Wuolah Free POEMS AND POETS

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LoveOfLess
Literatura Norteamericana Ii
3º Grado en Estudios Ingleses
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Granada
Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
PURITANISM
Michael Wigglesworth (1631- 1705)
● The Day of Doom

o Nursery rhyme: used in traditional poems and songs
o Apocalyptic description
o 18 stanzas (selected)
o Source of inspiration: Bible
o In every stanza, he refers to a chapter in the Bible.
o Before final judgment
o Sinners: sleeping without showing any repentance.
o Christians
o 1st
▪ Kind of sin depicted
▪ Carnal sin
o 2 , 3rd, 4th, 5th.
nd
▪ They are sinners, but they don’t feel remorse, so it causes the
destruction of the world.
▪ God’s threatening
▪ Battle of fire: hell
▪ You should be confident that you’re going to be OK! You should
improve your behavior as Christian
▪ Dramatic situation: all this happens in the middle of the night
o 6th, 7th.
▪ Tempest, signs of weakness, they are sleeping: metaphorically because
they feel secure and don’t worry about their Christianity.
▪ PP trying to escape of death: in the moment they see danger, they regret
everything.
th
o 8
▪ Another metaphorical image: the son of God.
▪ Contrast between revengeful God and a Sweet God.
th
o 9
▪ Depiction of death in association with hell: punishment.
o 11th
▪ Not the typical depiction of punishment and salvation, but apocalyptic
tone: punishment for sinners.
o 12th
▪ Mighty God: powerful, revenge will find all sinners.
th
o 13
▪ It is surprising that this is a poem so popular, taking into account that
the depiction of God and my rage anger. (metaphor)
▪ ´flaming eyes`: God himself is the image of Hell -> fire associated with
hell
o 14 , 15th , 16th
th
▪ Description of the process of destruction very well explained: tempest

is describing night.
a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-1648762
▪ Pragmatographia (rhetorical device which consists in the description of
objects and actions): + description of action
o 17th
▪ Death
th
o 18
▪ Reference to fire (constant reference to fire).
▪ Possibility of a word ending in fire: clear connection with hell, in the
context of sun.
▪ God presented as revengeful vs. sweet, mild, merciful God.
Anne Bradstreet (1612? - 1672)
● Wife of a minister
● Very religious lady reflected on her composition
● Also, other rinds of poems
● She came to America in 1630 of settlers to Massachusetts Bay.
● One of the first people to arrive in the Colony.
● In 1650, there appeared in London a book, with the title The Tenth Lately sprung in
America (her first volume of poetry).
● America: colony: depending on England: publishing of the book in England.
● Devote wife and mother
● She is the first serious poet of Colonial Americanism
● Respectable poet
● Religious and devotional verse
● Her private life was essentially conventional
● She came to America at the age of around 18
● She married at 17 and emigrated to America
● She lived in the colony until her death
● Mother of 8 children. In her spare time, she wrote.
● Life in a very conventional Puritan way.
● Customary poems.
o The Four Humours
▪ Melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine.
▪ Elements, seasons…
▪ Physiology: circulation of blood
▪ Very short extract
▪ 1st tercet: circulation of blood (different topics from traditional)
▪ It was surprising especially when the only topics at the time were
devotional writings.
▪ Maybe, she is metaphorically making allusion to God (Í am the
fountain...`) physiology.
▪ She is really interested in the body works.
▪ She also wrote some elegies
▪ Domestic poems: interesting became of the use of rhetorical devices
o Before the Birth of one of her Children
▪ Domestic poem: more personal, intimate and domestic poetry, not
religious writing.
▪ She expresses a wish if she dies
▪ Dominating field: love for her husband and children
▪ The poem is entirely for the growth of one of her children
▪ It is also a poem dominated by fear
▪ She has two fears: logical fear of dying and what happens afterwards,
especially to her children. How the new protect them from her fear:
pessimistic tone. Sad hopeless tone.
▪ When you die, everybody’s going to forget you, the tie of marriage will
disappear
▪ She doesn’t want her husband to get another wife way.
▪ Premonition: farewell poem
▪ Tone of elegy
▪ ´Knots untied`: marriage
▪ Urge him to forget the faults she may have
▪ (She asks him to forget and forgive her faculty, but doesn’t say it
directly).
▪ Óbvious grave`.
▪ We attribute an adjective which have human features (obvious) to a
thing.
▪ Metaphor and personification: hypallage: an attribute of an animate
thing
▪ Not the grave, but the person who contemplates the grave becomes
oblivious.
▪ E.g. Ignorant snow: angry dirt. So, it is a kind of metaphor.
▪ How soon/ how soon: anaphora
▪ Very personal tone
o To My Dear and loving Husband
▪ Typical love poem
▪ The whole poem is based upon superstition íf ever` (anaphora) :
proleptic clue
▪ Love seen as a supreme power
▪ Similes: her love for him compared to Mines of old, riches of East.
▪ For the idea of religious poetry
▪ References to Europe, God and religion: imagery
o A letter to her husband, absent upon public employment
▪ Public employee, so be away from home for long periods of time
(business trip)
▪ Last line, my love is so intense that it will live after death
▪ She missed him. A letter in the form of a poem
▪ Anaphora and parallelism
▪ This is again a love poem
▪ The imagery here is from the world of sciences in the previous one was
different
▪ More council, more personal and exotic poem: links between you and I
not only by marrying, but also by physical love
▪ How does she achieve this effect?
▪ Lack of looking particles : asyndeton
▪ Enumeration: ‘head`, éyes`, ´life`
▪ Conventional way to do an enumeration is by order of importance
(higher to lower): hypronyms
▪ Progression change ´my joy` (as if the more important thing were ´my
joy`: contrast to religion)
▪ Physical, erotic, missing her husband in a physical way
▪ Simile: compares she and the earth
▪ She was really interested in the world of science
▪ Discovery sun as centre of the universe
▪ Metaphor: she mourns in winter because her sun is away from her
▪ The Earth is cold became there's no sun
▪ Than view those fruits… contemplation of her children
▪ Strange of effect ´mentality at the time`: physical love: product:
children
▪ ´growing breast`: erotic sense
▪ Analogy on simile: the way, the world works ( sun and earth)
▪ Compared to the relation with her husband
▪ Comparison: relationship husband –wife/ summer- Earth
▪ Something similar to which helpful in the other poem
o Verses upon the burning of our house
▪ Copied out of a loose paper 1678
▪ Line 1: calm atmosphere
▪ Destroyer: fire : personification
▪ Same techniques: disaster
▪ Analogy ´The Day of Doom`: simple destruction of the house vs. God
sending it
▪ The dreadful voice is a physical voice here
▪ Dust: the Earth reduced to dust
▪ Poem: an account of the destruction of the house by fire: religious
images, analogy of the end of the world
▪ Liberation of the body: Christian ideals: ´give me strength to overcome
that asking not for the prevention of destruction by but for strength
▪ Dust: religious connotation
▪ We’ll be reduced to dust when we die in the same way that the house
▪ Christian attitude resignation
▪ Verbs in past tense vs. verbs in future
▪ Very strong influence of sir Philip Sidney and the French Su Baztas
▪ Puritan poetry: see the material world and things as temporary nor
permanent
▪ Description of how the house is now vs. real house (house of God,
permanent and eternal home)
▪ ´there’s wealth enough, I need normal`
▪ House as a sign of home/ family/ father: religious connotations
▪ Material possessions vs. religious possessions
▪ Real domestic event: make her nearer to God
▪ She is not reproaching God but resignation
▪ Not complex metaphor
▪ Couplets: typical nursery rhyme so popular at the moment
Edward Taylor
● the other best poet of colonial America

● the only book of poetry found in his library after his death was a copy of The tenth
muse
● the subject matter of his verse is almost exclusively devotional
● elaborate techniques and artificial language that contrast with the plain style of his
contemporary poets in the English colonies of America (cf. Anne Bradstreet)
● None of Taylor’s poems were published during his life
● Nothing was known about them till 1937. (Yale- Extra Estiler) A manuscript was
discovered
● He was born in England, in Leicestershire. He came to New England and studied in
Harvard. Where he became a minister of the congregation of Church
● He’d 14 children: married twice
● It was really a huge manuscript. He was the last representative of the metaphysical poets
(influenced by the school created by John Donne)
● Taylor wrote three kinds of poems: a long apocalyptic poem entitled ( God’s
determinations touching his elect), miscellaneous poems ( short compositions) and two
series of Preparatory meditations (didactic, devotional poems giving advice)
● In all of them, God appears as implicitly or explicitly as the minister of
● everything (supreme figure of the creation)
o Upon the Sweeping Flood
▪ Short extract
▪ Puritan aesthetic: God is everything
▪ This poem: evidence of the existence of God
▪ Intimate relation with his theology
▪ This is part of a long apocalyptic poem
▪ Images you don’t speak in a Puritan poem: rather than rain: excrements
▪ Punishment: the result of a punishment sent by God
▪ Process: recurrent images in P. poetry
▪ References to Flood: again tragedy. Tragedy God is sending us a
punishment
▪ Sin: carnal sin as in The Day of Doom, recurrent in Puritan poetry
▪ Flame: metaphor of the destruction God's anger
▪ Threat that God is going to be angry because of sinners
▪ Apocalyptic view again
▪ Why is this punishment taking place?
▪ Procedure: sinners should have shown repertoire for this punishment
not to happen
▪ Analogy: tear- water -> metaphor
▪ Í’d a tear to quentch that flame! `
▪ Tears show repentance. Now, it is late pride has perverted you from
crying and regret
▪ If you’d shown repentance, you would have put down the flames
▪ Óur cheeks were dry and eyes refuse to weep`.
▪ Instead of us, sinners who should be ingoing, it is heaven which is
crying: parallel analogies
▪ Why do they cry!
▪ Dark cheek: the skies are cloudy (raining): dark.
▪ The skies are sick and vomit because affair guilt
▪ (now we’ve to suffer the consequences)
▪ Analogy physical tears vs. tears from the skies
▪ Diction: elaborate
▪ Analogy built upon other analogy
▪ Not so direct
▪ (unlike Bradstreet)
o Upon a spider catching a Fly
▪ One of the miscellaneous poems
▪ God appears in his three kinds of poems as the supreme actor
▪ Much more complicated than Bradstreet: archaisms
▪ Rhyme in the middle: internal rhyme
▪ This doctrine is Puritan but his attitude toward language is not so: it is
transcendental
▪ Imagery: spider- evil / fly- victim (dies) / wasp- saves itself
▪ Hell spider: it is Satan, the devil, evil
▪ Devil: temptation, tuck people.
▪ Analogy: snake and spider, both are represented by Satan
▪ Temptation: not to eat the apple from the tree
▪ Devil: if you eat the apple, you’ll be as powerful as God
▪ Snake: venomous animal: poison
▪ The speaker starts addressing the spider
▪ Purpose: catch a fly
▪ Fly: ´silly fly`, silly Christian, a Christian who isn’t confident, not so
sure about, evil
▪ Cords
▪ All is clue to sin
▪ 2 last stanzas: we have to overcome obstacles in life as temptation
▪ (the wasp didn’t sin, but probably most are going to sin)
▪ Wase: strong Christian
▪ Nightingale: a bird associated with happiness
▪ It is an image of heaven, salvation achieved after overcoming that
▪ But, ćage`: idea of imprisonment: idea that you’re not the owner of
your life.
▪ This final image is again pernicious
▪ ´The grace to the cord`: link between us and God
▪ There’s always an union
o From the prologue to preparatory meditations, first series
▪ This poem is very typically Taylor’s
▪ Use of metaphors
▪ It is interesting that many critics have commented upon bigotry is sin,
and it has not really been commented
▪ Use of precious stones
▪ Purpose of the poem: praise God
▪ This poem is about a crumb of dust
▪ Dust is something insignificant vs. all the jewels he talks about
▪ Speaker is the crumb of dust
▪ Crumb of dust vs. the Earth
▪ A crumb of dust is nothing compared to the Earth
▪ Alliteration stanza 1: Of
▪ Synecdoque: part for the whole: hand and per (writer)
▪ The pen is going to be sharpened in previous stones, but this pen is
doing ´blur and blur`, ´jar and jar`
▪ Ever though you have a wonderful pen, it is nothing unless God moulds
it and the scrivener
▪ God: superior maker of everything
▪ Stanza 3: he identifies himself with the ćrumb`.
▪ ´thy praise`: purpose: praise God
▪ Writing about him, compares to him, he’s nothing
▪ Religion and dictation mission in life
▪ Write about him to prove the existence of God
▪ It is God who makes me and allows me to write
▪ Everybody can then see that God exists: ´he's asking for inspiration in
order to be able to fulfill his task
▪ Í am your crumb`: make whatever you want with me because I am
yours (an instrument at the hands of God: supreme, who controls, rules,
everything; so, devotional, didactic and asks.
▪ He is going to express how God like for people know he is the best
▪ Devotional writing purpose
POETRY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC
● The best thing is the Republic.

● Try to convince people of the wonders of the Republic.
● More political kind of poetry vs. religious or Puritan.
● A very repetitive poetry, full of images which are simply did active, not evocative a
suggestive.
● A poetry which is imitative
● Quotation by Bryant
● Accusation
● This is poetry? Let’s make it poetry
● Not freedom: this kind of poetry doesn’t allow freedom to the poet
● The imagination: no imagination, just didactic images with no other meaning
● Tinkle: rhyming couplets, heroic couplets: it stands like poetry
● Fit tars: something which doesn’t allow you any freedom
● He is denying all possibility of freedom in this verse
● Regularity: repetition of the same pattern boring not evocative
● The aversion that Bryant showed towards the poets of the Early Republic is shared by
later poets
● The poems of the era have kept no place in our living literary culture
● Just a few pieces are still anthologized
● We can consider Taylor’s verse more separated from British influence and ready to
establish the take off of genuine America Poetry that the Poetry of the revolutionary era.
● The Poetry of the revolutionary era
● Really influenced by British literature and political idea of the Revolution and Republic.
● Relevant poets (all of them except Trumbull were layers devoted the exercise of law):
Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, David Humphreys, and Philip Keneall.
● They are going to write didactic poetry.
● Aim: not innovative: use the old verse from diction in order to convince people of the
new philosophical thoughts and situation of the country.
● Poetry of imitation.
● Convince people that the revolution was the right thing.
● Philip Keneall was to place his pen in the service of the Revolution, rather than to adapt
politics to the service of poetry.
● All the longer poems of Dwight, Barlow, and Humphrey are secular sermons.
● A poet was not going to recreate the world through his which imagination: he was to
describe on evoke it through diction of generic categories.
● The poet didn’t recreate the world through his imagination: as we could just describe on
evoke it through diction of genera categories.
● Initially believe.
● There is no place for imagination: simply describe the real world: Early Republic Poets.
Joel Barlow:
● The Puritan faith that had shaped the poetry of the first hundred years was destroyed.
● But it might at least equal justice be said that Puritanism had committed suicide. The
very rigor of its self- defense exposes its inner contradictions
● Barlow writes no time in ´The Columbiad` attacking Puritanism. He simply ignores it as
irrelevant. Assuming the natural goodness as the Puritans had assumed his natural
depravity, he placed his hope in Reason, science, and free institutions.
● Reason and freedom are going to be his tools.
o Several stanzas from ´The Columbiad`
▪ This poem can be seen us an inversion of Puritanism
▪ Men have power, they can control then own fate
▪ Language he uses: a language similar to Puritanism but inverting it or
subverting it.
▪ You respect what you can control: whatever can be perceived through
your senses. (You can’t control religion because it can’t be understood).
He bows to every force he can control
▪ Aim: teach the importance of the Republic.
▪ Religious vocabulary but subvert it
▪ Idea of Enlightenment / new Age of Reason ´second birth`. (L1)
▪ By creating a better reality which refers to the Age of Reason, he
discards Puritanism without criticizing it directly
▪ Second birth: idea of beginning a new life: age of reason: religious
allusion but referring to the Age of Reason, not to faith. It is implied
that Reason is better than religion.
▪ Sense of liberty: whose holy fire…
▪ Light: knowledge
▪ Shader: darkness/ ignorance -> he purges from the get rid of.
▪ Hence rose his ( gods (without capital letter), that mystic monstrous
love (negative adj)
▪ Monstrous love refers to that love from the past. All the things that
framed our mind without noticing it. -> Puritan love
▪ Even though we don’t believe in them (myth), they frame our mind.
▪ You have to believe in that although you don’t have evidence ´blind
`credulity in all dark things (not he credulity but you) : hypallage
▪ Dark things: lack of knowledge, negative connotations. -> Obscurity,
the opposite of knowledge is implied by darkness.
▪ Oppression of the past Puritanism
▪ Reference to that time where there was credulity and faith instead of
reason.
▪ Reason vs. religion.
▪ Analogy: growth and implementation of the Republic as a reality with
the stages of development of the human being.
▪ From infant to manhood and then, maturity
▪ It is going to by reason, by not bellowing things without empirical
evidence.
▪ Soaring with science.
▪ Through science power will be achieved
▪ Reason is used here in a scientific way
▪ Paths unhold… -> we have to discover our country by using God
▪ ´God`: not the Puritan God
Phillis Wheatley (1753- 1784)
● She doesn’t have to do with the poets of the daily Republic

● IDEA: MAN IS FREE
● In this second reality, we are not sinners, no original sin has occur .> so no reduplication
or whatever
● Poetry examples where poetry has a public function /public persuasion
● Revolution: political responsibility of poetry: didactic poetry
● She is a love poet
● One of the slaves brought to America when she was 7. ´Poems in various subjects,
religious and moral`.
● Date and place of birth are not really documented scholars believe that she was born in
1753 in Senegal.
● She was brought to British ruled Boston, Massachusetts on July 11, 1761
● She didn’t have a name, she was given the name of the ship in which she was brought
● A wealthy family, the Wheatleys, bought her as a servant (husband present to his wife).
● She was named Phyllis, after the ship
● The publication of Wheatley’s poem on various subjects, religious and moral (1773)
brought her fame, both in England, and the colonies.
● George Washington praised her work
● She really mastered the convention in poetry at all time (her verse really imitative) ->
she was very intelligent.
o On Being Brought from Africa to America
▪ Ignorance vs. knowledge / Africa vs. America
▪ She gets that knowledge from religion in contrast to poets of the Early
Republic
▪ A very unexpected poem for readers: a poem writes by a slave who
feels gratitude for having being slaved
▪ ´pagan land` vs. Ćhristian religion`
▪ ´mercy`: interesting (because slaves are forced to go, violent process),
but she regards it as something positive (not reference to something
violent) because it brought her to Christianity
▪ ´benighted soul`: not her mind is ignorant but her soul (religion)
▪ ´Benighted`: overtaken by night or darkness being in a state of moral or
intellectual darkness (ignorance)
▪ Parallel situation: why was she ignorant?
▪ There’s not Christian religion in her country
▪ Parallel situation between skin colors and ignorance (darkness)
▪ Skin colored as ignorant of Christianity
▪ Several references to her skin color
▪ She is grateful for being no more ignorant
▪ It means blank, but with positive connotations.
▪ Sable refers to an animal which was a beautiful color (dark brown or
black)
▪ She applies positive connotations to the black race have. But, a contrast
▪ ´diabolic die`: negative connotations -> two last lines
▪ Question of equality on kind of quality
▪ Ambiguous: she can be addressing them or including they which have
been refined.
▪ Simile: black as Cain (the epidemic of evil)
▪ ´refined`: here conversion to Christian faith
▪ It was ´mercy`: she doesn’t refer to people but as God acting directly
▪ Public function persuasion: Republic of Puritan poetry: although diff
issues, same ´persuading people of the wonders of the Republic/ to
accept the new ideology of the Republic vs. trying to convince people
to be good Christians and follow the Puritan doctrine
▪ Revolution as the right things vs. Puritanism as the right things.
ROMANTIC ESCAPISM (TRANSCENDENTALIST PHILOSOPHY)
● Romanticism focused on simple natural beauties

● Romantics saw God in this contemplation (God is in nature)
● Look for the simplicity of things vs. mechanization of industrial society of the empirical
way of knowledge
● Romantic writing looked for exotic setting from the past
● They believed in contemplating in becoming one with the natural world, we’re part of
nature
● Longing for the past that we’re missing, knowledge is accused by looking at nature
● Main authors: A.E.Poe, R. W Emerson (one of the most important representative), H.D
Thoreau, W. Whitman
● Particularities of Dark Romanticism (often conflicted with Gothicism or called
American Romanticism)
● It is a literary subgenre. It is been suggested that Dark Romanticism presents individuals
as prone to sin and self- destruction, not as inherently possessing divinity and wisdom.
● For them, the natural world is dark, decaying and mysterious when it does reveal truth
to man, and revelations are hellish and negative.
Transcendentalism vs. positivism
● Positivists: only accepts as the time that which can be apprehended by the senses (only
rely on empirical sources of knowledge)
● Transcendentalists: the empirical (external) appearance of things is not reliable since the
withal properties of natural objects are only the extended sign these use as a wrapping to
conceal them spiritual essence.
● Moreover, the material properties are not reliable.
● TRANSCENDENTALISM: a response to the previous movement. Enlightenment
● A reaction to the continuous development of sciences in the 19th century.
● Transcendentalists: platonic view about absolute truth
● They thought that if it not through senses, a man cannot get to the core of ways (real
truth)
● They react against the too formal objective view order
● One among other manifestations which are going to take peace along the 19th
● Line between transcendentalism and non- transcendentalist is difficult
● The geographical area is mainly Boston
● Strong religious background linked to Puritanism, educated people.
● Emerson: he brought Puritan grounds to the Romantic Europe
● Most seminal force of the movement: Emerson
● In his essays the lies the foundations for the establishment of the movement
● Thoreau: presents another figure in the movement
● American transcendentalism: intellectual descendent of Puritanism, very clearly
organized movement.
● Transcendentalism: social, philosophical, literary… movement
● Literary transcendentalism: more important by its ideology than the real achievements
● More easily seen in poetry than in fiction
● Differences between British and American
● Transcendentalism links against objective evidence
● Transcendentalism goes beyond material thing which are undergone to change and
decay. The essence is inside
● Matter vs. Essence (hidden/ wrapped by the matter- we shouldn’t rely on it because it is
corruptible)
● Positivism: this means truth
o we can only admit as truthful and scientific that which we perceive through our
senses
o religion methodology and metaphysics in any of its possible forms, i.e. every
form of knowledge based upon non- empirical assumptions is false and must be
reflected
o the world is simply a collection of phenomena
● Transcendentalism:
o The world is not a collection of diff phenomena/ as positivists maintain, but a
vast symbol of spiritual or divine message
● For positivism: the only valid method of knowledge must necessarily strong form the
empirical info we can get from the (p.19)
● For positivism: criteria of knowledge, feelings, passions
● For transcendentalism: objective criteria
● Positivist: material reality: e.g. When you go to a dictionary and look up a word
(definition)
● There is no place for feelings or emotions
● Transcendentalist: association with life
● Growth, fertility, organized system, knowledge, family, stability -> evocative material
reality, unwrap objective interpretations and look for the essence
WALT WHITMAN
● I saw in Louisiana a live oak tree growing

o A vision of an oak- tree growing and growing in Louisiana
o Oak: connotations of one strength
o Adjectives associated with people: strength, rude, unbending, lusty, alone (it
remains him of himself), uttering joyous mass of dark green, glistening
o This specific tree would be a sign of loneliness
o Alone: why is the poet identifying himself with the tree? Because he is
physically alone?
o ´there`: maybe he is separated from his friends by physical distance
o He makes us think of mainly love: masculine imagery oak tree: idea of fertility
associated with the oak
o Companions / love -> mainly love
o A tree with around makes him think of mainly love
o He talks atoker to remind him of mainly love
o Take something from its material environment and take it out it
o So, homosexuality he doesn’t fit society. That’s why he feel alone
o Moreover, an oak tree doesn’t give fruits (unlike an orange tree, for example),
so it fits better his reality
o He admits that he cannot be alone
o Emerson nature as a symbol of spirit for him
o River: a symbol of life and death is related to lake
o Seeds of a plant
o The seeds of a plant is the symbol of the human corpse (give protection to that
plant which is going to develop)
o The tree for a transcendentalist is a symbol of man in Earth: stability, family,
growth
o Distinguish Br and Am Transcendentalism
o Thomas Conlyle. From on Heroes, Hero. Worship and the Heroic in history
o Going back to nature and divinity
o Different terminology but basically the same Carlyle from Sartor Resartus
● The prairie- grass dividing
o Image of the prairie- grass
o Vision ´smelling of the grass`
o I want to go beyond that physical reality
o Prairie: symbolize Am society
o Egalitarian society: the look the same but looking closely, they are not the same
community Am society
o Whitman is the poet of DEMOCRACY
o Natural garden parallel freedom
o Language: ´the greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the
suggestion of an occult relationship between man and the vegetable`
o Ralph Waldo Emerson. From nature
o Positivist: language as a convention (succession of phonemes), language as a
tool for naming things, long contained in dictionaries, grammars…
o Transcendentalists_ ling evocative of spiritual reality, language is an analogical
image of the universe. For theme, language is metaphor
o Whitman wrote an essay titled ´ American Primer`(he talks about his
transcendentalist conception of language)
o Language has been corrupted by men and we have to go back to natural
language
o America doesn’t have language which corresponds to reality because if was
incomplete it from England
Ralph Waldo Emerson
● Indispensable figure in transcendentalism first revealing link between the romantic

spirit of his own day and certain aspects of Puritanism
● Emerson’s effect upon his contemporaries was of course prodigious
● As to Thoreau, his entire career may be described as Emersionarism
● It is father was a clergyman, as many of his ancestor had been
● Reason vs. understanding -> society vs. nature
● He attached the Boston Latin School
● Went to Harvard University and the Harvard School of Divinity
● He was licensed as a minister in 1826 and ordained to the Unitarian church in 1829
● He married Ellen Turker in 1829. She died of tuberculosis in 1831: crisis of faith:
because of the death of his 1st wife: resigns from the clergy
● He was obsessed with her
● Contradiction: mental breakdown against meets Thomas Carlyle, Coleridge and
Wordsworth
● 1833 returns home and takes up preaching again: interested in public preaching (begins
to lecture on topics of spiritual experience and ethical living)
● 1834: moves to Concord, Massachusetts
● 1835: marries Lynian Jackson (an active abolitionist)
● Leader of in a circle of writers and thinkers who lived in Concord, including Margaret
ruler.
● In the 1830 he gave lectures that he afterward published in essay form
● Nature (1836) -> embodied his newly developed philosophy
The American scholar (1837)
● American authors to find their own stage instead of imitating the foreign predecessors
● The 1840s were productive years for Emerson: he founded and co- edited the literary
magazine The Dial, and he published the volumes of essays in 1841 and 1844. His 4
children, 2 sons and 2 daughters were born in the 1840s.
● The 1860: he advocated for the abolition of slavery and continued to lecture across the
country
● By the 1870s: the aging Emerson was known as the ´sage of Concord` despite his
failing health, he continued to write, publishing society and solitude in 1870 and a
poetry collection entitled Parnassus in 1874
● Emerson died in April 27. 1882, in Concord. His beliefs and his idealism were strong
influences on the work of his disciple Thoreau and his contemporary Whitman
● His writings are considered major documents of 19th century in American literature,
religion and thought
● Poetry: transcendentalism was about all a remarkable outburst of Romanticism Puritan
background
● Abhorrence of the institution of slavery
● Very active in the question of women’s right
● Í should vote for every franchise for women…`
The poet
● Í think that philosophy is still rude and elementary; it will one day be taught by poets`.
The poet is in the right attitude, he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggles,
having only reasons for believing`: the philosophical empirical
● Poetry is not chaos
● The poet is a visionary. The true poet is representative (poetical responsibility)
● The people fairly they hate poetry, and they are all puts and mystics!
● ´the fact… represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the center. For the world
is not Pain red or adorned
● Beauty essence: he is to large extent the sayer and name
The Rhodora
● Ch1: nature. A man can only be alone in Nature, where in nature, not obstacles between
him and the Divinity
● Part of a perfect whole by being integrated in nature
● The atmosphere is made transparent simple language to express an abstract reality
● We were used to the empirical way of knowledge, so he uses that metaphor from nature
● The poet: he who has the ability to integrate all the parts, drawing the essence of natural
realities
● Core, essence: Vocabulary used frequently
● Poet: the one in charge of transmitting the message
● Link between humanity and divinity
● He is able to decodify the spiritual reality found in these natural realities
● Chapter IV: language
● Language as the material fact wed to refers to the spiritual reality
● What is beauty? Closets word which suggests it?
● ´language is fossil poetry`32
● Language is the essence physical reality of poetry, so concrete poetry is the essence:
abstract. We cannot comprehend through senses, not empirical proof of that
● 8. Poet as scientist
● 9. Poet as maker of language
● Not everybody can be a poet. Poet as a link with God
● Transcendentalism really has a platonic influence: myth of the cavern
● The essence is not the wrapping/ form, the scholars, but a universal truth
● Beauty as truth (mainly)
● Poet: man of beauty, but that beauty is truth and good
● 1. Power: God, capitalization
● He doesn’t offer clear answer, but hits at it
● So, there is an answer
● ´the self- same power`
● 2. Solitudes, damp, sluggish, black…
● In that traditional gloomy and dim atmosphere, the rhodora which is bloomy appears
● Make the contrast more obvious
● órival of the rose`
● Conventionally, rose is associated with love, beauty
● If they are going to enter a competition, the rose is to win
● Rose: epitome of beauty: conventional emblem of beauty
● These two flowers are an emblem of beauty with capital letters (two last lines: we all
part of the whole)
● Integration of everything
● The externalization of beauty by the flower is a symbol of the existence of God.
● Use of natural images: visual meaning
● ćheapers`: allusion to physical appearance
● ´dialogue`: tell me, dear…
● We should not stop at the physical perception of things, transcendentalism goes beyond
it
● Seeing: double meaning ´physical`, but also knowledge by then contemplation of that
little flower, we are aware of the existence of God
● Rhodora: native American flower -> character of a nation
● Is the rose (England) more important than the rhodora (America)?
● He puts them at the same level because the self- same power put them there: idea of
equality is also interesting.
● Can a positivist educate a poet? Rules artificial
● Empirical way of knowledge
● Rules: language of positivism
● Demigod: transcendentalism
● Await: away to contrast with the previous tradition/ reaction against the previous
movement conventional poet vs. real poet/ demigod divine character
● Diviner character of the poet vs. distinction to the conventional poet
● ´poets are the children of music`. Music related to spirit
● Tremulous, impressional feelings
● Scientific knowledge vs. impressions
● Poet as interpret, not by touching things but by feelings and passions
● Spirit- touch: decodification of spiritual reality
● Poet as politician, democrat, representative man ńative`
● Fuse the past: democracy
● Line11 : idea of poet as creator -> senses vs. feelings
● Transcendentalism: Rise of democracy. First part of the 19th C
American Romanticism: TRANSCENDENTALISM AND DARK ROMANTICISM
● Democracy: gradual and complex process

● After the crisis of 1924, democracy was a fact in the US
● Process of democratization: complex, gradual and irreversible. Link to technological
development
● People also are going to be more conscious about the different regions
● People protesting and fighting for then rights
● Question of the position of man in the universe
● Reconsider the relation of man with the universe
● From rationalism to a more spiritual background (recover some of the principles of
Puritanism)
● A more spiritual period again
● Slavery one of the most tremendous our issues in the previous period.
● Now fight against slavery.
● Racism is going to be included on this society for a long time
● Response of poet and philosophers to democratization: REACTION
● Transcendentalism is within the romantic movement
● Background 18th c literature in Am:
● Writing style: formal, rhetorical devices, satire but not evocative
● Non- imaginative poetry: didactic
● Didactic emphasis: poetry at the space of politics: republicanism
● Neoclassicism: Enlightened thinkers: Voltaire and Rousseau
● Reaction against this from the literary and a reaction for the democratization of the
country
● Reaction against rationalism:
● Rationalism: reason, reality, mundane, conservative
● Romanticism: emotion, fantasy, exotic, revolutionary
● Reaction against Romanticism: The romantic journey is to the countryside; the
Romantics associated the country with independence/ moral clarity, and purity; the
Gothic romantics saw the country as a phantasmagoric place; interest in nature
● The transcendentalists saw nature as the ideal place to decodify the divine message
● Nature really has the clue either spiritual or phantasmagoric (gothic)
EDGAR ALLAN POE. (1809-1849)
● His origins were Irish

● Elizabeth (Arnold) and David Poe had three children: Leonard, Edgar and Rosalie.
● Poe is going to be associated with neurosis.
● He born in Boston in 1809.
● He disorganized life for years (her mother was an actress)
● In the beginning of 1811, his father died of tuberculosis.
● At age 16, he was the best student in his class. He liked Literature.
● Failure at university drinking and gambling.
● Fights with Mr. Allan, because he refused to give him money.
● Published his first poetry book in 1827.
● Goes to Europe.
● Goes to West Point in 1830 (Military academy) and is soon expelled.
● Very sensitive, very interrogative personality needed of women´s affection.
● He had never friends.
● After that, he went to New York and wrote a new Edition of his Poems.
● In 1833, he lived in Baltimore.
● Won a short story Contest (“Ms found in a bottle”) (One of the judged, Mr. Kennedy)
● Published some of his tales in “The Southern Literary Messenger and got a job in the
newspaper”
● The circulation of the newspaper went from 700 issues to 5000.
● Mr. Allan died and he did not inherit anything.
● He found one of his cunts, Mrs. Clemm.
● He fell in love with her daughter (cousin) Virginia.
● Poe's cousin and married in 1836.
● He is going to be successful because of his narration, not his poems.
● He moves from New York to Philadelphia where he wrote his best tales. They were
there for more than 2 years.
● He was secretary of Gentleman's Magazine and then, of Graham’s Magazine.
● Payment really low. He needs to do other jobs as a critic attacking other works.
● Because his introspective personality, he became more famous as a ferocious critic than
as a writer.
● End of 1814, back to New York.
● Becomes associated with 2 journalists to Grease Broadway Journal.
● Starts giving lectures.
● Lecture is Boston consequences because he was very criticism.
● In 1845, he published “The Raven”, very successful and he becomes popular.
● 1846 “ Ulalume”
● January 1847, his wife dies.
The Philosophy of Composition.
We are going to decide in which way he can be considered a Transcendentalist or not.
Poe as a Southern Writer.
The important literature of the 19th century. South took 4 basic forms:
● Nature lyrics on the Southern landscape.

● Collections of framed sketches of backwoods
● Character types.
● Episodic never or linked sketches on the model of epic historical romance.
ROMANTIC – SATIRIC NARRATORS OF IDYLLIC PLANTATION LIFE.
● Among his supposed Southern qualities are:

o A high formalism of prose style.
o An idealization of women.
o A scorn of democracy and the idea of progress.
o An uneasiness about the age of the machine (reluctance to mechanization and
the industrial life)
● The Southern writer, like Poe, is supposedly preoccupied with death and fatality and
addicted to the modes of the Gothic and Grotesque.
POE AS A TRANSCENDENTALIST:
● To see the spiritual, reality, the materialist reality.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.
● Nothing is left to inspiration: everything is part of a mathematical operation.

● It was published one day before “The Raven”
BASIC PROMISE.
1. Length/Extent 100
However, all the characteristics are subjected to the effect. What you have to do to achieve that
effect. So, consider the end of the poem.
You then need to have the denouement always in mind.
A poem basically is successful because it achieves a feeling ” effect”: the emotion it comes. The
effect here is “elevation of the soul”. The poet has to achieve this effect. If a poem is too short, it
would not achieve that effect. If it is too long, it is a succession of mini poem.
2. Province: Beauty.
The beauty is the most poetic of all the themes.
3. Tone: Sadness
The death of a beautiful woman would be the most appropriate them.
4. Refrain: repetition of a word or a short phrase repeated all over the poem.
● “Nevermore” find an excuse for the repetition of nevermore: sonority.
● Not feasible to have a human being repeating that word, do he decides to have an
animal (non-human reasoning) Raven.
5. Rhyme and Rhythm (meter)
● Nevermore-Lenore.
6. Climax (not a premise for her).
● The man realizes that the only word the Raven knows is “nevermore”.
● Self- torture, self-inflicted pain.
7. Locale: the setting must help to the achievement of the effect.
● Gloomy, dark setting.

● Lover´s chamber.
Bust of Pallas (idea of knowledge) -> mythology.
The locale is the place which frames the poem.
Common features with transcendentalists:
● Idea of beauty.
● But he considers they are excessive.
● P.42. “Beauty is not of intellect”. So far, a transcendentalist conception of beauty. He
calls it “ Supernal Beauty”
● Idea of Beauty to the idea of Truth? Not. He does not release the idea of Beauty. He
does not associate truth with beauty or goodness (difference with transcendentalists)
● He is not interested in reaching the true core (essence of things , but in achieving a
certain effect)
● 6 themes but 8 (effect and denouement mentioned before): try to use the terms. Province
instead of theme. Local instead of setting.
The 6 premises help to achieve that effect, and to achieve the effect the 6 are necessary. The
denouement has always to be kept in mind to write a good poem (Lenore is dead and is never
coming back to life)
The Southern poet, like Poe, is supposedly preoccupied with death and fatality and addicted to
the modes of the Gothic and the Grotesque.
However, does he follow his philosophy of Compositor in all his poems? He is written very
short poems.
POE AS A TRANSCENDENTALIST:
● To experience transcendence is always moved “through” or “beyond” the apparent

objects or situation to God or the All or the Spirit, through the “real” to the “Real”; but
Emerson´s early Transcendentalism. Emerson does not consider him a transcendentalist.
● As a symbol not, as sign. One glances at a Sign only to find out where it is pointing. A
sign is not important in itself, but only as a means to something totally other.
● Something “imagined” or “dreamed”, created by the poet's own mind, something
projected is precisely what Supernal Beauty seems to be in
Poe´s poetry.
● Emerson: a real poet drinks water not wine. The Contemplation of Nature and God is
enough. Poe takes the sign, recreates the sign, but does not go beyond the sign. It is not
a symbol of the sublime, the Creation, God…(What a Transcendentalist poet would
think)
● It takes the sign and recreates it but does not go beyond it, so not a symbol of the
sublime, of God.
“SONNET TO SCIENCE (1829)”
1. He despises it.
“Peering eyes”: Empirical method of knowledge. Something perceived through the senses.
Empirical way of apprehending things. Science= “Vulture” (it does not have good connotations,
negative image.
Destroy mythology, poetry, art.
“Dull realities”: scientific knowledge, not evocative, not other possible answer.
“Vulture”: if there is a vulture, there is a corpse. The corpse here would be “the poet's heart”
“Dyana”, “Hamadryad”, “Naiad” (poetry, mythology): have contempt for sciences and reference
of imagination.
● Scientific truth vs. Dreamy imagination: we could take this poem as belonging to
transcendentalism, but we do not find here any traces of the divine, for instance, so it is
not at all. He despises science, whereas in Transcendentalism the poet is a scientist, but
one who goes beyond the scientific method.
TO HELEN (1831)
● Name Helen: personification of beauty (origin of the Greek name)

● Concept of beauty.
● Helen-Greece-yore (part)
● Classic beauty: beauty referred to art, mythology, past.
● Beauty here is not described in a transcendental way.
● Allusion: intertextual references.
● Alliteration: way worn wanderer. Modern Ulysses.
● “St atve-like”
● “Lamp”: illumination, inspiration, knowledge.
● “Psyche”: woman.
● In both poems, there is a feeling of despising science, a fascination with classical myths.
The rejection of science is not in a transcendental way.
● So, Poe is not a transcendentalist although chronologically, he should be one and there
is controversy.
THE RAVEN.
● Sadness
● Refrain
● Lenore as a beautiful woman.
ULALUME
● Published in the American Review.

● In January 1847, his wife died. The same year, he wrote the poem.
● Check if he fulfils” The Philosophy of Composition” in “Ulalume”.
TO …ULALUME. A BALLAD.
● Length: 104 lines.

● Province: beauty.
● The Raven: beauty of the girl idealized by the speaker.
● The speaker goes back to his lover´s tomb without realizing it.
● (THE RAVEN: tone (sadness), topic (death of a beautiful woman), effect (constant
reminder of the death of Lenore).
● Theme: desperation of the lover. The poem is about the death of a woman. Ulalume
appears idealized in the same way that Leonor appears idealized.
● So, the province is also beauty.
● Tone: sorrow, sadness, melancholic tone.
● Refrain; we do not have a clear refrain like in “The Raven”.
● Meter: ABBA very conventional rhyme.
● Effect on denouement: self- torture/self-inflicted pain. Asking what is it? Where are we?
Almost as a rhetorical question. Need for self-torture: climax.
● Unity of effect: Elevation of the soul.
● All the premises fulfilled except for the idea of the refrain.
1. “Warmer”: the moon seems to be suggesting the speaker to take another wife and have
children (Fertility).
● Edgar and Virginia did not have children because she was very sick, so it can be a
reference to Virginia.
● Get another woman who is warmer and can give children.
● Edgar and Virginia were cousins: so, also the idea of incest can be suggested.
2. The poem is written as a memorial. A commemoration of that 1 st year.
● Impossibility to distinguish dreams from reality. Suggestion of his own soul to forget
Ulalume and his impossibility to do it.
● Name of Ulalume: it is not a name. It probably refers to the Latin word “Ululare” (to
shriek, lament in wail). Last 3 letters replaced with “ume” (pronounced oom)-gloom,
tomb and ghoul (doom).
● Themes (profound, prolonged sadness)-”death of a beautiful woman! (the most poetical
in the world)Self-torture, self-inflected pain: Climax.
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
● Born in Long Island.

● Worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government, clerk and as a volunteer nurse during
the American Civil War.
● Whitman´s major work, “Leaves of Grass”, was 1 st published in 1855, with his own
money.
● He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892 (so, it was his one and
only book).
● He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.
● He listened to one of Emerson's lectures and decided to fulfill the premises of what he
called poet.
● Why did he publish only 1 book? Because he conceived his poetry as a whole 8-9
editions.
● He does not have this formal education. He was the second child He has to develop a
strategy to cope with his problems (not good relationship with his father, brothers
‘problems: dysfunctional family)-problems at home.
● He studied to work in a book office as helper.
● Spent most of his life as a newspaperman.
● He was a poet, essayist and journalist.
● He was “Poet” Emerson described in his essay.
● He is a true transcendentalist but also incorporated realist views in his works.
● Whitman is among the most influential poets in the Am Canon-
● He is the father of “free verse”
● He was employed for a time at a newspaper printing helper.
● He was efficient worker.
● Editor of a Daily Newspaper “Aurora” (popular at the time)
● He was fired, very controversial work in its time because of lack of education.
● His poetry collection “Leaves of Grass” was described as “obscene” for its overt
sexuality.
● He worked in the Eagle but was also fired because of political ideology (he-democrat)
● Whitman paid for the publication of the 1st edition of Leaves of Grass himself.
● He had it printed at a local print.
● Did not include his name in the front cover, just a portrait him?
● But in the text he mentions himself Walt Whitman, an American.
● Leaves of Grass was praised by R.W.Emerson. Serologist and Peter Lesley wrote to
Emerson, calling the book “trashy”.
● Whitman was an Emersonian.
● Absorbed the elements of Emerson´s Conception of the ideal poet.
● Used them in the remaking of his own image.
● And had become that image.
● He published the 12 poems of the 1st edition on July 4th 1855.
● “America” is Whitman's first word in the essay.
● He really uses a lot of alliteration. Many references to nature.
● Homosexuality.
● Idea of the self (internal and external)
● The prose preface to the 1955 edition of married to the poems both theoretically and
rhythmically, presenting a microcosm of the world of the poems.
● The preface of the 1855 Leaves of Grass is a fundamentally American document with a
promise of the universality that Emerson wanted the ideal poet to attain eventually.
● No distinction between life and art.
● Whitman took more political action than Emerson.
THE EMERSON LEGACY: “SONG OF MYSELF”
1. Emerson´s notion of the ideal poet as a representative man: “I celebrate myself and sing
myself/ And what I assume you shall assume/celebration of the self…”
2. Emerson´s notion of man´s divinity: “Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be casemoniches
“when he “find´s) he sweeter.
3. Emerson´s notion of the vatic (prophetic) function of the ideal poet. He is the poet of the
personal religion that has at its heart recognition of the divinity of humankind and the
internship.
4. Emerson's notion of the ideal poet as a kind of filter for the divine: Though me the afflatus
surging and surging through me the current and index….many long dumb voices.
5. Emerson's notion of the ideal poet as the great democrat.
6. Emerson's notion of the ideal poet as a “scientist”
7. Emerson´s caution against the domination of the past. Another of Whitman´s trick, the
substitution of an archaic Indian name like “Paumanok” for the Contemporary English one
“Long Island”, or of the Greek letter “K” for the English “C” (especially in “Kosmos”)
8. Emerson's idea of organic form (Which Emerson really appropriated for Coleridge). He
develops his characteristic free verse long lines, with their strongly rhythmic repetitions and
parallelisms, precisely because that is the pattern that inherited in his vision.
9. Emerson's notion that there should not be restrictions in subject matter. And sex, essentially
absent in Emerson, is the subject to which Whitman most obviously applied Emerson´s license.
No distinction between spiritual and physical love, which included all the practices of physical
love Sex as a natural, motivating human face and a means of human expression. It is not dirty.
The dirt is apart from sexuality. Every human organ, he insists, is: “hearty and clean/Not an inch
or a particle of an inch is vile”, “hugging and loving bedfellow sleep…cat his) side”
10. Emerson's notion that America is the stuff of party. No one but an American could have
written Leaves of Grass.
LEAVES OF GRASS.
● 1855,56,60,67,71,76.
● 1881* (the 2nd Boston edition edited 1881-82)
● 1882 (published in Philadelphia after* had been declined immortal by the society from
the Suppression of lice )
● 1888
● 1892 (the “deathbed” or “authorized” edition)
● Civil War
● Drum Taps
● Sequel to Drum Taps.
● Sex:
o Enfant d'Adam (Children of Adam)
o Calamus
▪ If the poem is from Calamus, you have to interpret it in sexual terms.
Themes:
● 1. Death
● 2. Love
● 3. Transcendence
● These three things are mingled in his poems.
TRICKLE DROPS
● “Wounds” (L.4)
● Blood
● Pain produced because of a wound which is bleeding.
● Blood: very intimate, very inside of you.
● “Candid: innocent”
● Wound-free-prison.
● Blood in a metaphorical/ symbolic way.
● Blood to free you when you are in prison.
● Release your feelings although it is a struggle.
● It is really as a confession, something very painful which comes from a very intimate
part of you.
● “Stain every page” “blood like ink” (analogy)
● His poetry is going to be his mechanism to confess his real sex.
● “Painful confession”: as if it was writing in blood (painful and comes from the very
inside).
● “Stain”: it has negative connotations. It suggests the idea of sex.
● “Red chops”confession chops.
● Scarlet heat. Sexual connotation.
● “Glisten”, “wet”: sex connotation
● “Ashamed”
● Blushing drops: Painful confession.
● A poem in which he talks about his poetic vision.
● Poetry as a way to confess his real self.
● Poetry as the tool to free from his taboos.
● “In Paths Untrodden” (From Calamus)
● “Untrodden”: more difficult.
● Controversial metaphors: life is a play, life is a journey, love is war, good is up, death is
rest.
● Death is arrival-death is departure.
● Mainly love.
● Need of Comrades.
IN PATH UNTRODDEN
● He decides to go through Paths Untrodden despite the difficulties.

● Conventional metaphors: it has to do with our culture. We are not aware we are
applying it. They operate in our minds.
● E.g.: tendency to talk about love in terms of a war.
● “Life is a play
● “Life is a journey”: life operates like a journey metaphor.
● Now that his is born with a new sexual identity. He is going to celebrate the need of
Comrades.
VII “OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING”
1. .- It symbolizes the growth of a poet.
● Analogy with the birth of a child “cradle”.

● Symbols: sea, birth, moon.
● This child awakes to life.
● The tool which enables him to grow is poetry.
2. Why does he choose a bird?
● The connotations of freedom but especially, because it sings (it is a singer like the poet
himself)
● Reference to the continuation of life: “he-bird”/ “she-bird”
3. It is the bird's song.
● Shine! Shine! Shine!: kind of repetition.

● North and south: America.
● The perfect whole (he, she, North, South)democratic idea. “We two keep together”
4. Now, introduction of the symbol of the sea. The symbol of the bird merges with it.
● Idea of separation
● Idea of death: identified with the sea. “The solitary guest from Alabama
(he-bird)-Identification to the poetic voice (wander´d alone)
5. Address to the sea´s waves.
6. Identification of the poetic voice with the bird.
● Both “lore-singers”
● “Bare feet”. More communions with Nature.
● The poet listens to the message of Nature.
7. The song of the bird.
8. The symbols blend with each other.
● Symbolizing: the bird´s song: love and happiness.

● Carol; but a death Carol Oxymoron.
● Use of alliteration: musicality.
● Acceptance: life continues going on.
● Sea, moon, child.
9. Image of him being a child (metaphorically)
● Before being a poet, tongue was sleeping. But after decodifying that message, he is
realized that his mission is to be a poet ( hid, sea and bird).
● Here the poetic voice is Emerson.
● Ideal of the transcendental poet.
● He is not going to ignore the message of nature.
● “As I ebb'd with the ocean of life”
● The birth and growth of a poet.
● The poet is going to have a middle age crisis.
● Maturity, questioning, difficulties in decodifying the natural message.
● The poet comes to a beach looking for inspiration (revelation or acceptance he got from
the Whisper of the sea in the previous poem).
● Metaphorically dying (ebbed), metaphorically living (Ocean of life).
● In the previous poem, he had his revelation in the Paumanok´s Shones.
● Not, he feels he has not strength and revisits the plan.
● The message is again looked for in Nature.
● He is contemplating his beloved Paumanok and what can he see? Waste, absence of life.
● He is questioning his identity as a poet. He is talking about the same thing as before, but
in a depressive mood.
● Nature, decodification, role of the poet.
● “Spontaneous: me”
● Spontaneous. Freedom.
● Nature: identification of the poet with Nature.
● One of the most powerful lines in the poem.
● Everything related to Nature is naturally good.
● Why are these sexual taboos in society which oppress us? Idea of the poem.
● Because this is a social convention.
● If nothing in Nature is considered indecent, I ´m part of Nature and my sexuality too.
“Trimmed”: “man-made vs. untrimmed”
● Images from Nature.
● Constant reference to apple-fruit.
● Associated with sex indirect reference to the idea of sex.
● Nature as a source of inspiration.
● Sex: spontaneous, instinctive, similar to the tide of the ocean.
VI: “CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY”
● River: remember the flow of life.
● On top of the bridge.
● Transcendentalist philosophy.
VIII: WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM'D (From Memories of

President Lincoln)
● A poem dedicated to P. Lincoln. death, love, transcendence.

● An elegy.
● He intertwines three topics: death, love, transcendence,
● It is not the traditional form of the elegies (Lincoln´s name is never mentioned along the
poem)
● Symbol upon which the poem is built: lilac, bird and stars.
● Lilacs are associated with the bloom in Spring. They do not last very long.
● They suggest the 1st sign of spring.
● Lincoln was killed by a man
● Whitman uses the ever-returning spring- Cyclical pattern of life.
● He avoids symbolism related to Jesus Christ.
IX. THERE WAS A CHILD WENT FORTH.
● A child going forth (ponerse en camino)

● The reality of life.
● Topic: Innocence of childhood (Role of the poet: Transcend)
● Integration within the whole: part of the whole.
● By becoming an object, the poet becomes integrated into Nature.
● Spring: childhood: beginning of life.
● Cyclical structure life.
● Grasping objects
● Children are naturally curious, questioning and absorbing everything.
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)
● She never published everything during her life.

● She is not transcendentalist, not modernist, but she is really influenced by Emerson and
also by Realism.
● Some critics all this period “The New Consciousness”
● She is going to surprise the literary circles after her death.
● Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830.
● Spent all her life there.
● Her family had strong community ties.
● Introverted and reclusive life.
● Eccentric.
● Later in life she did not leave her room.
● Friendship carried out by correspondence-Epistolary friends.
● Totally disconnected from contemporaries and any literary movements at the time.
● Poetry is considered timelessness.
● She creates a poetic universe (new conception of the poem unity, use of metaphor is
surprising)
● This offers a contrast with her life (social events)
● Letter: “…I find ecstasy in living- the more sense of living is joy enough” (To
Higginsor, in 1870)
● She belongs (as a poet) not as a person to a much later age, closer to the 20th century
than to 19th century.
● She experimented tirelessly with language:
o Resurrecting old words
o Creating new ones.
o Employing familiar words in surprisingly.
o Unfamiliar context.
● Use of blank spaces and hyphens.
● The Emersonian essence is in her poetry.
● Much more important poet than Whitman.
● Large poetic production (around 18000 poems)
● No mine than 12 poems published diving her life (altered to fit the standards of the
time)
o Short lines.
o Lack titles.
o Slant rhymes-rhyme in which the vowels or the consonants of stress rhyme are
identical.
o Unconventional capitalization and punctuation.
● Speculations with her sexual life.
● She described her father in a warm mother and her mother is suggested to be cold and
grey.
● Good relation with her brother Austin.
● Lavinia and she went to school together for some time (her sister)
● Father tries to stimulate children intellectual development.
● Periods
o Pre-1861: there are often conventional and sentimental in natural (just above 5
poems)
o 1861-1865: Her most creative period-these poems are more vigorous and
emotional. She developed her themes of life and death.
o Post-1866: It is estimated that two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry was
written before this year.
● Major THEMES:
o Flowers of garden.
o The Mater poems.
o Morbidity.
o Gospel poems.
o The Undiscovered Continent.
● Master: a kind of figure which is human but with God like characteristics (idea of
Transcendentalism: divine characteristics)
● Morbidity: pans reflect fascination with life, but also with death. Not death in dramatic
way, but fascination with the worlds of decaying pre measuring burials, all kind of
death.
● Gospel preoccupation with the teaching of Jesus Christ Poems addressed to him.
● The discovered continent: tangible places you can actually visit. This is often a private
place: recreation of a place you can go if you reside within yourself.
II SHOCKING POEM.
● Effect of paradox or irony.

● Idea of faith, but just when you need it.
● Microscopes
● The importance to examine your faith in order to question it you have to put your faith
to the test in order to strengthen it.
● Use of fain in quotes.
● Real faith vs. “Faith”
IV TOUCH OF TRANSCENDENTALISM.
V. WALLS AS AN OBSTACLE.
● One of the Mater´s poems.

● God's calling her to join in eternity.
● You have to tunnel (effort) to reach this Master, God, Lover.
● “Prose paraphrasing by Mark Van Doren”
● It follows the structure of a love poem.
VI. UNDISCOVERED CONTINENT.
● From physical to mental death.

● The death of Reason or spirit.
● Persistent pain/persistent flowing of pain by means of repetition-Self-inflicted pain.
● A poem based upon the sense of hearing.
● Loss of consciousness.
XII
● Symbol of the key. Decade and death.

● Buzzing sound: annoying (irritado, molesto). Association with the fact that she is not
able to hear property.
● Even though she is dying, the fly (insignificant) continues buzzing.
● “Storm”: rain/thunder/clouds/wind/lightings/ idea of darkness.
● Heaves: the stillness between one noisy aspect of the storm and the other.
● Literal storm vs. metaphorical storm.
● A metaphorical storm of grief.
● Rain tears.
● Thunder: anger and cries-emotional effect of the storm.
● Darkness: sadness because of a loss-emotional effect of the storm.
● The Eyes around: synecdoche (she was not alone, there were people around). Eyes: you
emphasize they were crying.
● “Onset”: it suggests the beginning of something.
● Initially, it seems a contradiction.
● “Last onset”.
● Oxymoronic Contraction: Christian tradition.
● (Beginning of a new life)-the end of a life the beginning of another.
● “Uncertain”: It does not refer to the buzz, but to the people. They do not know to what
will happen.
● Buzz: related to the difficulty or inability to hear.
● So, buzz conveys that uncertainty.
● Between the light and one.
● Christianity: when you see the light, you are dying light at the end of the tunnel. OR.
Being alive vs. dying.
● “Windows”: eyes (you close your eyes and you cannot see).
● “Light”: life, knowledge.
● “I could not see to see”: literally to understood/to know.
● Final loss of consciousness: you stop hearing (buzz) and you close your eyes (loss of
vision)
● Suggestion that there is not after life (“not see to see”): you are supposed to make sense
but you don´t.
● A set of signs which gives us this sense.
VII.
● They are in the grave (already dead).

● “Safe”: because of their death, so it implies life is not safe.
● “Alabaster Chambers”: expensive.
● “Meek”(moderado) but “Satin” -(wealthy people)-contradiction in term.
● It is just important people who are going to be remembered.
● “Sleep”: conventional metaphor “death is rest”
● “Rafter of satin”-elegant, luxuriant.
● “And roof of stone”
● We have a rafter (structure which holds the roof) made of satin: is it secure? It will
probably collapse. So,this is the irony (They think it is safe, but it actually is not)
● “Stolid”: motionless. Also, stone “stolid”
● “Breeze, Bee, Ear”: Natural element.
● Ignorance cadence: hypology. The cadence is not ignorant, the ignorant is you who
cannot hear anymore.
● You are so wealthy, so important, but what matters? Death is going to reach you. This is
the irony.
● It does not matter because death makes all equal.
● It is clearly attributed to Emerson.

● Emersonian/ transcendentalist poet.
● Difficulty to fit Dickinson in a particular movement. She is not a transcendentalist but
she is influenced by Emerson.
IX.
● Robin: typical bird from American

● “He is mastered now”
● References to transcendentalism (Emerson)
● Robin also connotations of spring, beginning of life.
● “Grown”: It reminds us of the passage of time .
● The bird is young now.
● 1 st stanza: references to the passage of time.
● 2nd stanza: “Pianos in the woods”: Melody of Nature, essence.
● Nature speaking to God: Poet being able to decodify that message.
● 3rd stanza: reference to Wordsworth: “Daffodils”
● 4th stanza: again reference to the passage of time.
● 5th stanza: “Bees” association with death. That is why “Stay away”.
● It can also be a reference to men- male organ- sexual intercourse (bees pollinate
flowers)
● Idea of isolation from society in the poem
● 6th stanza: even though her suffering, she thinks, she deserves respect (Queen of
cavalry).
● “Unthinking Drums”: a reference to death.
● The transcendentalist elements found in her poetry are much more abstract and
elaborated.
XI: “I died for Beauty”
● Dialogue.
● “I died for Beauty”
● “I died for Truth”
● They are put at the same level: ”adjoining room”
● “Themselves are one”: Truth equals Beauty. (Beauty equals Truth) (Reference to
Reats).
● Emersonian Beauty: beauty is Truth.
● Death as an excuse to express this idea of truth is beauty, beauty is truth.
● “Moss”: with Death, you lose your identity, your name.
XIII.
● Idea of death.
● How is the topic of death approaches? Death personified as a male force.
● If you don´t stop for death, death is going to stop for you.
● Death: personified as a kind of lover (carriage)
● We are presented what she saw in this kind of journey.Passage of time.
● This is a metaphor: It is not a man but death, but not abstract, but the physicality of
death.
● Life as a journey: death is departure (a departure towards eternity)
● In that journey, you see the stages of life- Children (childhood), Gazing Grain (Youth)
and Setting Sun (maturity).
● Gossamer: reference to age.
● Time is relative: eternity-Last stanza.
● Final destination- Last stanza.
XV : MY LIFE.
● Life is a journey (Conventional Metaphor)

● “Parting is all…heaven…hell”- Life as a journey.
● Motif: death.
● She was about to die.
● Events:
o Her nephew's death, the death of her mother.
o it makes her think about her own death.
o Transcendentalist terms immortality is capitalised.
o “Hopeless to conceive”: negative news of death, probably related to her crisis of
faith (She does not seem to be convinced at that entire afterlife).
XVII
● Death is inevitable.
● Death by means of a simile with an insect.
● Acceptance.
XVIII
● Death is rest (Conventional metaphor)

● “Being fast asleep”: death.
● “Granite lip”: metaphor. -Material graveyard.
● “Robins”: one of the first birds in Spring.
● “Idea of renewal”-regeneration of the cycle of life.
● You are your voice so if you have “granite lip”, you cannot speak and you lose your
identity.
XVI
● “Banish” (Keyword).
● She is trying to express her conscious mind ( psychological approach)
● Dichotomy body and soul.
● Undiscovered continent.
● Acquisition of the mind How can have peace if not by subjugating.
● Consciousness: abdication of the mind, but this is difficult because, we are mutual
Monarch.
● Abstract and enigmatic: Idea of equality in power.
MODERNISM (1910-1945) Approx.
● Not agreement on the end date (30s or 40s)
● “Modernism” how remove, since the literary period it refers to is thought to have ended
in the late 1930s or the early 1940s.
● Word first widely used in Germany in the 1890´s , (the decade which modernism is said
to have appeared)
● Does not refer to the qualities of works of art, it simply suggest a break with the past
(Historian conventions and traditions)
● USA: Truly united in a vast economic pattern.
● Advanced in technology and industrialization difficulty to move onto the 20th century
period of fluidity, of questioning and of experimentation.
● Also a time of disillusion and even cynicism (questioning of the role of the
government…)
● An important effect of the war: the introduction to America of certain European
intellectual influences as; Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Sir James Frosen, etc.
● A redaction against Victorian notions of what- literature was and the ways in which it
was to be judged.
● Historical developments (later): The Civil Rights Movement (Martin Luther King) and
The Development of the Television (altered the American mind in the basis ideas).
● The movements for the rights of the black.
● The women's liberation movement.
● The studentsánd youth rebellion.
● The hippie revolt against America middle class Standards.
● Americans, as opposed to Europeans whose modernist impulses were reactions to or
efforts to break off from, European traditions.
● Is their “breaking” with the past of another kind?
● A brief answer is that our early modernists (Henry James, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot,
Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams and others) inherited an American Past that
both empowered and constrained them in discerningly different ways.
● Distinction: 2 kinds of poets.
o Poets who kept pretty much to American settings and experiences (who drew
upon techniques developed by their American predecessors (as we have said,
those close to Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman) - Hide Emersonian influence
not to be reflected.
o Poets who engaged (adopted) European Subjects.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935)
● During his most fruitful years, between 1896 and 1916, he suffered a kind of absolute
silence and neglect.
● Lack of readership
● The long years of public indifference damaged him as a poet.
● Considerable success, along with honours and a modest affluence, came to him in the
1920´s.
● Literary achievement is also a matter of success be born at the right time.
● A series of long narrative poems.
● Robinson´s career resembles one of his own ironic and compassionate lyrics based on
the theme of failure, including the failure of success. (“Minister Cheevy”)
● His finest poems are in part a reflection of his life, and of his troubled family
background.
I. MINISTER CHEEVY.
● Pessimistic attitude.
● Robinson´s life: “Child of Scorn”- because he kept faithful to American traditions.
● “Born too late” (unpopular to the critics)
● “He kept on thinking”
● “Kept on drinking”
● “Grew learn while he assailed the seasons”
● War of Independence: American Revolt. Civil War: 1861-1865
● Metaphor of life, passage of seasons.
● Rebellion against time.
● “Miniver loved the Medici”
● “Khaki Suit”: Military uniform.
● “Medieval grave”: “Clothing”
● Complains about materialist society- “Scorned the gold he sought”
● Defeated, hopeless character.
● A lot of bibliographical references.
● Not just reduced to a lyrical mod, although a lot of short lyric compositions (like short
stories)
VI. EROS TURANNOS.
● Story of a girl who is disturbed by Eros Turannos.

● “The world is…a kind of spiritual kind of garden where millions of infants are
trying to spell God with the wrong blacks”
● Reply to the criticism that his poetry was depressing.
● Poem (very long): Captain Craig. We can also associate him with the figure of Jesus
Christ.
● He puts in this poem Emerson's philosophy to the test.
● “And Art arrogant” (Miniver Cheevy)
● Arrogant: homeless: No place in this new tradition here he can be referring to
Emerson, Transcendentalism.
● Identification of the poet with Miniver Cheevy.
II “RICHARD CORY”
● Unexpectant ending.
● Money does not give you happiness.
● Idea about human condition: put a bullet in his head.
IV: ROBINSON: “REUBEN BRIGHT”
● Lexical field of the poem connected with the topic.

● Death: BUTCHER, BRUTE, GRIEF AND FRIGHT, CRY, DIE, MOURNFULLY,
TORE DOWN, SLAUGHTERHOUSE, NIGHT. It is a poem about death, brutal death.
The main topic is GRIEF
● BECAUSE OF THE LOVE OF A BELOVED ONE.
● The poet tells us he’s not a brute. In fact, he cried like a baby.
● Reference: pronouns, ellipsis, substitution (anaphoric, cataphoric references)
Endophoric: within the text. Exophoric: outside the text.
● We have to understand the poem by means of reference and
● modality (must) obligation.
● THEY: Exophoric reference ( animals, doctors, the jury sentenced to
● death,)
● THEY: Endophoric reference ( the singers, the sexton, the woman. What authority does
a woman have? Lovers? Fortune teller? It is probably women who assist her in her
pregnancy ( in this context these women have the authority)
● “CRIED LIKE A GREAT BABY”: Many women died of childbirth. We expect to hear
the cry of a baby but we don’t hear it. The baby must be dead “ He packed a lot of
things she had made” ( baby clothes) so that he tore down the slaughter-house.
III: “MR FLOOD’S PARTY”
● Again a defeated character.Idealization of the past. Emmerson tradition.

● We have a party, In a party we generally have people but here we do not have people.
He is talking to himself. It addresses the sympathy of the reader. His friends are dead
(Emerson)
● Icony: He’s having a party for himself.
● “Alone one night” Loneliness
● “Over the hill…. Hermitage”
● “As much as he should ever know”
● “Said aloud”
● “And you and I : He’s talking to himself. “We may not have many more” He’s old.
● “the bird”: Emerson: poet as a singer.
● “Eben’s eyes were decadence, death, decay (old age and decay)
● Pretended dialogues: many exchanges.
● Constant allusions to the old time, past “silver loneliness”
● “Until the whole harmonious landscape rang”
● RELATION TO EMERSON: his vision of poetry didn’t coincide with the poetry at the
time (Robison old-fashioned)
● He considers the old time better than the new time. So Mr Flood would be identified
with Robinson. Transcendentalism was outdated at the time but he was actually a
transcendentalist. The fact that he goes to the forest is interesting (inspiration)
Surrounded by nature.
● Behind every natural fact. There is a spiritual fault.
● Contraposition of the past vs the present (negative)
● Passage of time, age, solitary character.
II: “RICHARD CORY”
● Transcendentalism: APPEARANCE VS ESSENCE

● Material things spiritual things
● “crown”: member of the novelty.
● “waiting for the light” : revelation (another transcendentalist characteristic. Knowledge
in the sense of understanding.
● Ending: He commits suicide. “calm summer night” “bullet” Contrast, even paradox.
V: “THE MILL”
● The wife waiting for his husband and he’s late. The tea is cold. The fire was dead.
Tenses: it is something that happened before the husband went to his mill and she was
worried about him because he was late. He never comes back.
● MATERIALISM: The millers were bound to disappear because of industrialisation. I
am defeated and I’m going to kill myself. She also killed herself. She contemplates one
of the ways in which she can commits suicide. Industrialisation, factories, cities,etc.
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
● Our first Modernist is actually influenced by Emerson so (Emersorian poet).

● He’s always been related to England.
● Although he is always been related to New England, he was born in San Francisco in
1874. Parents: New Englanders who had to emigrate to California.
● At 11, he returned to New England and contemplates his first snow storm. Absorbed
into the New England atmosphere. Depression for some periods of his life. Tendency to
rage and desperation. He was a tormented person.
● He took his family to England in order to write and “be poor”. He was happy with life
in general. Regressive mood. He was going to be criticized by his family when he
decided to write because they were conventional .
● Better literary luck: first volume of poetry: A boy’s will (1913) with an introduction by
Ezra Pound. North of Boston (1914). Returned to America in 1915, he had a reputation.
The English experience solidified his sense of himself as an American and also New
Englander.
● In the English years Frost was working not only in his national and regular identity but
also his literary and poetic ancestry. He had problems of jealousy with Robinson and
this was going to make him a bitter man.
● First born child died of cholera at the age of 4 in 1900 ( poem “Home Burial”). In 1920,
his sister was arrested by the police. Another son committed suicide. Constant tensions
with his wife but very devastated by her death. Personality (bitterness, sadness)
● He was famous and got four Pulitzer prizes. Taught in the university of Michigan. He
held a remarkable position in Harvard. He was praised and popular but when in further
range appeared in 1936. It met with a good deal of hostile criticism.
● Emerson and Thoreau were Frost’s biggest influence. He was more conservative,
politically, than Emerson because he was also more conservative intellectually.
● Frost is the poet of autumn, of impending winter, of the darkness to come.
● When he was 86, he read “ The gift outright” at the inauguration of P. Kennedy in 1961.
He was a teacher.
POEMS:
V “THE OVEN BIRD”
● A singer everyone has heard. Poet as a singer. “mid-summer”. He puts the emphasis in
the end of the summer. He is a poet of winter and autumn.
● Influenced by Emerson and Transcendentalism.
● “Makes the solid tree trunks sound again”. Natural elements sounds.
● It is the poet who interprets the natural fact in Nature(Transcendentalism).
● He is lamenting that Transc is old fashioned. Imagery which indicates the end of things
(seasons, day).
● “The highway dust is over all”: Industrialisation.
● “dust”: death
● Impossibility to see: Metaphor (Industrialisation). Machinery covers all and you cannot
see the essence.
● “The bird would cease” : The poet would see and be as other poets.
● “Diminished thing”: They do not pay attention to real poetry, transcendentalist poetry.
I “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” (1915)
● “Life is a journey”: conventional metaphor that operates in the poem.

● The problem is when you come to an intersection, which way to take. Options in life are
cross-roads. He took the last travelled. It reminds him of Whitman. He wrote it to refer
to his sexual condition.
● His option to write according to transcendentalism when that was not the literary
fashion.
● Of course, there is no way back. It is done.
II “DESSERT PLACES”
● A very Frostian poem. Probably the critics refer to it as insignificant in content. Fear the
speaker has. What is he scared of? Of emptiness, idea of nothingness. Also loneliness.
“benighted snow” It is not the snow. So it reinforces emptiness, fear and loneliness.
Feeling of emptiness and solitude.
III “STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING” (1923)
● Very typical setting of Frost: Wood. About death. “sleep” “miles”. Life is journey and
death is rest. That path in which life takes place is going to be represented in this poem
as a wood.
● Speaker’s attitude towards death: acceptance as if his time had come.
● “Darkness” “The darkest evening of the year”. Date in which he has decided to die. It
can be read as an attempt to commit suicide. Forest symbolizing death vs. village life
symbolizing light.
IV “AFTER APPLE-PICKING” (1914)
● Rhyme scheme: The regularity of the beginning is broken. The impression that
dominates the poem is that he’s tired “I am overtired”. Pressure of an extreme tiredness.
Thinking about going home and sleeping. We have to talk about allegory, images that
appear to their exaggeration. A moment in which he is so tired that he does not know
whether he’s dreaming or alive. He picks an apple. In his dreams, he sees magnified
apples so not real, hyperbole. Frost is also very fond of paradoxes.
VI “FIRE AND ICE” (1923)
● Idea of destination with an ironic tone. What is generally considered as good may
produce evil.
IMAGISM (1914-1917)
● It is interesting to check that the figure of the poet in Frost is not going to be so specific
and precise as Emerson.
From Imagism to symbolism:
● Imagism is a very short moment and very soon turns into symbolism. It is a Modernist
tendency. Imagism is the most developed Modernist tendency in the USA.
● The imagist poem was an invention of the American and English poets who worked
together in London in 1910.
● 1912: agreement of those principles. T.E. Hulme:
o Direct treatment of the “thing” whether subjective or objective.
o To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation to the
thing.
o As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not the
regular metre. It makes poetry closer to actual speech.
● Modernism is a revolting against
o Conventional virtue of the middle class.
o Out reality
o Tradition
Ezra Pound
A traditional poem responds to a traditional conception of life. Pound’s definition of an image:

“That which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” Pound goes
on to state that “It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous
works”.
The image is also considered to be a moment of revealed truth.
AMY LOWELL:
Difference between Imagism and symbolism.
Imagists thought of an image as a complete poem and symbolists thought of an image as a part
of the poem. This new poetry has been praised because it was free of what it is called “the
polysyllabic, honey dripping and derivative adjectives that distinguishing the works of most of
their contemporaries, makes 19th century poetry as a whole seem close like the air of a room.
Experiments with free verse: Imagist manifesto (Amy Lowell).
This is what you have to do in order to write Imagist poetry. “hard and clean” defined.
We are not a school of painters.
Use the exact word not ambiguity.
Deficiency in imagist theory.
They lack a dynamic quality. Emphasis on exact word. It relies merely on the surface and rejects
the symbolic qualities.
Why is it so important? The poem is a tool. Very soon Imagism evolved into symbolism. The
importance of the movement is that it became a tool to fight big war. Controversial movement
that breaks with Emersonian tradition.
EZRA POUND: “IN A STATION OF THE METRO” clearly
symbolizes this movement. 17 th syllable poem.
AMY LOWELL: “A DECADE”. Love relationship. Beginning of a relationship (passion)

Routine. After years you are completely nourished. Decade: 10 years.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1883-1963:
He was a doctor during his whole life. He wrote poetry in the evening. Initially modelling his
poems after death. He wrote better than he thought he did. He met E. Pound and Hilda Doolittle.
For Williams, poetry must be perceptual and sensational(remember late Emerson) It presents
things in connection with Imagism.
Williams works:
o Short poems: extremely iconic, lyric poems.He wrote about trivial band
ordinary things( The Red Wheelbarrow)
o Long poem. Published in 5 books and in the year of his death 6th volume.
Williams career inspired by Whitman: idea of writing American poetry in
rhythm, topic, diction (great national poetry).
o Short stories, novels and plays. He is best known as a poet but also stories,
novels and plays
o Literary criticism and literary theory. A lot of essays on other writers and also
on literary theory. He talks about distinctive art figures.
o Autobiographical writing. He writes about himself.
POEMS:
III) POEM: (poem)
Is it a crippled symbolist poem? Is it just a superficial image? The image is very powerful, we
really see it. Curiosity killed the cat
(idiom).
First stanza: image of a cat. But later curiosity not just a school of painters.
II) POEM: (This is just to say)
We picture like a post stick note in the fridge. It is really an image.
One of the most effective imagist poems.
1Who is the note written to?
2 Who writes it?
3 What could it be found?
4 What time of the day?
5 Is the speaker really sorry?
6 What is the attitude towards the plums?
7 Would the speaker eat the plum again if he had the chance?
8 What can we infer of the characters?
The plums were delicious, sweet and cold. They were tempting he wouldn’t resist. Maybe what
the poem brings is the idea of temptation. Idea of temptation. The speaker writer a note.
Symbolism of the poem: forbidden fruit (apple). Fruit as an element which produce temptation.
He is not really sorry. He’s eaten them during the night. Mysterious (hidden). Breakfast: first
meal (new day and light). The poems are very important because they have been saved. You
save important things ( money, virginity)
Saving is the middle of the poem and it is just one word so the important of the poem is that it
has been saved. Maybe beginning of married life, temptation, original sin (related with sex).
Saving is the most important word, the clue to understand it.
IV: “THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE”:
Young housewife described as doing her duty jobs at her husband house (present time)
Circumscribed to the inside of her husband’s house. She goes out to call the ice cream man.
Then, he compares her to a fuller leaf introducing the idea of sex He passes solitary in his car.
Emerson “Every married man carries in his head the beloved and sacred image of the woman he
has whored.
A woman who has lost her virginity, a woman a man has whored.
So “a fallen leaf” because of that sin (sex).
“Noiseless wheels”: The car is not moving but it is actually moving.
Moving very quietly as if trying not to make a noise.
Sum up images: Man solitary in his car. He was not to be seen or heard. Lady: she’s moving
around ( erotic connotations)
Metaphorically he is punishing her. Killing her because she is compared to a “fallen leaf” and he
says he “dried leaves”.
“Solitary”: seeking pleasure in the contemplation of the lady.
Dichotomy: virgin vs whore : antithesis.
V: “QUEEN-ANNE’S LACE”
Queen Anne: a flower. Description of a field. It is compared to the female body. He body not so
“white” because it has been touched (corrupted)
“wild carrot”: phallic symbol.
“blosmish”: negative connotations “exploited”
“white desire” : sex
VII: “SPRING AND ALL” (1923)
The beginning of life: spring and human life. He helped women to give birth (doctor)
“contagious hospital”: autobiographical elements. Spring approaching although there is no

apparent sign of life. Cyclical nature of life. Reflection of human life. Images which have
connotations of the idea of death but also images of regeneration (lifeless only in appearance”
“They enter”: Analogy. “One by one objects are defined” initially
shadows ( not see properly) until later.
“rooted”: element which indicates separation from the mother.
“awaken” they enter the world.
WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)
Contemporary to Williams Carlos Williams.
WCW has more characteristics of Imagism than Wallace.
Wallace poetry is much more abstract, universal.
Style: Abstract, difficult to understand, philosophical.
Passion for philosophy
“It must be abstract” He says it.
Supreme fiction. He calls so poetry.
His work: For him a poem does not need a meaning like some things in Nature doesn’t have.
He studied literature and poetry at university. He became a successful lawyer. (Harvard, study in
a Law school in NY).
President of an insurance company (prominent position).
His wife didn’t approve his friends.
His first book appeared at his 40s .
Series of images or motifs in his poetry. E.g.: Use of colours blue (imagination) red( power of
reality) green (Nature).
His poetry is attached to the course of Nature so another image the sun ( cyclical course of
Nature).
About his poems:
o Short lyrics: “Anecdote of the Jar” Influenced by Keats as WCW.

o Long poems: “The man with the blue guitar” “Notes towards a supreme fiction”
For him poetry means redemption. We are going to find some references to transcendentalism
although he is by no means a transcendentalist.
I “ANECDOTE OF THE JAR”
Jar: an inanimate object perceived as if it were animate. “It took dominion”, empowerment of
the jar.
Perspective: two dominions, the forest which is inside the jar.
Characteristic of the wilderness: It is wild. It grows free, it is a natural element not touched by
men.
The jar altered that wilderness. The speaker puts the jar there, a man made things and artifice
thing takes dominion of the immensity of wilderness. Metaphor of the jar dominates the poem.
The jar represents confinement.
The immensity of Nature is kept in this jar. Idea of industrialisation.
Nature is no more natural. Industrialisation took dominion of Nature.
“The jar did not give of a bird or bush”: It is not natural but artificial creation, a manufacture.
Although it is in the middle of a natural dominion. It is not natural but artificial. Relation to Ode
on a …
Some critics say that you can interpret this poem without reading
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Some say this poem is about something you have read. When he wrote
the poem, Tennessee was beginning to be industrialized.
II “THE IDEA OF ORDER AT KEY WEST”:
“Key West”. WS was fond of including geographical references so, references to the sea:
surrounded by it everywhere. One of the most emblematic.
A poem about a girl at the seashore. Poetry is a mirror of Nature, a woman reflecting upon the
sea.
It reminds us of Emerson: The poet as interpreter, reads the poem again to see if he fulfils the
premises. Is he going to perpetuate Emerson’s ideas or subvert them? To begin with it is a SHE.
Motif of the sun: Annual rotation, diurnal rotation.
Colours: blue (imagination) red (power of reality) green
“After one has abandoned a belief in God. Poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s
redemption”
It is important the concept of “order” in this poem.
“The maker of the song”: poet as sayer, maker.
“She was the single artificer in the world in which she sang”.
Singer inspired by the sea. Nature as a source of inspiration.
Dichotomy: sea/she. It seems as if she fulfilled the role of a poet in the Emersorian way.
However, he is a modernist and they were against tradition. How? Introducing a she instead of a
he. She does not decode the reality. She does not sing the reality of the world as created by God
but of an alternative reality “of the world in which she sang”. “She say beyond”: it is not the sea
but beyond.
“The sea was not a mask”. He denies there is a reality we have to uncover in order to have
access to the spiritual essence.
“For she was the maker…” She was not the interpreter of the reality given by God but makes it.
“Whose spirit is this?” Emerson. We are not looking for the essence, the spiritual side of things.
Some critics say Ramon Fernandez is a philosopher others it is just a name used for sonority.
Order: importance. It starts from transcendentalism principles to challenge them. Abstract

definition of poetry. Conscious of the new role of poetry.
III “OF MODERN POETRY”:
Poetry should resists intelligence almost successfully. He is not one of the poets who favours
interpretation. Is there any conventional metaphor? Yes, Life is a play.
Poetry in terms of a play an actor.
“The scene was set” Reference to previous tradition
“It repeated what was in the script” Repetitive poetry.
“Change”Avant-garde movements.
This modern poetry has to represent the current time.
“Be living with men and women of the period”
“New stage” new kind of poetry.
“In the delicate ear of the mind” It alludes that abstraction.
“Invisible audience.. but to itself” A poem is successful when it establishes an intimate

relationship between poet and audience.
Intimate relation between poet and audience.
“The actor…rightness” The poem is described with the metaphor of an actor who performs a
role.
“The poem of the act of the mind” Modernist conception of poetry.
Modernist feature: Subversion of Transcendentalism. The scene was set (trans). A poetry that
represents the current time.
Abstraction. New stage ( new poetry).
EZRA POUND:
Poet decides to embrace European attitudes ( he disliked Whitman).
However, in a poem, he admits he has to be in debt with Whitman and Transcendentalism.
“A PACT”: All the new is possible because the scene is set. You read against something
because there is a previous tradition that allow us to criticize. He admits that Whitman
was immortal. “one sap and one root”: He’s referring to Emerson (the origin of this).
MARIANNE MOORE:
“POETRY”: Against that heightened interpretation of Victorian times. Accusation of

traditional poetry “so derivative…as to become unintelligible”. She is in the line of WS, of two
emotions becoming one “ if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry”.
MURIEL RUKEYSER:
“THE POEM AS MASK”: Myth of Orpheus. Is she alluding the myth? Rejecting it or
appropriating it? Changing poetry.
Mask: something that covers your identity ( metaphor of the real self).
That mask adopted by the poet: confessional poetry. Rejection of the mask (exposure of the
self).
Breaking the convention of the poet mask: Free from the mask to talk about yourself. She
proposes like a claim for female recognition.
Metaphor of child birth referring to the poetic creation.
Rejection of mask as male mask and rejection of mythology . It makes poems something more
tangible and open to emotions. .
Triangle: poet, mother and child. Metaphor of the children.
20th CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY:
Traditional conception of poetry. Emersonian ideas and faithful to setting and ideas.
Situation in America constantly changing. Reaction against conventions of the past. Rejection of
the poetry of the past (topics, subject matters, forms).
Literary criticism: New Criticism. Freud, European influences coming into the USA.
Change the perception of literature when it comes to criticism. This was in the first part of the
20th century, from 1945 to the present.
Reactions: against communism. Abandoning the communist cause: Susan Sontag, George
Orwell. Creation of anti-heroes: Tillie Olsen, Marge Piercy.
Poetry after 1945: Movements 50s and 60s. Beats: poetry reading.
Sixth gallery in San Francisco in the fall of 1955 audience, almost all the main beat poets were
in attendance. Allen Ginsberg’s reading of “Howl” was the evening’s dramatic high part.
To be “beat” is to be beaten, defeated, to be “beat” is to be holy “howl”, a powerful immersion

in modern urban life that tortures the sufferer into transcendental vision. It turns defeat into
sacred experience.
“HOWL” describes a painful immersion in modern urban life that tortures the sufferer into a
transcendental vision, it turns defeat into sacred experience. Ginsberg returned to the
Whitmanesque conception of poetry as prophet to American poetry. He was an angry, social
prophet. His poem an art of social protest. Drugs, madness, extreme experiences of all kinds
were sought to dislocate ordinary into visionary consciousness.
Jass was invoked as a model for poetic improvisation. Ginsberg’s theory stressed the poem as an
art event. The beat poets combined the mystical, the political, etc. Rejection of standards.
Innovations in style, experiments with drugs etc.
CONFESSIONAL POETS: Creative act: painful self-exposure, direct expression of urgent
emotion aroused by personal, often extreme experiences. The creative art is going to be a
painful self-experience.
No leader, no geographical centre, no manifesto, independent writers working about similar

lines at more or less the same time.
Rejection of the new critical doctrine of the poem as mask. They prefer drawing directly on their
own experiences and true self (brutally, frank self-exposure). Self-inflicted violence is not just a
frequent subject but the very way to creativity for many of these poets.
A poem is not a verbal icon but more like a piece of flesh torn out from the poet’s body. They
explored psychic and physical experiences: madness, suicide, incest, hatred, drugs, surgery,
masturbation, menstruation that were repressed by the reigning poetic decorum.
For women poets to adopt a mask, especially one of male invention, confessional poets assumed
the social self to be alien and dead, and so they sought release of a core self-hidden beneath
social convention.
It’s highly subjective.
It’s an expression of personality, not an escape from it.
It’s therapeutic and purgative.
Its emotional content is personal rather than impersonal.
It’s most often narrative.
It portrays unbalanced, afflicted and alienated protagonists.
It’s anti establishment in content with alienation being a common theme.
Personal failure is also a favourite theme as it is mental illness.
The poet strives for personalization rather than for universalization.
It is totally successful, the personal is expressed so intimately we can all identify and emphasize.
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963):
She committed suicide. Born in Boston. Her brother was born in 1935 and the family moved to
Winthrop. Otto died in 1940 from untreated diabetes complication. Many references to his
father in her poetry.
From a very early age she had always been an inquisitive, bright girl who had a precious talent
for poetry and the rest of the arts.
Proof of her brilliance is that Sylvia was tested for her IQ when she was only 11 and her results
indicated she was a brilliant and unusual girl.
After Otto’s death, the family moved again and Sylvia attended the local high school and
excelled academically. She was admired by her teachers.
At Smith, she carried an excelling at all her classes but put herself under the enormous pressure
to achieve.
She continued writing poetry through her college years and had several stories published.
Ironically, her summer spent in New York marks the beginning of her psychological spiral.
Her distressing experiences are detailed in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963). She
found it hard to get along with the other girls and began to feel isolated. To make matters worse
she was refused admission to a writing seminar at Harvard. Sylvia was suffering from a severe
depression and once she returned home, received electroconvulsive therapy. However, the
experience traumatised her and in August, she attempted suicide by overdosing on her mother
sleep pills.
In Cambridge, she met fellow poet and further husband Ted Hughes. The couple married just a
few months after their first meeting and spent their honeymoon in Benidorm. Their life as a
married couple involved taking up some jobs.
Meeting Lowell and Sexton had a profound impact on her poetry as they encouraged her to
write he own personal experience (confessional poetry).
In 1954, they moved back to England where their daughter was born in April.
In October, her first collection of poems was published “The Colossus”. She discovered that her
husband was being unfaithful and she began to write poems every day.
Ironically, the poems that she wrote during those months (winter 1967) are now considered to
be her best and one of the best examples of confessional poetry.
The Colossus (abstract and dark) deals mainly with her experience
as a woman and a poet.
She wrote poems about:
o Suicidal thoughts
o Depression
o The loss of her father
o Her married life
o Motherly duties
o Illness, decay.
o Women as perceived by society.
o With recurring images as:
▪ Flowers, Domesticity, Resurrection, Bees, etc.

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3º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Reservados todos los derechos.

Michael Wigglesworth (1631- 1705)

● The Day of Doom

▪ Description of the process of destruction very well explained: tempest

Anne Bradstreet (1612? - 1672)

● the other best poet of colonial America

POETRY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

● The best thing is the Republic.

Phillis Wheatley (1753- 1784)

● She doesn’t have to do with the poets of the daily Republic

ROMANTIC ESCAPISM (TRANSCENDENTALIST PHILOSOPHY)

● Romanticism focused on simple natural beauties

Transcendentalism vs. positivism

● I saw in Louisiana a live oak tree growing

Ralph Waldo Emerson

● Indispensable figure in transcendentalism first revealing link between the romantic

The American scholar (1837)

American Romanticism: TRANSCENDENTALISM AND DARK ROMANTICISM

● Democracy: gradual and complex process

EDGAR ALLAN POE. (1809-1849)

● His origins were Irish

The Philosophy of Composition.

We are going to decide in which way he can be considered a Transcendentalist or not.

● Nature lyrics on the Southern landscape.

ROMANTIC – SATIRIC NARRATORS OF IDYLLIC PLANTATION LIFE.

● Among his supposed Southern qualities are:

● To see the spiritual, reality, the materialist reality.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

● Nothing is left to inspiration: everything is part of a mathematical operation.

You then need to have the denouement always in mind.

The beauty is the most poetic of all the themes.

The death of a beautiful woman would be the most appropriate them.

5. Rhyme and Rhythm (meter)

6. Climax (not a premise for her).

7. Locale: the setting must help to the achievement of the effect.

● Gloomy, dark setting.

Bust of Pallas (idea of knowledge) -> mythology.

The locale is the place which frames the poem.

Common features with transcendentalists:

● To experience transcendence is always moved “through” or “beyond” the apparent

“SONNET TO SCIENCE (1829)”

Destroy mythology, poetry, art.

● Name Helen: personification of beauty (origin of the Greek name)

● Published in the American Review.

● Length: 104 lines.

2. The poem is written as a memorial. A commemoration of that 1 st year.

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

● Born in Long Island.

THE EMERSON LEGACY: “SONG OF MYSELF”

5. Emerson's notion of the ideal poet as the great democrat.

6. Emerson's notion of the ideal poet as a “scientist”

● He decides to go through Paths Untrodden despite the difficulties.

VII “OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING”

1. .- It symbolizes the growth of a poet.

VI. UNDISCOVERED CONTINENT.

XI: “I died for Beauty”

From Imagism to symbolism: