1、Selected Readings of British&American PoetryLecture 12:American Poetry in the Colonial and Early Romantic Period第1页，共15页。Colonial period poetryvPhilip Freneau(1752-1832)1.Regarded as“the Farther of American Poetry”/study in Princeton University and a roommate of James Madison(4th president of the US
2、)/career as a poet began during college period.第2页，共15页。Colonial period poetry2.From 1776 to 1778,he was offer a position of secretary in the West Indies,where he became interested in the romance of the past and the natural beauty of American country and wrote a large group of lyrical works,among th
3、em,“The Wild Honey Suckle”is considered the best.第3页，共15页。The Wild Honey Suckle Fair flower,that dost so comely grow,Hid in this silent,dull retreat,Untouchd thy honeyd blossoms blow,Unseen thy little branches greet;No roving foot shall crush thee here,No busy hand provoke a tear.By Natures self in
4、white arrayd,She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,And planted here the guardian shade,And sent soft waters murmuring by;Thus quietly thy summer goes,Thy days declining to repose.第4页，共15页。Smit with those charms,that must decay,I grieve to see your future doom;They died-nor were those flowers more gay,Th
5、e flowers that did in Eden bloom;Unpitying frosts,and Autumns power Shall leave no vestige of this flower.From morning suns and evening dewsAt first thy little being came:If nothing once,you nothing lose,For when you die you are the same;The space between,is but an hour,The frail duration of a flowe
6、r.第5页，共15页。Analysis vThe first stanza shows readers a contradictory of the retreat status of the wild honey suckle:the flower is designed with beauty and well protected in solitude,whereas its beauty might be admired by few.vThe 2nd stanza depicts the flowers relationship with nature.From the words
7、like“array,bid,plant and send”this point is clearly shown,which is the natures kindness.However,instead of this favor,the flower cannot escape its doom,and death is waiting.vThe 3rd stanza goes on to talk about the indifferent side of nature.Nature brings unpitying frost in autumn as well as soft wa
8、ters in summer.From this contrast the readers see that nature is relative,while death is absolute.vThe 4th stanza shows the poets meditation of the life and death of the flower,the poet sees his fate mirrored in that of the flower.Human beings are part of nature,and they originated from nature and w
9、ill surely return to nature some day.第6页，共15页。Theme&Rhyme SchemevTime is constant but the time of a life is short;any favor is relative but change is absolute.And thus create a philosophical meditation by the description of the fate of a trivial wild flower.vThe rhyme scheme is ababcc in each stanza
10、,with a regular tetrameter(四步音节).第7页，共15页。Significancev1.Freneau is the first American-born poet,and he cast his eyes over natural surrounding of this new continent.v2.the wild honey suckle,instead of the daffodil or rose,becomes the depiction;the word“wild”conveys the fresh perception of the natura
11、l scenes of the new continent.v3.in the poem,the wild honey suckle was born,bloomed and then declined to repose,from which the poet feels doubt about the Puritan belief that they were the selects of God,and to be arranged on the abundant land.And the poet thinks people should wake up from the fantas
12、y and be more respectful to natural law.第8页，共15页。Early Romantic Poetry Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)vBorn in Boston/entered university of Virginia,gamble and dismissed from school/went to west point and dismissed because of misbehavior/then make a living by editing some magazines or journals/At 27,marr
13、ied his 13 year old cousin,who died in 1847/most controversial writer,vRepresentative poetic works:“To Helen”“The Raven”“The City in the Sea”“Annabel Lee”第9页，共15页。Annabel Lee vIt was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LE
14、E;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.v I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea;But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee;With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.第10页，共15页。vAnd this w
15、as the reason that,long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud,chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulcherIn this kingdom by the sea.vThe angels,not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!-t
16、hat was the reason(as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.第11页，共15页。vBut our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,
17、Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.vFor the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so,all the night-tide,I lie down
18、by the sideOf my darling,my darling,my life and my bride,In the sepulcher there by the sea-In her tomb by the sounding sea.第12页，共15页。Analysis vStanza 1:the pretty girl Annabel Lee used to live in a kingdom by the seaside.Before her death,the only thing in her heart was to live or to be loved by me.v
19、Stanza 2:our love was so strong and beautiful that angels in heaven would envy us.vStanza 3:my Annabel Lee was taken away from me.The lovers were mercilessly separated by superpower.vStanza 4:repeat the content of stanza 3.vStanza 5:our love must be the strongest,the most lasting one in human histor
20、y,and also the most sensible one in the world.Though the evil wind and highborn kinsman are powerful to take Annabel Lee away,they are never able to take her soul away from me.Our love is more powerful than death.vStanza 6:My Annabel Lee has gone to heaven,but the moon can remind me of bright face i
21、n my dreams and from the stars I can see her bright eyes.Were together and nothing can separate us,neither the human power nor the God of death is possible.第13页，共15页。Analysis vThis is the last poetic work by Poe/regarded as the best of Poe s poemsvThis poem is dedicated to the memory of his wife(Vir
22、ginia Clemm)vPoe did not use her real name or the real background.Instead,he used an imagined“kingdom by the sea”vPoe used this imagine kingdom,and this add some mythical&fabulous color to their love;and also implies that such kind of true love exists nowhere else but in a mythical kingdom,which sho
23、ws his resentment to reality.vThe repetition of the/i:/sound is rhythmically written with the same sound of Annabel Lee/li:/,which shows the melancholy atmosphere that weaves into the poem.This suggests the poets love for Annabel Lee is omnipresent from the beginning to the end.第14页，共15页。Poes Aesthe
24、tic Theoryv“Beauty is the sole purpose of the poem”.Poetry must concern itself with“supernal beauty”vThe immediate object of poetry is pleasure,not truth.The function of poetry is not to summarize,nor interprete earthly experiences,but to create a mood in which the soul soars.vMelancholy(忧郁)is the most legitimate of all the poetic tones.Topics like sickness,abnormal love,or the death of a beautiful women are the most poetic topics.vThe length of writing:about 100 lines,reader can be well engaged in it without any interruption.第15页，共15页。
