Nature

Created by: R_S_E
Created on: 30-03-14 12:51

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Mixed metaphor of the clouds as rocks and desert enshrouding the sky, death? Nature is dangerous
Harshness of nature emphasising the power it has over people
"desolate", "enshroud", "threatening", "imprisonment", "bellowing", "din", "blustering"
- Harshness of nature emphasising the power it has over people
LOVE / ADMIRATION OF NATURE
- SUMMER TINTS
  - ‘When Summer’s mellowing pencil sweeps his shade’
    - Personification / metaphor of summer drawing nature = beauty / artistry
    - Sibilance conveys the flow of the art / flow of care free nature
  - ‘So sweet that shepherds from their bowers have crept / And stood delighted musing o’er the scene’
    - Romantic idea (register), poet can enjoy it without violating it
    - 'Crept' so as not to disturb - suggests respect
  - ‘While over the face of nature softly swept’
    - Painting metaphor: wind personified as painting a personified face of nature
  - Colour imagery related to art = admiration / love of nature's creation
- SONNET: 'THE BARN DOOR IS OPEN'
  - "The hen's in the dust and the hog's in the dirt, / The mower is busy and stripped in his shirt'
    - Alliteration emphasising the natural and uninterrupted environment
    - Rhyming couplet emphasising the harmony between nature and humans
  - 'The maid's in the meadow and a-making the hay; / The ducks are a feeding and running about'
    - Alliteration showing the repetitive and simple action - working closely with nature
    - Parallel phrasing conveying how humans and animals can live in close proximity
- THE ANTS
  - ‘ A swarm flocks round to help their fellow men’
    - ants are personifies do show that they have a superior society where all are equals and help, ‘swarm’ portraying their activity
  - ‘their ways / prove they have kings and laws’
    - metaphor for their order, they have a human like society which is to be admired
  - ‘Too fine for us to hear’
    - superior to us, we cannot understand their system because it is so much better than ours it is beyond our grasp
- EMMONSALES HEATH
  - ‘Creation’s steps one’s wandering meets / untouched by those of man’
    - Personification / religious worship of nature, in harmony with nature as they wander
  - ‘In thy wild garb of other times’ / Still wildly threads its lawless bounds'
    - personification, ancient, typical Romantic idea of untamed land / paradox of clothed nature
    - enjambment emphasises the long life of nature, it isn’t constrained in any way
  - ‘And blooms that love what man forgets’
    - Personification - nature loves what man doesn't interfere with
  - ‘Stern Industry with stubborn pride / And wants unsatisfied’
    - personification as an enemy of nature, enjambment emphasises, nature is stopping expansion
- “hides beneath the rotten hedge”
  - Mysterious, protects itself, shy, builds homes in difficult conditions
- SONNET: 'I FOUND A BALL OF GRASS AMONG THE HAY'
  - ‘She found her nest again among the hay’
    - Admiration for the way they rebuild despite human interference
  - ‘The water o’er pebbles scarce could run / And borad old cesspools glittered in the son’
    - Admiration for nature’s beauty
Nature
- Conflict with Nature
  - THE FODDERING BOY
    - ‘crumping snows’
      - onomatopoeia emphasises the actions the boy must take to fight the cold environment
    - ‘And shakes the lodging snows from off his clothes’
      - personification of snow trying to stop him from working
    - ‘Then faces it again – and seeks the stack’
      - I n conflict with the weather to complete his job - personifies the weather (emphasised through enjambment - makes him pause)
      - alliteration for boy’s forceful actions to fight the conditions
    - ‘And brawls to call the staring cattle round’
      - Angry shout suggesting an antagonistic relationship with nature
      - Indifference of nature to the boy’s suffering, don’t care that he is cold
  - GIPSY CAMP
    - ‘The Gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up’
      - Assonance = physical discomfort from the cold
    - ‘Beneath the oak which breaks away the wind’
      - CONTRAST - here nature is a protector
    - "Half hid in snow"
      - Alliteration = battle through nature
      - Cushioning their home? (soft sound)
  - St. MARTIN'S EVE
    - "Huge-seeming rocks and deserts now enshroud"
      - Mixed metaphor of the clouds as rocks and desert enshrouding the sky, death? Nature is dangerous
    - "Winter's imprisonment is all begun"
      - Metaphor for entrapment indoors from harsh nature - nature can control the actions of people
    - "desolate", "enshroud", "threatening", "imprisonment", "bellowing", "din", "blustering"
    - "Rude winds... ill forsee... Who clingeth now to hope like shipwrecked folks at sea"
      - Nature didn't anticipate the wind damaging the landscape - power surprised itself
      - Simile of nature as shipwrecked at sea - winter is a harsh and powerful time that is a danger even to nature
  - SONNET: 'I FOUND A BALL OF GRASS AMONG THE HAY'
    - ‘With all her young ones hanging at her teats / She looked so odd and so grotesque to me’
      - Clare is not romanticising his account, rather telling it what as it is suggesting nature is more primitive than a source of spiritual inspiration
    - "I ran and wondered what a thing could be"
      - doesn’t understand, wants knowledge
  - SONNET: THE HEDGEHOG
    - Social Protest
      - ‘And eat what dogs refuse’
        Desperate position the gypsies are in which is emphasised the repetition of verbs like ‘hunt/savage’ which further suggest their poverty
      - ‘Nibble their fleshy teats and make them dry’
        kind of hyperbole exaggerating the desperate situation the gypsies are in to show their extreme hunger and thirst
    - “I’ve seen it in their camps; they call it sweet,/Though black and bitter and unsavoury meat”
      - admonition or disbelief at the lengths humans can go in their exploitation of nature
    - "It rolls up like a ball, a shapeless hog"
      - caesura to mark the action, survival instinct
      - LOVE / ADMIRATION OF NATURE
        SUMMER TINTS
        ‘When Summer’s mellowing pencil sweeps his shade’
        Personification / metaphor of summer drawing nature = beauty / artistry
        
        Sibilance conveys the flow of the art / flow of care free nature
        
        ‘So sweet that shepherds from their bowers have crept / And stood delighted musing o’er the scene’
        Romantic idea (register), poet can enjoy it without violating it
        
        'Crept' so as not to disturb - suggests respect
        
        ‘While over the face of nature softly swept’
        Painting metaphor: wind personified as painting a personified face of nature
        
        Colour imagery related to art = admiration / love of nature's creation
        
        SONNET: 'THE BARN DOOR IS OPEN'
        "The hen's in the dust and the hog's in the dirt, / The mower is busy and stripped in his shirt'
        Alliteration emphasising the natural and uninterrupted environment
        
        Rhyming couplet emphasising the harmony between nature and humans
        
        'The maid's in the meadow and a-making the hay; / The ducks are a feeding and running about'
        Alliteration showing the repetitive and simple action - working closely with nature
        
        Parallel phrasing conveying how humans and animals can live in close proximity
        
        THE ANTS
        ‘ A swarm flocks round to help their fellow men’
        ants are personifies do show that they have a superior society where all are equals and help, ‘swarm’ portraying their activity
        
        ‘their ways / prove they have kings and laws’
        metaphor for their order, they have a human like society which is to be admired
        
        ‘Too fine for us to hear’
        superior to us, we cannot understand their system because it is so much better than ours it is beyond our grasp
        
        EMMONSALES HEATH
        ‘Creation’s steps one’s wandering meets / untouched by those of man’
        Personification / religious worship of nature, in harmony with nature as they wander
        
        ‘In thy wild garb of other times’ / Still wildly threads its lawless bounds'
        personification, ancient, typical Romantic idea of untamed land / paradox of clothed nature
        
        enjambment emphasises the long life of nature, it isn’t constrained in any way
        
        ‘And blooms that love what man forgets’
        Personification - nature loves what man doesn't interfere with
        
        ‘Stern Industry with stubborn pride / And wants unsatisfied’
        personification as an enemy of nature, enjambment emphasises, nature is stopping expansion
        
        “hides beneath the rotten hedge”
        Mysterious, protects itself, shy, builds homes in difficult conditions
        
        SONNET: 'I FOUND A BALL OF GRASS AMONG THE HAY'
        ‘She found her nest again among the hay’
        Admiration for the way they rebuild despite human interference
        
        ‘The water o’er pebbles scarce could run / And borad old cesspools glittered in the son’
        Admiration for nature’s beauty
    - Juxtaposing the hedgehog’s timidity ‘hides’ ‘creeps away’ with the violent actions of the gypsies ‘hunt the field’ ‘hunt them out’ stresses the conflict and vulnerability of the hedgehog
- Mystery of Nature
  - THE LANDRAIL
    - “we know”, “we hear”, men “wonder” and “guess”
      - Repeated verbs of menatal activity suggest that the bird is beyond human power
    - ‘And now I hear it in the grass… And now ‘tis in the grain’
      - Aural imagery is juxtaposed with visual imagery of physical movement ‘peep / look’ which is used by Clare to describe the vain efforts of humans to find the bird
      - Like God the bird is omnipresent
    - ‘’Tis like a fancy everywhere, A sort of living doubt’
      - symbolic of God, you can never see it but you must trust that it exists
  - SUMMER MOODS
    - ‘dewy thorn’
      - paradoxical image of nature both being soft and sharp
    - ‘like voices underground’
      - dead?
    - I love to muse o’er meadows newly mown’
      - Alliteration & assonance = soft atmosphere created with seductive olfactory image, muse is on the Romantic register
    - Right glad to meet the evening’s dewy veil’
      - Feminine softness / seductiveness of death/darkness, relief to meet them
    - ‘The fairy like and seldom-seen landrail’
      - Simile - almost mythical = mystery
    - ‘hid as thoughts unborn’
      - Quail is a simile for unconscious thoughts which are ambiguous as either hopes or anxieties
  - SONNET: 'I FOUND A BALL OF GRASS AMONG THE HAY'
    - ‘With all her young ones hanging at her teats / She looked so odd and so grotesque to me’
      - Clare is not romanticising his account, rather telling it what as it is suggesting nature is more primitive than a source of spiritual inspiration
    - "I ran and wondered what a thing could be"
      - doesn’t understand, wants knowledge

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Nature

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