'The cold earth slept below' = Death

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  • 'The cold earth slept below' = Death
    • Language
      • "Beloved" = only example of tenderness, otherwise detached
        • Gloomy, morbid, melodramatic
      • "Lips pale" death imagery
        • Thematic link
          • Death is flowing all around him. Death prevails in life
          • Grief process of detachment and desensitisation of Harriet's death
            • Death of Shelley's pregnant first wife Harriet by deliberate drowning in Hyde Park
              • Indicted Percy in suicide note
          • Atheistic exploration of death
            • Shelley = expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet on atheism
        • Pale from the moon? Or death?
        • Moon = symbol of femininity
        • Nature is reclaiming what is rightfully hers
        • Lexical field of cold/death
          • Light imagery
      • "Fen-fire's beam". Leads travellers astray as poet is being led astray
      • "Slept" - personified, latent, dormant
    • Structure
      • X4 Sestets
      • Slant rhymes = speaker's dejection and confusion
    • Interpretations
      • Autobiographical
        • Death of pregnant Harriet, his first wife
          • Drowned herself in Hyde Park
          • Indicted Shelley in her suicide note
        • Date changed by Mary Shelley. Not intended to be published???
    • Thematic link
      • Death is flowing all around him. Death prevails in life
      • Grief process of detachment and desensitisation of Harriet's death
        • Death of Shelley's pregnant first wife Harriet by deliberate drowning in Hyde Park
          • Indicted Percy in suicide note
      • Atheistic exploration of death
        • Shelley = expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet on atheism

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