As have other of works by Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712) has inspired many full-length books of critical consideration, so important was its effect upon Pope, his readership, the genre of poetry, and Pope’s legacy. The new… Read More ›
Literature
Analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Regained
Written in four books, John Milton’s Paradise Regained (1671) tells the story of Christ’s temptation by Satan and ultimate victory, using as a historical basis the version of the tale found in the Gospel of Luke. Milton preferred Luke’s version… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe
Although a first authorized published edition of Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S. by John Dryden appeared in Miscellaney Poems in 1684, it had been circulated in unapproved versions since 1682. Critics cannot pinpoint the year… Read More ›
Analysis of John Milton’s Lycidas
John Milton had known Edward King at Cambridge and wrote Lycidas (1638) as an elegy for his friend’s death. When word arrived that King had drowned in the Irish Sea returning to Dublin in 1637, his many friends were strongly… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther
John Dryden wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687) in order to contribute to an ongoing dispute between Protestant and Catholic factions. While his exact date of conversion from devotion to the Church of England to Catholicism remains uncertain, it… Read More ›
Analysis of John Donne’s The Good Morrow
The Good Morrow was first published in John Donne’s posthumous collection Songs and Sonnets (1633) and ranks among his best known love poems. Critics have developed various theories regarding the poem’s symbolism, many relating to the Platonic theory of love…. Read More ›
Analysis of John Donne’s Go and Catch a Falling Star
John Donne enforced a tight structure on his song Go and Catch a Falling Star (1630), with three stanzas each containing sestets with a rhyme scheme of ababcc and concluding with a rhyming triplet. That controlled format contrasts with the… Read More ›
Analysis of John Donne’s The Flea
Most critics agree that John Donne wrote The Flea during his youth, before becoming an ordained minister. It was first published as part of Songs and Sonnets in a posthumous collection that appeared in 1630, 1635, 1650, and 1669. As… Read More ›
Analysis of Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Alexander Pope spent some time considering the choice of form for his late-career rebuttal of those who had most demeaned him in print. He selected a poetic letter, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), which later critics would deem a rhetorical… Read More ›
Analysis of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray may have begun writing Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as early as 1746. He discarded four stanzas of an early version, which were probably read by his friend Horace Walpole, and planned to title the work simply… Read More ›
Analysis of John Donne’s The Canonization
Critics basically agree to divide John Donne’s writing into two groups related to his life stages, his romantic, or love, poetry in the stage dating prior to 1615, and the spiritual poetry emanating from the time of his ordination in… Read More ›
Analysis of John Donne’s Batter My Heart
Critics feel fairly certain that one group of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets was published in 1633, a collection that included “Batter My Heart,” sometimes listed as “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God.” It gained fame as a prime example of… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast
John Dryden wrote his second ode (1697) in celebration of St. Cecilia’s Day, Alexander’s Feast; Or the Power of Music, 10 years after his first tribute, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. Set to music by Jeremiah Clarke, it became… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis
With Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 John Dryden published his first major nondramatic poem, and his last major poem utilizing the heroic quatrain format. In addition to its subtitle, The Year of Wonders, 1666, the work contained an… Read More ›
Analysis of George Herbert’s Affliction
George Herbert wrote five “Affliction” poems, all contained in his collection The Temple. The first of the series, while not essentially autobiographical, did grow from Herbert’s life and experiences. While the poem begins with positive aspects of the speaker’s life,… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden’s publication of Absalom and Achitophel (1681) had a specific political motivation. He wrote the poem during the threat of revolution in England, connected to the so-called Popish plot and the move to exclude the reigning King Charles II’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s There’s a certain Slant of light
When Mabel Loomis Todd published this poem in the 1890 Poems under the rubric of nature poems, she set a precedent that would be followed by editors for more than half a century. Todd may have seen it as a… Read More ›
Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death
One of Dickinson’s most famous and widely discussed poems, Fr 479 appeared in the first 1890 edition of her poems, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson had given it the inappropriate title “The Chariot,” thinking, perhaps,… Read More ›
Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Religion and Literature
Another essay from that period in Eliot’s career as a social and literary critic when he was staking out the parameters of his conservative views, Religion and Literature was originally from a lecture organized by the Reverend V. A. Demant… Read More ›
Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Literature of Politics
First presented on April 19, 1955, as a lecture at a literary luncheon organized by the London Conservative Union, The Literature of Politics was later collected in Eliot’s last collection of prose, To Criticize the Critic, which was published posthumously… Read More ›
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