Merchant Taylors' School

In the poem, Love’s Philosophy, Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests through imagery, personification, speech act, and the structure of the poem that love completes meaning of life since everything in nature pairs, and that without love, everything is in vain. Shelley uses nature to demonstrate the complementary pairings. “The fountains mingle with the river/ And the rivers with the ocean” connect these flowing substances together. Without one of them, there will be a gap, a lay of land separating the…

Symbolism is when a writer uses an object or sign in a physical form to represent an idea. The use of symbolism was popular in the Romantic period of literature from around 1800 to 1850. Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his use of symbolism in his stories. In 1850, Hawthorne used this technique while writing The Scarlet Letter. He did this to make the reader think deeper about the story, and to make it have a figurative meaning. A symbol doesn’t always have to be an object or a sign, in the case…

Romanticism was a movement in the 1770s that focused on the primacy of the individual, inspiration, subjectivity, and the belief in the supernatural. Transcendentalism began in the late 1820s and was influenced by other movements such as Romanticism. Romanticism and Transcendentalism can be seen throughout the poems Thanatopsis, written by William Cullen Bryant, and Song of Myself, written by Walt Whitman, respectively. The tenets of Romanticism can be seen be analyzing Thanatopsis,…

Mushrooms Poetry Analysis A quiet revolution: perhaps oxymoronic sounding upon first glance. However, this poem paints a picture of a story about exactly that, doing so through a subtle metaphor and simple but powerful visual imagery. Though a poem about the oppression of a group of people, it does not tell a story of despair. Quite the opposite, speaking instead of an uprising of a different sort, of hope as modest as mushrooms themselves. Mushrooms may seem at first like a very peculiar…

What is a poem? Poem expresses feelings, tells a story, or states a passage. In different phases of history, different forms and types of poems arises because of the environment. Ushering the Age of Enlightenment which people has discarded religious faith as the way they view the world, more and more art works focuses on common, daily, and relatable topics instead of the formal ones. Nowadays, scholars name this period as the Romantic Movement. In poetry, poets at this time emphasizes their…

In the sonnet “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” written by William Wordsworth and “The Planners” written by Boey Kim Cheng, the poets show their attitude towards the world and nature through the co-existence of man and nature as well as the loss and extinction of nature, both which help effectively convey the poets’ ideas. "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, written in iambic pentameter with ten syllables per line. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABBA ABBA CDC DCD. The poem begins with a…

The Art of Symbolism “Nature speaks in symbols and signs.” - John Greenleaf Whittier. Symbolism is a very strong and emotional way of writing. It uses symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Such as, the ocean representing freedom and desires or the red flowers in a backyard that symbolize courage and respect. In Inside Out And Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Hà the main character struggles with her family through a time of depression in their country. There is a collection of symbols that Hà and…

The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" was first published in 1923 in America by the acclaimed author Robert Frost, whom at the time was thought to have a hostile view towards nature (Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism). Imagery in literature refers to use of descriptive terms in the hopes of making the reader experience the scenery of the text in their mind. Symbols are utilized mainly works such as narratives to represent something greater than what is actually mentioned. Personification is the…

T.S. Eliot was a creative modernist poet in the early 1900s. One of his most popular writings, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, tells a story with deep imagery, symbolism, and personification. His style of writing lends the reader to reflect a sometimes obscure mental image. Upon analyzation, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” explores the world of a seemingly lost and confused well educated man. Looking to build the courage of talking to a woman, Prufrock skulks away from such…

In (love song, with two goldfish), Grace Chua presents both the build up to and the breakup of the relationship between to goldfish. However, through direct parallels with human behaviour, Chua represents the flaws on the human condition through an extended metaphor, personifying goldfish. Chua particularly represents the mindlessness of humans, our ingenious emotions and the way we feel despair. Whilst Chua is using fish, she draws direct parallels to human emotions and behaviours, through her…