archaism) quikly, and it has been replaced by the colour white.
LINE 4: Withereth the “th” stands for the third person singular. 

I met a lady in the meads,

       Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
       And her eyes were wild.

LINE 1: meadow is poetic for elds.

The subject speaking is no longer the poet but it’s the knight explaining his sickness, his
story.  He met a lady in the meadows (meads), in the elds. She was a very beautiful lady
but the connotation is a magic presence, she is from the fairy world. Her hair was long,
her foot was light as if she wasn’t even human. 
LINE 4: Her eyes were wild, it suggests that she had some supernatural background.

I made a garland for her head,

       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
       And made sweet moan

LINE 1: Like any common lover, you understand that he has instantly fallen in love with
her, he started to make objects, garlands with owers as tokens of love, such as ower
bracelets. As a consequence she looked at him as if she really loved him. 
LINE 4: a moan is a sound you make with your mouth that suggests you are either happy
or unhappy, in a state of pleasure or pain. It can go both ways. And he perceives this
sound as a sign of love, it’s sweet.

I set her on my pacing steed,

       And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
       A faery’s song.

What does he do? He steps down his horse (steed) and he makes her sit on the
horseback and keeps the horse at a slow pace as he is walking next to her. He saw
nothing else but her. She would lean (bend) sideways (sidelong), and in this way she looks
onto him and she would sing a magic song. Is it the song that mesmerises him? Or is it
the food she gives him?
LINE 3: would is not a conditional tense, but it expresses the happy habit in the past, very
often would is used as the formal phrasal verb  “use to”. 

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 She found me roots of relish sweet,
       And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
       ‘I love thee true’.

LINE 1: roots are the bottom extensions of trees and some of them are also edible, she
gave some to the knight. The one she picked for him had a sweet taste. 
LINE 2: honey wild, as in wild honey, and manna-dew, food usually eaten by the Gods in
the past, it resembled bread. Dew is something liquid.
The fairy-like woman found some food in the forest and fed it to the knight. 
Very often witches and witchcraft pick up roots and food in the woods that’s not always
edible, very often it’s poisonous. 
LINES 3-4: In a strange and foreign incomprehensible language she told him that she
really loves him, but he doesn’t know how he understood what she said.

She is the lady he met in the woods, she fed him these roots, wild honey, these
substances and then she said something to him in a strange language that he very surely
thinks it’s an “I love you”. 

She took me to her El n grot,

       And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
       With kisses four.

LINE 1: The El n is an elf (a magical creature), while grot is a cave. 

LINE 2: You sigh when you are unhappy, mainly it’s the opposite feeling of pleasure. She
looked at the knight intensely and sighed. 
She is sore, something is bothering the fairy. As a consequence the knight shuts her wild
wild eyes and kisses her in order to relieve her su ering
LINE 3: Repetition of wild, they are very wild eyes, they’re surely not human eyes.
LINE 4: kisses four is an inversion to make the second and fourth line rhyme.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

       And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
       On the cold hill side.

These are very ominous lines that suggest an unhappy ending for the knight.
LINE 1: To lull someone is to sing a lullaby to help someone to fall asleep. 
LINE 2: woe is archaic for sorrow.
She makes him sleep, and then he dreams. It was the last dream he had, because he
then died on that cold hill side. He found himself in that grot.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

       Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
       Thee hath in thrall!’

This stanza describes the nightmare the knight had. 

LINES 1-2: pale is repeated thrice, to emphasise the paleness of the knight. It’s a
common situation with how the poet met the knight, all pale and su ering. 

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Is this just a situation of su ering caused by her love? He is held prisoner by the lady, it’s
the message he receives from these pale kings, princes, warriors. The people he dreams
about look more dead than alive. The context is mediaeval, so romance-like. 
LINE 4: she has the knight in her palm. He’s a prisoner, he can’t leave that cave the same
as those people who the knight dreamt of, they all died there. 
The ballad never explains whether he is actually dead, everything is left vague to make
the reader puzzle. Maybe he is a spirit lurking around the woods.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

       With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
       On the cold hill’s side.

In the nightmare he saw their lips, they were so thin as they were starving in the dark.
LINE 1: starved lips as very thin lips. You starve when you're hungry. The gloam is
darkness, not total, but it’s dark.
LINE 2: they gaped in a shout, they gave him a warning cry of horror to warn him against
the danger, they were in love with that fairy before him and they died because of her too.
They are telling him that he is her prisoner. It’s a wasted warning though, because he is
already trapped. 
LINE 3: He says he wakes up, but does he wake alive or as a ghost? He said that that was
his last dream. We don’t really know.

And this is why I sojourn here,

       Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
       And no birds sing.

LINE 1: Probably he remained in the cold for a very long time.

LINE 2: He is alone, no one is there.
LINE 3-4: The repetition of the nal 2 lines with the rst ones in the rst stanza closes the
poem in a circular way. This barren landscape is present even in the end.

PAGE 310
EXERCISE 4
LISTEN and complete the summary of the text.
The ballad takes place in late autumn. A knight (1) is wandering in a desolate wasteland
where the plant life (2) has withered and no birds sing. He himself is declining: he is (3)
pale and the rose in his cheeks, like the sedge, is withering. He tells about a beautiful
woman, a faery's child' with wild wild eyes', a detail which highlights her real (4)
supernatural nature. She speaks a (5) strange language, sings fairy (6) songs and lulls
the knight to sleep in her (7) el n place. Eventually she abandons him on that cold hill
side. The lady's responsibility for the knight's sick condition seems to be con rmed by
the (8) dream he has of (9) dead pale kings, princes, and warriors who claim La Belle
Dame sans Merci / Thee hath in thrall!' [lines 39-40]: he is under the lady's (10) spell. As
Keats is imitating the mediaeval ballad, he uses simple language, (11) focuses on one
event, provides minimal details about the characters, and makes no judgments (12).
Some details are realistic and familiar, others are (13) magical and supernatural. As a
result, the poem is pervaded by a (14) mysterious atmosphere.

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ORAL TESTS QUESIONS
• Describe the paintings on pages 258-259. Are they romantic? Why and how? What
feelings does this painting evoke in you?
• What about the fantastic in Romanticism? Do you see anything evil in here (the
Fuseli’s painting)? Di erence between imagination and fantasy? (The rst one
belongs to the romantic artist, it’s natural talent, the second one bhoooo).
• Can we say that Keats combines some aspects from neoclassicism with other
romantic features? Do ballads date back to neoclassicism?
• What mediaeval elements do you nd in them?  Not many Odes were written by
romantic, the preferred ballads.
• Tell me more about the “Bright Star”…
• In La Belle Dame sans Merci did the poet say why the knight is sick? Why?
• Compare it with other ballads we read (talking about how the poet starts the ballad
uttering, without giving an introduction)… What about the Sun?
• Why is the Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde called “strange”? Let’s focus on
the case itself. Why is it called “strange”? If you think about other novels, or the
trends of that time, can you think of any names of other novels?
• What is the most tragic part of this novel? Do you think Doctor Jekyll can be
considered schizophrenic? What are the features of Mr. Hyde? 
• What’s your opinion about this doubleness of Dr. Jekyll? Do you agree with him?
Are people really made of two sides?

PAGE 290
Coleridge divides the mind into two distinct faculties: imagination and fancy. Like Blake
and Wordsworth, Coleridge emphasises the role of imagination in poetic creation. He
makes a distinction between primary imagination and secondary imagination.

“Primary imagination” has the following features:

• it can be experienced by every human being;

• it is linked to perceptions;

• it is an unconscious process;

• it manifests itself through images which recall relevant sensorial experiences that
happened in the past.

“Secondary imagination” is an echo of primary imagination; it can only be experienced

by the poet, who consciously dissolves, dissipates the images linked  to past experiences
in order to re-create. The result of this process is the “new world” of the poem created by
the poet himself.

The parallel between Coleridge and Wordsworth appears quite clear: they both start from
personal experiences. While Wordsworth uses imagination to half-create, or rather modify
and transform the data of experience through recollection in tranquillity, lifting them above
a passive “recording”, Coleridge transcends the data of experience and “creates” in the
true sense of the word thanks to secondary imagination.

Fancy is no other than a mode of memory, emancipated from the order of space and
time. It is inferior to imagination because it is not creative: it is a kind of logical faculty
which enables a poet to associate material already provided and blend it into

beautiful images like metaphors, similes and other poetical devices.

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 Percy By he Shelley
LIFE
P.B. Shelley drowned in the Ligurian Sea, in a tragic way at the age of thirty. It was typical
for English people to visit Italy for its good weather. He was staying in Livorno. 

Shelley married Mary Godwin, best known as Mary Shelley. Mary was the daughter of
William Godwin, an atheist. She was a writer as well and published Frankenstein in 1818,
the same year she and Shelley went to Italy. 

THEMES AND MAIN WORKS

Shelley admired atheism and politics, and he also wrote about these topics. Nature is
less relevant in his poetry. There’s no pantheism in his poems. 

All of his works pointed out that he would’ve liked things to change and mirrored his
restlessness never being satis ed about situations brought in writing under some
metaphors, as his writing might have been the target of censorship. He pointed out the
possibility of revolution as the people were so unsatis ed with their condition. He believed
in a possibility of a happier and better future for everyone in his idea of brotherhood
(which came from the ideals of the french revolution). 

His poems, both the sonnet England in 1819 and the ode called Ode to the West Wind
add a warning of a possible political revolution that the lower classes might be thinking
about. There’s also an appeal to love, but certainly there’s a deep ferocious attack on
institutions. 

He’s an artist, he is gifted unlike ordinary people who can only use fantasy or fancy to
create imaginative work. He describes the revolution not as a revolution, he calls it
Phantom (as in ghost) or as a West Wind (in his infamous Ode to the West Wind). He
talks about the wind as the possible revolution who in his opinion is going to sweep the
country, if the government and the royal family are not better at dealing with the lower
classes' requests for improvement. 

THE POET’S TASK

All the Romantic poets think that the poet has a role in society, which is to be a prophet,
to touch people’s hearts. His message is to inspire common people. 

His task is to help mankind to reach an ideal world where freedom, love and beauty are
delivered from tyranny, destruction and alienation.

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 England in 1819
Shelley wrote a poem called England in 1819 that develops the political theme, travels
that the royal family and the government were having at that time in facing some social
unrest*. There were rebellions, (luddite) violent riots  against factories, factory owners,
workers smashing machines and rebelling against their bosses because of the ill
treatment and the terrible working conditions. The dissatisfaction of the lower working
classes was visible to P.B. Shelley; unlike Keats who had poor health and was probably
less interested in the socio-political aspects of his country. 

*social unrest includes civil disorders, acts of mass civil disobedience, and strikes.

ANALISYS
It’s a sonnet so it consists of 14 lines. It has a depressing and negative panorama/view of
an unscaled and uncaring establishment, a country that only has more than decent living
conditions for the upper-middle classes, while the lower classes are still exploited and
neglected. Mainly the riots that were going on the social-economical panorama were tied
to luddism, the rebellion against factory owners.
P.B. Shelly dedicates a line to almost all the institutions that he regarded as totally
useless. In his opinion nothing worked on the political level in England, including the king. 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

LINE 1: The rst strike is on king George V. King George V is the rst one to be criticised
with ve negative adjectives. He was old so he was almost on his deathbed and he was
shortsighted. He was a bit insane, mad. Metaphorically he’s blind because he couldn’t
see the state of his own country. He didn’t want to see it even though the terrible
conditions in the country were obvious. He was despised. 
LINE 2: Princes are collective for all the royal family members, their o springs... Dull
means unimportant, stupid. They descend from an unimportant race. 
They come down from the origin of the earlier generations and they live through public
scorn, people who do not respect them at all, the public doesn’t like them.
LINE 3: mud is a combination of rain and soil. It’s another metaphor. The present royal
family is mud, disgusting, unimportant. Even their ancestors, their spring (what generates
a river, a stream from soil. It’s not the season, it’s the origin), their parents come from a
vulgar and disgusting origin. 
LINE 4: This line is dedicated to rulers, governors, prime ministers. Rulers seem not to
know what to do, it’s another category of useless people. They don’t feel any sympathy,
any discomfort for their people. 

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 But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey

LINE 1: in another simile, they’re described as leeches are parasites that suck blood and
live in muddy swamps. Leeches were used in the past as a treatment to lower your blood
pressure. Like leeches these governors cling, remain attached to their dying (fainting)
country. The country is fading, decaying, yet they remain attached to the country’s blood,
exploiting their country by bene ting from it as much as they can for political interests
they have. 
LINE 2: there’s an alliteration. These politicians remain attached until they let go of the
country without a sound (blow), when they are metaphorically so full of blood, so full with
money and riches that they can’t even see. They are completely unimportant, even when
they’re full they don’t make any sound when they fall to the ground.
LINE 3: it’s the only line not dedicated to criticism. It’s instead a description of how lower
classes are starving and have been stabbed by a dagger, it’s a symbol of betrayal. They
are betrayed by those who should be taking care of them, the governors. Untilled means
uncultivated. England’s elds are left uncultivated. The people are dying of hunger and
betrayal.
LINE 4: Even the army, which should be the tool to maintain freedom and peace, doesn't
always work on the people’s behalf.  

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

LINE 1: a two edged-sword is a weapon used in mediaeval times. This army was a
weapon that could be used for positive or negative purposes, for the country or for the
worse. It could be used to maintain equality and liberty or to kill liberty (liberticide, look at
line 4 of the second quatrain), to oppress and su ocate any rebellion that came from the
people and sometimes the army con scated belongings of the people (prey), they stole
from the people. 
LINE 2: whoever administered the law, they did it to their own advantage, to bene t
themselves. Slay means kill. They used law to kill whoever was in their way, an obstacle
to their interest or target. Laws are golden and sanguine. The jurisdic system is more
interested in money. The law administers economic interest that bene ts a certain
category. They’re very bloody laws that generate violence and face rebellions in bloody
ways.
LINE 3: Shelley doesn’t spare religion either. Not even the church is helping the poor, the
homeless people, or orphans. The church seems to be priceless, not to follow the
teachings of God. The church has forgotten the teachings and messages provided by
God.
LINE 4: a senate is an old-fashioned metaphor for government, the worst institutions of
all. It’s still unrepealed, unrejected, undismissed, unabolished. It’s still there, when it
should be sent away.

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 Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

LINE 1: all these institutions are dead, so they might as well be considered graves. From
their tombs, where they lie dead, a glorious Ghost bursts.  
LINE 2: the ghost will appear with violence of the unsatis ed rebels to lighten (illumine)
this stormy period. 
It’s a revolutionary message, it’s a warning to the political institution but also a message
for the people to organise a rebellion. 

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 Edg Allan Poe
LIFE
He’s an early nineteenth century’s writer and poet who unfortunately lived a short life of 40
years, mostly of su ering probably, lost in drinking and gamblig. He found a young love,
his cousin who was only thirteen years old and he was already 27. Unfortunately she died
sooner than him. He survived for a couple years longer and then he was found
unconscious (dead) in his sleep in the streets of Boston, due to his heavy drinking.
He was a bostonian writer, he was born in Boston (New York’s east coast where the
puritan fathers landed on the May ower). He is considered puritan, with very strict values
and morals. He clashed against morality by marrying such a young woman and facing so
many deaths in his life. 
When she died he was really upset and destroyed every value he used to follow. He
became an alcoholist. 

He had an obsession with death, he was fascinated by it and found it beautiful. He

investigated ways of dying, he had an obsession with death by su ocation, choking, a
death where you couldn’t breathe. He was an orphan very soon, his father disappeared
and his mother died of consumption (tuberculosis).  There’s a saying, he didn’t even know
his mother’s name, he had to learn it when he went to visit her grave. 
He was adopted by the Allans’. They were the reason why he was able to study and
attend university. His well being didn’t last because he started gambling. He
experimented with poetry, he wasn't the best at writing stories.

Luckily, before he died he was lucky enough to nd love in Virginia, who was thirteen at
the age, while he was already an elder. His drinking, gambling, the fact that he married a
thirteen year old child, quali ed him as a pervert. 

His works weren’t read at that time but they were translated in Europe, by symbolist poets
Baudelaire and Verlaine who also lived border-lined, not really integrated in society, they
also experimented on drugs and alcohol. 

Edgar was trying to nd a reason in his life, both his parents and his wife were dead. His
only moments of relief were when he was drunk. He was thinking about death quite a lot.
The general topic is melancholic. 

POE’S TALES
His tales can be divided in two groups:
• Tales of ratiocination or detection (it belongs in detective stories) e.g. Black Cat.
It has a development of detective stories (Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes…), prose
compositions based on logistical or rational things. The solution of crimes using
logical reasoning and psychological analysis;

• Tales of imagination (gothic element is dominating) e.g. The Tell-Tale Heart, the
dark, noir element is stronger, it’s more horri c, it also contains sadism
sometimes. The horror comes from inside the self (from the human psyche) and not
from the outside.

The two tales belong to two di erent trends.  They both have the characteristic of
someone dying in common.

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MAIN WORKS:
RAVEN
One of his poems is called Raven, just like the black bird, even the atmosphere is darkish.
His poems are usually set in attics, secluded places, basements, dark places mainly
inside, usually it’s never outside. The protagonists live in a very limited reality, indoors and
they can’t even face the outer world and they live in their minds. They might have contact
with the outside world, nonetheless they soon lose this contact, this capability of
interacting with common ordinary people.

TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is an early collection of tales you can’t even believe
to be happening (grotesque), arabesque suggests the dichotomic style of his prose (but
some places that he describes can be richly decorated). 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION

The philosophy of composition contains his ideas on writings. 

BLACK CAT
The protagonist sees something hauling around the walls, you might think as a reader it’s
a ghost and the house might be haunted but in the end the protagonist nds a black cat
behind the wall and was the origin of those noises. There’s no moral, there’s the logical
explanation of what might appear to be a supernatural presence in the house. In detective
stories we nd this common aspect, the mystery is solved at the end. 

THE TELL-TALE HEART

The protagonist (whose name is unknown) develops an obsession with his boss as he
never leaves the house. He’s a caretaker and takes care of an old man, usually always in
bed. One day he sees something reserved and develops a horrifying and grotesque reality
in his mind. One eye of the man is diseased, and the caretaker calls it the vulture eye (or
the eagle eye as an example of superstition). The title suggests that the heart reveals
something.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WRITINGS

CHARACTERS
His interest was caught by the short tales, maybe because he was in uenced by a genre
that was developing in the nineteenth century, detective stories. The two main authors at
that time that introduced a new literary kind were Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. No
matter how insane his characters are, in the end the mystery is rationally explained and
solved. He showed his creative imagination, his deep interest in the human intellect, the
way our minds work as his protagonists think a lot more than speaking, they provide
interior monologues*. We repeatedly nd the beauty of death in his stories in a violent
way. Every character gets lost in its own world, they are hardly interested in what they
perceive, they hear noises that only exist for them, they’re unreal, they hallucinate, see
things that aren’t actually there. They choose death, it’s the truth that counts for them.
The beauty of death is what he investigates in his tales. He analyses truth, conscience.
His characters have no moral bounds, but Poe does investigate morals as well, his
characters make choices based on what they think. The characters are project into their
minds just like the setting, inside their own world, their psyche. They concentrated on
themselves, who they feel, think and hear. Slowly and gradually they lose grip on reality by
getting more and more into their minds, as they create their own reality, di erent from
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 what others perceive. They withdraw themselves from the real world, from the
conventional aspects of life. The cultivate a life of their own, cut o from the world.

They look mad (as in insane, like lunatics) to common people as they behave like it. The
characters actually have more acute senses (stronger and ner eyesight and hearing).
They often have hallucinations, they perceive things that aren’t actually there. They
develop an exceptional acuteness of the senses.
They are considered as privileged skills in a very accurate and rational way, in an attempt
to show they are not mad. They accuse the others of being limited, as they are the ones
that have an expanded consciousness.

*A soliloquy is used in theatre when an actor speaks to himself on the stage for a long time when
he’s alone; a monologue is a long speech but not necessarily when the actor is alone on the stage.
In prose an interior monologue is a series of very long thoughts, it’s what you think not what you
say, it’s not a speech, it’s expressed by re ections of the conscience of the character.

SETTING
As for the setting it’s more indoors, it’s rare to have an outdoors setting of the real world.
Examples are secluded places like towers, castles, basements, attics, cellars, places
where you might end up being buried alive. Characters are rarely seen in daylight, they
are in con nement: in a small place, walled into cellars, buried prematurely. 

THEMES
- Perverseness, the impulse to annihilation with rules the dark side of human
behaviour; 

- The fusion of beauty and death, of creation and destruction;

- The double, which anticipates the modern idea of “split personality”. Just like in doctor
Jekyll and mister Hyde when psychoanalysis wasn’t even invented yet. Before
psychoanalysis was born some started to turn their attention to the human psyche and
understood that there was a whole world to be investigated, also considering our
personality might be to fold, we need to control how to control our worst instincts
(including the attraction to death, which is not completely advisable or healthy);

- The attraction to death.  

STYLE
He chose:

- The rst person narration. Even during the Enlightenment (age of Reason) the eye
witness was appreciated, the protagonist writes and tells in rst person narration as if
he was the witness, the testimony. This allows the authors to present a more credible
tale; 

- Long interior monologues* (very innovative). The protagonist himself that presents his
thoughts and emotions; 

- Description of a great variety of moods and sensations. The style can be very detailed
(not so much in the description of the exterior, outer world);

- Relationship of cause and e ect.

THE SINGLE EFFECT

According to Poe, writing longer prose was an easier way to lose the reader’s attention. It
was better to focus on what he called a “single e ect”, a very short story that narrated
an episode, a single event.

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 The principles of the short story are:

- Brevity: the story should be read in a single sitting in order to maintain the reader’s
attention, otherwise the story would lose its suspense element;

- The characters: shown at some revealing moments of crisis, not while developing or
maturing. They are almost immediately introduced directly into the moment of crisis. 

- The setting: simpli ed and circumscribed;

- The “single e ect” → a person or an object around which all the story revolves around
to arouse the reader’s curiosity and interest.

PAGE 324-325
LIFE AND WORKS
Born in Boston in 1809, Edgar Poe was the son of poor, itinerant actors. His father, who
had the reputation of an alcoholic, left his family in 1810, and his mother died of
consumption the following year. Edgar was brought up by the Allans, a childless couple,
and after i824 his full name became Edgar Allan Poe. After attending school, rst in
England and then in the States, he went to the University of Virginia in 1826.

Once there, he ran into debt by gambling and when the Allans refused to pay, he left for
Boston, where he published his rst collections of poems. These works attracted little
attention and brought him no money, so he decided to join the army. Mr Allan helped
him to enter the military academy of West Point, where he remained for only seven
months. He then moved to Baltimore where his aunt, Maria Clemm, lived. He fell in love
with his cousin Virginia, whose pale and fragile beauty, and childlike character embodied
the morbid ideal Poe celebrated in his poems. They married in 1836, when Virginia was 13
and he was 27.

The years that followed were very productive: in 1838 he published his only novel The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; in 1840 appeared his Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque, followed in 1845 by another collection of Tales, the poem The Raven, which
made him famous throughout the country, and, in 1846, by The Philosophy of
Composition, the essay containing his aesthetic theories. Virginia died in 1847 and Poes
health declined rapidly owing to his alcoholism. In 1849 he was found in Baltimore, lying
unconscious in the street, and a few days later he died.

Poe's reputation in America was spoilt by accusations of perversion, alcoholism and

drug addiction. It was the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) who increased
European appreciation of Poe's work with his remarkable translations of his tales. The
French poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), who translated Poe's poems into French, was
in uenced by him and regarded him as a forerunner of the Symbolist movement. Poe's
main contribution to literature, however, was in the eld of the short story, where he also
began the popular genre of the detective story.

POE'S CREATIVE SPIRIT

Poe thought that art was the only method to give order to the shapeless world. He saw
the human self as divided into intellect, conscience and soul. The rst was concerned
with truth, the second with duty and the third with beauty.

Since poetry was a means to the discovery of beauty, it had nothing to do with truth or
morals. Poe spoke up for beauty in an age when poets liked to instruct and identi ed the
most suitable tone for poetry with sadness and melancholy.

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 POE'S TALES
His tales can be divided into two groups. 

The rst group are the 'tales of ratiocination or detection', that exerted great in uence
on the development of the detective story. Poe created a private detective, Monsieur
Dupin, who is aristocratic, arrogant, eccentric but extremely rational. Dupin solves crimes
by his capacity of logical reasoning and his power of psychological analysis, which
enables him to interpret the thoughts of others even from their gestures. Thus, knowledge
based on the deductive method, rather than the plot itself, is at the heart of the detective
story. Poe paved the way for the future writers of detective stories, like Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (1859-1930) and Agatha Christie (1890-1976), who drew on his model to create
their successful detectives. 

The second group are the 'tales of imagination’, where, despite using some
conventional Gothic elements, Poe went beyond the Gothic tradition to write stories
where the 'horror' does not come from the outside, but from inside the self.

SETTING AND CHARACTERS

A distinctive feature of Poe's stories is a closed setting: his characters are rarely seen in
daylight; they often live con ned in a small place, some are walled into cellars, others are
buried prematurely. The explanation of such aberrations can be found in madness, which
for Poe was almost an aspect of a higher awareness.

All of his most memorable characters withdraw from the conventional aspects of life to
cultivate a life of their own, so cut o from the world that they lose contact with reality,
In this condition they develop an exceptional acuteness of the senses and lose their
sanity, and often their lives, as a result of expanded consciousness.

THEMES
Among the most common themes of the tales is that of ‘perverseness’, that impulse to
annihilation which rules the dark side of human behaviour and that Poe believed to be
hidden in every material and spiritual portion of the universe. In Poe's stories morality is
the tension between the creativity of his narrators and the perverse impulse to dissolution
that leads them to act as they should not act and to confess their crimes at the end. So
conscience becomes the most powerful agent of the perverse because it betrays the self
by revealing its deepest secrets.

Other themes are the fusion of beauty and death, of creation and destruction, and the
theme of the double which anticipates the modern idea of 'split personality’. Poe was
also attracted to death: he was aware that man's fear of death is mainly linked to the fate
of decay of the body after it stops breathing. In The Tell Tale Heart, for example, the
narrator's Punishment is brought about by the incessant beating of the heart or the man
he has killed.

STYLE
Almost all tales are narrated in the rst person, thus becoming long interior
monologues which describe a great variety of moods and sensations: sadness, sense of
guilt, claustrophobia, deviation, fear, hatred and desire. Movement is not given by the
development of a series of images, each independent of the others, but by the
relationship between cause and e ect.

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 THE SINGLE EFFECT
Edgar Allan Poe wrote remarkable short stories in which the world of the imagination
coexists with the analytical spirit of reason; he was also the rst theorist on the genre. In
The Philosophy of Composition (1846) he explained his approach: the rst principle was
brevity; secondly, the story should be read in a single sitting so that the external world
could not distract the reader from the unity of the work. The characters should be shown
at some revealing moments of crisis rather than while developing and maturing. The
setting was often simpli ed or circumscribed and the skill of the writer was devoted to
rendering atmosphere and Situation convincingly. Poe often used the 'single e ect’, a
keynote - a person or an object - to arouse the reader curiosity and interest.


e tell-tale he
THE TELL-TALE HEART | PAGE 326
One of Poe's most impressive stories, The Tell-Tale Heart is about a man whose  senses
have been made more acute by a disease. This situation haunts him and gradually leads
him to murder the old man he works for as a caretaker.

ANALYSIS
True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully
nervous I had been and am; but why will you
say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened
my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them.
Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I
heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.
I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I
mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily —
how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
From the very rst line, the protagonist
tries to justify his insanity, his behaviour,
his choices and reasons as pure
acuteness of the senses. He sustains that
he cannot be a lunatic, as how can he be
mad when he is giving us such a clear
straight-forward and lucid explanation, it’s
all just a result of very acute senses, the
protagonist’s senses are expanded, not
limited as the ordinary people. He
immediately points out his senses are
sharper, ner than everyone else's, they’re
not dull.
• Hearken is the archaic form for the verb
to listen, it’s mediaeval, a verb used by
Shakespeare. 

It is impossible to say how rst the idea entered
my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me
day and night. Object there was none. Passion
there was none. I loved the old man. He had
never wronged me. He had never given me
insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it
was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes
resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye,
with a lm over it. Whenever it fell upon me,
my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very
gradually — I made up my mind to take the
life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the
eye forever.
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A vulture is a black bird of prey that feeds
on corpses, dead organisms leftovers until
they’ve completely devoured everything. 
What’s unusual is that the old man has
one blue eye that looked like a glass (as if
it had a lm* over the eye, and it looked
pale blue), while the other one is normal.
The protagonist becomes obsessed with
the old man’s pale blue eye, as he
associates his eye with the evil eye. Evil
eye is associated with superstition, it’s
when someone casts some kind of curse
on someone else through black magic. 
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Now this is the point. You fancy me mad.
Madmen know nothing. But you should
have seen me. You should have seen how
wisely I proceeded — with what caution —
with what foresight — with what dissimulation
I went to work! I was never kinder to the old
man than during the whole week before I killed
him. And every night, about midnight, I turned
the latch of his door and opened it — oh, so
gently! And then, when I had made an opening
suf cient for my head, I put in a dark lantern,
all closed, closed, so that no light shone out,
and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would
have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it
in! I moved it slowly — very, very slowly, so that
I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took
me an hour to place my whole head within the
opening so far that I could see him as he lay
upon his bed. Ha! — would a madman have
been so wise as this? And then, when my head
was well in the room, I undid the lantern
cautiously — oh, so cautiously — cautiously
(for the hinges creaked) — I undid it just so
much that a single thin ray fell upon the
vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights
— every night just at midnight — but I found
the eye always closed; and so it was impossible
to do the work; for it was not the old man who
vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every
morning, when the day broke, I went boldly
into the chamber, and spoke courageously to
him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and
inquiring how he had passed the night. So you
see he would have been a very profound old
man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at
twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
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* lm = a very thin paper layer. A movie is
also called like this as it was originally shot
by using a lm. A lm is also a substance,
a foil that you use to wrap food.
“You fancy me mad. Madmen know
nothing. But you should have seen me.
You should have seen how wisely I
proceeded.” it could vaguely be a
syllogism as he proceeds in a very rational
and technical manner in his reasoning. He
presents how other people he met might
perceive him as a madman but at the
same time a madman doesn't know
anything, he’s unaware of what’s going on.
How can he work so cautiously, wisely he
prepared his plan, he even thought about
all the possible mishappenings, of
everything that could’ve gone wrong. 
• To be cunning means to be very smart
in a sly (negative connotation) way. 
• Thrust suggest some quickness in
putting his head inside the door. It took
him a whole hour to place his whole
head through the door. 
• Ray, a thin light fell upon the old man’s
eye when the caretaker put on the
lantern. 
• Hinges are the objects that allow a door
to open. There are usually two objects
on the side of the door, around which
the door revolts. In this case the hinges
were a bit rusty as they were old, so
they creaked. 
The protagonist recognises that he has
nothing against the old man, until the man
is asleep and his eyes are closed, he has
no reaction. The problem rises when the
eye is open, it triggers the caretaker’s
violence, hatred.
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Upon the eighth night I was more than usually
cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute
hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never
before that night had I felt the extent of my
own powers — of my sagacity. I could
scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To
think that there I was, opening the door, little
by little, and he not even to dream of my secret
deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the
idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved
on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you
may think that I drew back — but no. His
room was as black as pitch with the thick
• Deeds are actions. 
• Sagacity means intelligence, skills. 
• To chuckle is to laugh in a low tone.
• Startled is when you sort of jump up
because of a scare.The man was
asleep, but hearing the caretaker
chuckle, he woke up.
• Pitch is a very dark material (it’s also
called tar, used to make asphalts). It’s a
black sticky substance. 
• Shutters are used to block out the light
coming from windows.
• Steadily means without stopping.

darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened,

through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he
could not see the opening of the door, and I
kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the
lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin
fastening, and the old man sprang up in the
bed, crying out — “Who’s there?”
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole
hour I did not move a muscle, and in the
meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was
still sitting up in the bed listening; — just as I
have done, night after night, hearkening to the
death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it
was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a
groan of pain or of grief — oh, no! — it was
the low sti ed sound that arises from the
bottom of the soul when overcharged with
awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just
at midnight, when all the world slept, it has
welled up from my own bosom, deepening,
with its dreadful echo, the terrors that
distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what
the old man felt, and pitied him, although I
chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been
lying awake ever since the rst slight noise,
when he had turned in the bed. His fears had
been ever since growing upon him. He had
been trying to fancy them causeless, but could
not. He had been saying to himself — “It is
nothing but the wind in the chimney — it is
only a mouse crossing the oor,” or “it is
merely a cricket which has made a single
chirp.” Yes, he has been trying to comfort
himself with these suppositions: but he had
found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in
approaching him had stalked with his black
shadow before him, and enveloped the victim.
And it was the mournful in uence of the
unperceived shadow that caused him to feel —
although he neither saw nor heard — to feel
the presence of my head within the room.

Night after night he heard noises coming from the walls.

• A groan is a sound you make when you’re su ering. Here it’s a groan of terror. 
• Awe usually is a sensation you feel towards a divinity, someone you consider superior.
He laughs to himself (chuckles) because he knows how terri ed the old man is, as every
night he perceives his presence. The man is terri ed by the noises he hears from the
walls. The man tries to rationalise the sounds he hears to reassure himself. He tells
himself these sounds are coming from a mouse or a cricket near the walls so there’s
nothing to be afraid of.

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 All this terror, the fear the man fears is all based on the perception or the anticipation of a
mortal presence, he was terri ed by this vague feeling, he had no evidence someone was
with him in his room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently,
without hearing him lie down, I resolved to
open a little — a very, very little crevice in the
lantern. So I opened it — you cannot imagine
how stealthily, stealthily — until, at length
a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider,
• Stealthily means very slowly and quietly
and at lengthy means after a while. It’s a
very detailed description of what has
been going on.
• Dim is the opposite of bright and shiny. 
• Ray from the lantern fell upon the eye. 

shot from out the crevice and fell upon the

vulture eye.

It was open — wide, wide open — and I grew
furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect
distinctness — all a dull blue, with a hideous
veil over it that chilled the very marrow in
my bones; but I could see nothing else of the
old man’s face or person: for I had directed the
ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned
spot.
After one week of nding the man asleep,
he sees the eye and loses his control.
• Marrow is the substance that the spine
contains. It’s the substance associated
with DNA, genetic material. 
• Hideous means horrible, there was a
horrible veil ( lm) over his light blue eye
(dull colour, not very bright).

There’s a superstition regarding the Evil

Eye, he associates it with the vulture eye
of the man.

And now have I not told you that what you
mistake for madness is but over acuteness of
the senses? — now, I say, there came to my ears
a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes
when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound
well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s
• Enveloped means surrounded by
cotton. 
His enhanced, acute hearing perceive the
heart beating of the old man, but
obviously it’s all happening in his head,
he’s just hallucinating.  

heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a

drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how
steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It
grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been
extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! — do you mark me well? I have told you that I
am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old
house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I
refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And
now a new anxiety seized me — the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had
come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once —
once only. In an instant I dragged him to the oor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled
gaily, to nd the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muf ed sound.
This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old
man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed
my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone
dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

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 • Tattoo is the sound of the heart in this case. 
The deed (action) is done. There’s an analogy with Macbeth, Macbeth also says the deed
is done when he nally kills king Duncan in order to become the new king. 
The caretaker chokes the old man, but he’s afraid that the beating of the fast of the man,
as it was becoming louder and louder in his head, could’ve been heard by the neighbour,
but in reality he just lost grip on reality. He only hears and sees what is only inside his
head. 
• A mu e is a very low sound. 
He says that the mu ed sound didn’t bother him (it didn’t vex him).

If still you think me mad, you will think so no • Hastily means quickly.

longer when I describe the wise precautions I
took for the concealment of the body. The
night waned, and I worked hastily, but in
silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I
cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the ooring of
the chamber, and deposited all between the
scantlings. I then replaced the boards so
cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye —
not even his — could have detected any thing
wrong. There was nothing to wash out — no
stain of any kind — no blood-spot whatever. I
had been too wary for that. A tub had caught
all — ha! Ha!
He wants to hide (conceal) the body. It
was night, but day was coming. He cut
the body in pieces.  He hid the body
underneath the wooden boards of the
oors, he removed three planks and left
the dismembered corpse between the
scantlings, the space underneath the
wooden boards.
He is referring to the old man as if he were
alive, not even his eye could see what was
lying underneath the boards if he had
b e e n a l i v e a n d t h e c a re t a k e r h i s
someone’s corpse there, under his eyes. 
• The tub in the bathroom caught all the
blood while he was cutting the body,
that’s why he managed to hide the
blood perfectly, not a drop can be seen.

His crime was unnoticeable, it’s a bit

unrealistic. 

When I had made an end of these labors, it
was four o ‘clock — still dark as midnight. As
the bell sounded the hour, there came a
knocking at the street door. I went down to
open it with a light heart, — for what had I
now to fear? There entered three men, who
introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as
of cers of the police. A shriek had been
heard by a neighbour during the night;
suspicion of foul play had been aroused;
information had been lodged at the police
of ce, and they (the of cers) had been deputed
to search the premises.
There are some similarities with Macbeth’s
murder of king Duncan.
The lines concerning the reporting are still
presented in the form of a dialogue, in the
form of direct speech. It should be in
commas but it’s presented as if it was
reported speech, as it is an interior
monologue. 
• Foul play is crime. 
The neighbour had heard a shriek (high-
pitched scream) and had called the
police. 


I smiled, — for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own
in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the
house. I bade them search — search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his
treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my con dence, I brought chairs into the room,

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 and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect
triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

There’s no introductory verb, he reports with direct speech. There’s no reportive verb. I
said should be placed before the commas. 
He really becomes overcon dent, he shows the police around the house without fear, he
even shows them the room where the man was buried. 

The of cers were satis ed. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and
while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and
wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still
chatted. The ringing became more distinct: — it continued and became more distinct: I talked more
freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained de nitiveness — until, at length, I found
that the noise was not within my ears.

At rst he thinks he was hearing a noise coming from his own ear, but then he becomes
convinced that the noise came from somewhere else.

No doubt I now grew very pale; — but I talked more uently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the
sound increased — and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound — much such a sound as a watch
makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath — and yet the of cers heard it not. I talked more
quickly — more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about tri es, in a
high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be
gone? I paced the oor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the
men — but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore! I
swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose
over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted
pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! — no, no! They heard! —
they suspected! — they knew! — they were making a mockery of my horror! — this I thought, and
this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this
derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! — and
now — again! — hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! —
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here!
— it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

The italics wants to underline the same expressions from before regarding the man’s
heart, they suggest that the noise he’s hearing is coming from the old man’s heart. 
• Tri es are unimportant things.
He starts speaking in a very loud voice in order to cover the noise he hears. 
He reveals his crime, which could’ve been a perfect crime. The reason why he reveals it is
his own illness. He thought the police knew what he had done and was making fun of
him. He feels like they are ridiculing him by ignoring the beating of the man’s heart. 
The caretaker removes the planks and reveals the disassembled body.

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 e oval portrait
THE OVAL PORTRAIT | 1842
It’s similar to The Tell-Tale Heart. We are directly plunged into the upper lines. 
A chateau is a castle. All the gothic books are mainly settled in Spain or in South Italy in
mediaeval times and places, because it was what the gothic writers appreciated. This
aspect is also romantic, we nd these elements in Edgar Allan Poe.
The castle is also a secluded and isolated building, also decaying and abandoned. 
It’s an inhabited place.

The protagonist is a wounded writer who nds refuge in a chateau and reads the history
of the portrait of a young woman.

Geographically speaking the castle is in the Appennins. The protagonist sees a lot of
paintings hanging on the wall.  

ANALYSIS
THE CHATEAU into which my valet [a very re ned word to say servant] had ventured to
make forcible entrance [it was an abandoned castle, they had to break in], rather than
permit me, in my desperately wounded condition [the protagonist isn’t completely healthy.
We don’t why the man is injured yet, we’ll learn later that he’s taking some medication.
The servant doesn’t allow him to pass the night outside, so they break into the castle], to
pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles [loads] of commingled [mingled means
mixed, combined. Commingled is the combination of combined and mingled] gloom
[darkness] and grandeur [richness] which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not
less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe [Mrs. Radcli is a gothic writer, she also
described this place in her books]. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very
lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously [it’s
another reference to this rich, grandeur place, even though it is a bit shabby as it has been
abandoned. The castle is richly furnished.] furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret
[tower] of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered [partly ruined, in bad
conditions] and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry [before they started to paint, they
used large tapestries to show battle scenes] and bedecked [covered] with manifold and
multiform armorial trophies [aromours, helmets], together with an unusually great number
of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque [decorated in the
arabian fashion, it suggests rich decorations in the frames of the paintings].
In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in
very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary- in these
paintings my incipient delirium [he confesses that he is unwell, we don’t know if it's a he
or a she though. He isn’t both physically nor mentally well, probably as a consequence of
the medication he’s taking. His judgement becomes blurry, he’s not feeling well. Strong
painkillers usually tend to make you feel sleepy or dizzy], perhaps, had caused me to take
deep interest; so that I bade [asked] Pedro to close the heavy shutters [at the windows, heavy
ones] of the room- since it was already night- to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum
which stood by the head of my bed- and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of
black velvet [textile material, really soft to the touch but also heavy] which enveloped the bed
itself [there’s a very elaborated description of this room, it’s the old kind of bed, a poster
bed was surrounded by four posts at each angle and a curtain]. I wished all this done that I
might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these
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pictures, and the perusal [the reading, the analysis] of a small volume which had been found
upon the pillow [he found an art book that explained all the paintings in the room], and
which purported [obsolete verb from purpose, it means aimed] to criticise [as in comments
on the art, it was an art book that described the paintings hanging on the walls] and
describe them.
Long- long I read- and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours ew by
and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me [he didn’t like
how the candelabrum was projecting its light onto the painting, so he decided to move it
by himself in order not to wake up his servant as he was sleeping], and outreaching my
hand with dif culty, rather than disturb my slumbering [sleeping] valet, I placed it so as to
throw its rays more fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated [his action of moving the light,
he noticed something he did not expect]. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were
many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto [archaic for so far, up to this
moment] been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts [the four wooden posts at
each side of the bed, there was a shade projected by one of them, in the shadow there
was a picture he didn’t notice before]. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed
before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening [like fruits, maturing] into
womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this
was not at rst apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I
ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them [he really brootes, re ects on every
single tiny movement he carries out while his eyes close out]. It was an impulsive
movement to gain time for thought- to make sure that my vision had not deceived me- to
calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I
again looked xedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the rst ashing of the candles
upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my
senses, and to startle me at once into waking life [this stupor is cause by dizziness].
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders,
done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads
of Sully [painter probably]. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair
melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the
whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded [golden, decorated with gold] and ligreed in
Moresque [there’s this tendency towards spanish and arabic art]. As a thing of art nothing
could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the
execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance [the appearance of the
girl], which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been
that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living
person [when he woke up he was a bit confused, but the painting was so good that he
mistook it for a real person]. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the
vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea- must have prevented
even its momentary entertainment.
Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half
reclining, with my vision riveted [ xed] upon the portrait. At length, satis ed with the true
secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an
absolute life-likeliness [realism, it seemed to be almost alive in the expression] of
expression, which, at rst startling, nally confounded, subdued [captivated], and appalled

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 [scared] me. With deep and reverent awe [admiration, respect in front of this work of art] I
replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus
shut from view, I sought [simple past of seek] eagerly [anxiously] the volume which discussed
the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I
there read the vague and quaint [strange] words which follow: “She was a maiden of rarest
beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and
wedded the painter [it was not a moment of luck]. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having
already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all
light and smiles, and frolicsome [happy, cheerful] as the young fawn [a young deer, it’s metaphor
or a comparison with this young animal]; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art
which was her rival; dreading only the pallet [series of colours used to paint] and brushes [other
objects used on the canvas to paint] and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the
countenance of her lover [it’s mentioned she was wedded to the painter, so the subject
portrayed was his wife, she was his model. He was already married in his art, this is the
reason why she dies. She is doomed to die. He was obsessed with his work and he forgot
about his woman, his wife. She just accepted to sit as a model because she loved him].
It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray [in
modern English it’s spelled portray] even his young bride [it’s unusual that it was a terrible
thing to see that the husband wanted to portray his wife, she should be pleased]. But she
was humble and obedient, and sat meekly [very patiently she waited for many weeks posing
in the turret] for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon
the pale canvas only from overhead [the canvas where he was painting her was lit overhead
over the turret, it was a source of life]. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which
went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild, and
moody man, who became lost in reveries [his thoughts, he daydreamt a lot, what you think
just before going to sleep, when you’re neither asleep and unconscious nor completely
awake, you are lost in your world]; so that he would not see that the light which fell so
ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined [she
started to fade like a ower, she became thinner and thinner as she didn’t receive any food
or drink. Everybody noticed this except him, he was concentrated in his painting only lost
in his own thoughts] visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly,
because she saw that the painter (who had high renown [who was very famous]) took a
fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought [archaic for worked] day and night to
depict [portray] her who so loved him [but he loved only his art], yet who grew daily more
dispirited and weak [she was su ering, but she kept smiling and sitting there in front of her
husband because she loved him. She saw that by posing she pleased him, and she
wanted to please him, so she dind’t complaint]. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait
spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel [the wonder in this portrait
was its resemblance, its similarity to its model, to the painter’s woman. The protagonist
already pointed out the alive-like and realistic characteristics of the painting from the very
beginning], and a proof not less of the power [skills] of the painter than of his deep love for
her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length [after a while, when the painting
was almost done], as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into
the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes
from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife [no one was admitted in the
turret, the painter had become sort of wild, invoked in the passion for his work. He just
xed his canvas and did not even look at the appearance of his wife]. And he would not
see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who
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 sate [archaic for sat] beside him [he didn’t notice that the colours he was putting on
painting the cheeks on the canvas, were almost literally subtracted from her face, she was
becoming paler and paler while he was painting a woman with very pink cheeks. The
painter was like really stealing the colour from the real woman, as she became paler and
paler]. And when many weeks bad passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush
upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again ickered up as the
ame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was
placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had
wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast,
and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself !’ turned suddenly to regard his
beloved:- She was dead! - -

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