PLASTIC Poetry Notes – GCSE English Literature Past and Present: Poetry Anthology – Love and Relationships – Sonnet 29, P.10

Poetic devices and their effects – form (ballad,

sonnet, free verse, dramatic monologue), alliteration,

rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia,

Some ryhyming couplets and some alternate rhymes Suggests variations in their togetherness

Dramatic monologue We see the poet’s very personal take on their link with their lover

Staccato rhythm with lots of caesura Mirrors the slow merging process of her thoughts around him. Slow, methodical.

Language and its effects – what sort of words are in

the poem? Violent, loving, colloquial, archaic, semantic

fields, diction, religious, romantic language

Comparatives: ‘dearer, better’ Shows that she abases herself in the face of his ‘superiority’. Attempting to flatter to win him over.

Semantic field of growth – ‘twine, bud, burst’ Sense of togetherness which builds to growth and then an eruption of love and excitement.

Imperatives – ‘renew’, ‘rustle’, ‘set’ and ‘let’ Wants things to happen deeply and quickly – forcing the issue

Alternative interpretations – Can quotations be read in

two ways for different meanings?

‘as wild vines’ Sense of natural growth in her love and actions OR a sense that her love has an uncontrollable quality and cannot be tamed.

‘put out broad leaves’ Her thoughts become a part of him and a extension of his being OR she wants to help protect him

Structure and its effects – tonal shifts, pace, caesura, Caesura in the first few lines Suggests the slow and disrupted way in which her thoughts

are mingling with his. Sinister?

PLASTIC Poetry Notes – GCSE English Literature Past and Present: Poetry Anthology – Love and Relationships – Sonnet 29, P.10

what rhyme stresses, beginning, middle, end, repetition,

dialogue and where it happens, enjambment

Volta (Change in sonnet structure and tone around Line 8 – 9)

Happens here in Line 9 – the speaker wants the addressee to cast off the vines which she has wrapped around him as they are now one and no longer separate.

Caesura in the last line – ‘I do not think of thee – I am too near thee’

Has a tone of finality – she is confirming their closeness. Echoes the first line but changes it dramatically.

Tone and its effects – talking about moods which are

evoked and where, narrative voice

Definite tone of ‘There’s nought to see’ Suggests she has given herself over to him fully‘I will not have my thoughts instead of thee’ Stresses the speaker’s want to give up her own identity and

will.

Sense of excitement in ‘burst, shattered, everywhere’ Gleeful in destroying the notion of two people reliant on each other in order to build one person

Imagery and its effects - metaphor, simile,

personification, visual sense

‘Strong tree’ Metaphor which shows the solidity of the lover and his strength

‘rustle thy boughs’ Delicate and quasi-comic image which acts as a pre-cursor to him shedding her off

‘breathe a new air’ Metaphor for their new life together – a freshness and vigour introduced to their life.

Context – authorial, social and historical

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was, like his friend Lord Byron, one of the most important Romantic poets. He made himself unpopular with some of his ideas on subjects such as atheism, vegetarianism and the need for social and political change, which at the time were controversial.

This simple love poem shows a different, more personal side to Shelley, who usually wrote about more serious subjects such as politics.

Context of the natural qualities of love. Has similarities to the Romantic poets – love through nature. Sense of the woman as inferior and willing to give herself over wholly to the man, who is dearer, better. Happy to sublimate the self.