Little Fugue analysis

Themes

• Parental/family relationships
• Death
• Memory (or lack of it)

Lexis

• Fugue (will explain later)
• Beethoven - German pianist & composer in the transition between the classical & romantic period
• A single movement piece written by Beethoven for a string quintet, which makes use of a double fugue
• Gothic - Barbarous & uncivilised
• Delicatessen - specialised food stores
• Prussian - relating to the Kingdom of Prussia (a German kingdom between 1701 & 1918)

Imagery

• Imagery of death through "yew", colour imagery of black & white, oblivion through blindness
• Imagery of senses - blindness, deafness (Beethoven), synaesthesia of "I see your voice" to suggest difficulty in remembering & inability to communicate with father
• German imagery "Gothic" "Great War" "sausages"
• Dark, troubling, overwhelming imagery in middle verses - overwhelming past dictating future

Syntax

• Unordered, fragmented use of caesura, enjambment & end-stopped lines reinforces fragmented thoughts of narrator

Form

• Quatrane - ballad form - implies control

Rhyme

• Free verse…