Literature Finals Reviewer

Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Victorian Age- man was the center of womans life
Ways of love
Petrarchan sonnet
First 8 lines = ABBA
Next 6 lines = ABAB
Love is immeasurable
Love that rises to the level of the spiritual
Wants to show her love day and night in the most ordinary ways
Love without conditions / love is unconditional
Love is unswerving
I shall but love thee better after death
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines by Pablo Neruda
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture
o Form of healing = writing
o Verses come spontaneously
I no longer love her, thats vertain, but how I loved her.
Las Ruinas del Corazon by Eric Gamalinda
When you marry someone who is handsome, you lose control of
the situation
Depressed
Died of melancholy
Did not actually eat Philip according to history
Kept his body for a long time
Juana- creative presentation
Relationship of Philip and Juana- unfaithful, philanderer
Juana was extremely jealous
Madly in love with the handsome prince
Could not accept the death of Philip
Ate the body piece by piece
Obsessed
Trying to merge life and death by swallowing him
poets to record architects to carve- attempts to
immortalize the love of Juana for her husband
Because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone
through the ruins of the heart- nature of love is a never
ending journey because we begin with searching for love

Musee Des Beaux Art by WH Auden

Museum of beautiful arts
Theme: suffering
Suffering is not special
Truth: suffering is common, it is an ordinary event
Suffering happens to those without audience
Bad things are often surrounded by beauty
Indifference of people in society to the pains and misery of the
people surrounding them
Breughels Icarus
About suffering they were never wrong.
After Great Pain, A formal Feeling Comes by Emily Dickinson
Anyone who feels pain attempts to look dignified
Courage and inner fortitude
The pain goes on and on
A wooden way A quartz contentment, like a stone This is the
hour of lead
o Heavy feeling
Pain must recede somehow
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
Rose- represents the longings of the character
Setting- funeral of Ms. Emily
Narrator- the whole town
House- once a rich mansion, where rich aristocrats used to live
an eyesore among eyesores.
August names- people of high stature
Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a careconsidered to be one of the important people
The whole town was in debt with her father, thus she was not
required to pay tax
Parallelism (between the house and Miss Emily)- Before ;
beautiful :: Later; ugly and worn
Miss Emilys beauty was fading
Lived only with her father
Tobe- negro servant
The man she was supposed to marry deserted her
Her fathers death caused her to feel alone
Devastated without her father

She kept the body of her father and did not prepare a funeral for
him for 3 days
Cut her hair as a sign of freedom, breaking away from her father
a foreman named Homer Barron- road construction, laborer
nobles oblige- people believed that a lady with the stature of
Miss Emily should not be in a relationship with a laborer
People were judgmental
Her actions were a disgrace to the town and to the young
because she represents the nobles
Miss Emily was desperate/desired for affection and love
Nave, lack of experience
Not cautious, careless
Cannot establish a good relationship with other men
her father which had thwarted her womans life so many
times had been too virulent and furious to die.- her father never
approved any of her suitors
Room- fir for a bridal
Theme of the room- rose
Emily slept beside the dead body of her husband for years
Naturalistic story- presents the gloomy, horrid, and depressing
aspects of life

The River Merchants Wife by Li Po

Speaker- woman
First stanza: 5/6 years old
o Playful kinds
o without dislike or suspicion- innocent
playmates/neighbors
Second stanza: 14 years old
o Timid, quiet, passive
o Married at an early age
o Man- authority
o Woman- subordinate, subservient, submissive
o Resemtent
Third stanza: 15 years old
o Got used to the married life
o I desired my dust to be mingled with yours forever and
forever and forever- forever until death
o No need for change/ new possibilities in her life
Fourth stanza: 16 years old
o Husband was constantly traveling for trade/business
o You dragged your feet when you went out.- didnt want
to leave his wife

They hurt me. I grow older.- suggests that she longs and misses
her husband
Wants to see her beloved as soon as possible

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

Urn had many embossed or frozen scenes
First scene: musician playing an instrument
o but those unheard are sweeter- those imagined by the
mind are better
Second scene: a young man attempting to kiss a young maiden
Third scene: Perpetual summer
o A summer that lasts forever
o A burning forehead, and a parching tongue
Fourth scene: sacrifice of a heifer
o Town was empty to watch the sacrificial procession
Beauty is truth, truth beauty- the beauty in art will be captured
forever
Gods Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world should reflect the grandeur and greatness of God
Beautiful world
seared, bleared, smeared, smudge- man destroys Gods
creation
nature is never spent- despite all of mans abuses, nature will
never be gone
Nature is able to renew itself because of Gods providence
Because the Holy Ghost over bent world broods with warm
breast, and with, ah bright wings.- Holy Spirit protects the world