Best Books Study Work Guide: Poems From All Over Gr 11 HL. Lynne Southey
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Название: Best Books Study Work Guide: Poems From All Over Gr 11 HL
Автор: Lynne Southey
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Учебная литература
Серия: Best Books Study Work Guides
isbn: 9781776070695
isbn:
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared! —
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.”
Analysis
| Poem | Comment |
| Note the rhyme and rhythm by reading the poem out loud in an exaggerated way. | The first line establishes the context and subject. Most of Lear’s limericks begin with just such a statement, e.g. “There was an Old Man in a boat”; “There was a Young Lady of Ryde”; “There was an Old Man with a nose”; “There was an Old Man on a hill”; “There was an Old Man in a tree”.The second line usually begins with Whom/Who/Whose followed by an idea that expands that of the first line. |
Contextual question
What in your opinion is nonsensical about this limerick? (3)
(3)
| Enrichment activityTake one of the first lines of other limericks given in the comment box above and complete the limerick in your own way. Then find a copy of the original limerick and compare it with yours. |
In an Artist’s Studio by Christina Rossetti
(See p. 20 in Poems From All Over)
| Title: | The title gives us the place, an artist’s studio, but more than that it’s what happens in a studio when a (male) artist paints a portrait of a woman who poses for him. It also implies that the speaker is in the studio. |
| Theme: | Contrast between the imagined and the real, that art reveals more about the artist than about the subject, that women are seen as objects by men*. |
| Mood: | Light, protest, sceptical. |
| *It is known that Rossetti was talking about her artist brother, whose obsession (“He feeds upon her face”) with the model, Elizabeth Siddal (whom he later married) worried her. Siddal appeared in many of his paintings. | |
Discussion
The speaker, with someone else (“we”), is in the artist’s studio (workplace) but it seems he is not present. She (we assume, because the poet is female, although we cannot usually assume the poet is the speaker) is critical of the portraits they are looking at. No matter how he changes the position or clothing or guise (as queen, girl, saint, and angel) of the woman in the portrait, her face is the same one in all of them. The speaker sees an obsession with the model in this (“He feeds upon her face by day and night”) and is worried about it. It seems the real model might be tired of “waiting” (of posing for him or waiting for a proposal of marriage?), and be sad (“sorrow dim”) but this is not how the artist paints her. He paints an idealised version (or the version of herself that she was at the beginning, when she perhaps still hoped for some future or relationship with him, or some other result of sitting for him).
The speaker’s concerns can also be read as a criticism of art which doesn’t represent the true (the actual) model, but which represents the artist’s ideal of her. The woman becomes a mere object who serves the artist in his work rather than a subjective human being. This can be seen as a general criticism of the status quo between the sexes where women are seen as inferior and men as dominant.
Dante Rossetti’s Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal
Analysis
| Stanza | Comment | |
| 1–4 | The artist paints portraits of women in different positions but the face is the same (“One face looks out from all his canvases”).“We” is the speaker and companion who claim to see the real woman, the model, behind the paintings (“canvases”, “screens”).The screens are like a mirror that reflects her beauty (“all her loveliness”). | The speaker says that the painter paints the same face in all his portraits, possibly because he uses the same woman as model. The speaker looks for the reality of the woman, not as she has been painted, but as she really is (“hidden just behind those screens”). The screen is a mirror but the implied question is whether the real woman is as beautiful as the painting has made her. |
| 5–8 | The speaker describes the different portraits of the woman as painted by the artist (“queen”, “nameless girl”, “saint”, “angel”) and her clothing (“opal”, “ruby”, “summer-greens”). In the speaker’s opinion, the meaning of the portrait doesn’t change, they all mean the same thing. | What do these different portrayals of a woman, the same woman, signify? What is their meaning? The speaker is suggesting that they all show the idealised version of a woman, as the artist would like her to be, that he is perhaps unaware of the real person and her own life and desires.The comments can also be seen as criticism of the subject matter of the artist as being very limited. |
| 9–14 | Line 9 here is a startling expression if taken literally, but means that the face inspires, obsesses the artist, shows an unnatural state of affairs. What he has painted is a perfect woman with “true kind eyes …/Fair … and joyful” (lines 10–11)rather than pale, and sad. The speaker suggests that the woman is no longer like that (“Not as she is”) but as she used to be before, the woman of his dreams. | He portrays her as an ideal woman (“as she fills his dream[s]”, his desire for her). In the painting her eyes are kind and true, and she is beautiful and happy. This is contrasted by the speaker who tells what she possibly does look like: pale (“wan”) and sad and not shining like the moon and light, but “dim[med]” by “sorrow”.Note the repetition of “Not as she is” in lines 13 and 14, which emphasises that the model has not been painted truly, that the artist has not been true to the reality of the model. He has used the woman to paint his ideal dream of her. |
Contextual questions
1.Write out the rhyme scheme of the sonnet. (2)
2.How does the repetition of “One” at the beginning of the first two lines add to the meaning? (3)
3.What double meaning can one find in the word “screens” (line 3) and how does it add to the meaning? (3)
4.In what way can this be read as a “feminist” poem? (The feminist movement fought for equal rights for women in every way.) (3)
5.In what way can the critique of the artist in the poem be seen as ironic, given the content of the poem? (4)
6.What effect does the choice to use “Not … not … / Not … but … / Not … but …” in the last three lines have on the meaning the speaker/poet wants to convey? (5)
(20)
| Enrichment activityLook at paintings by the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and decide whether you agree with what the speaker in the poem is saying about them. |
We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar
(See p. 22 in Poems From All Over)
| Title: | The “we” associates the speaker with his people, who all hide their true feelings behind a mask of contentment. The title is the first line and refrain of the poem. |
| Theme: | Suffering, endurance under oppression. |
| Mood: | Sad |
Discussion
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