20 Detailed summary sheets | Christina Rossetti poems | Analysis, structure, themes, links, context and critics
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Kurs
Unit 1 - poetry
Hochschule
WJEC
Detailed summary sheets of various Christina Rossetti poems.
These include a brief summary of the poem, analysis of the lines, structure and themes, relevant contexts and critics, and links to her other poems.
There are summary sheets for the following 20 poems:
- Have you forgotten?
- Sweet ...
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?
Summary The speaker reminisces on one summer night spent with a lover, who has
forgotten the memory, thus representing a failed or one-sided relationship.
Title ‘Have you forgotten?’ accusatory: immediately assumes they have forgotten as
opposed to asking ‘do you remember?’
Analysis - ‘One Summer night’ capitalisation of summer shows the significance of
the memory. ‘Night’ suggests a secretive, concealed atmosphere.
- ‘While warm winds hummed to us a sleepy tune’ alliterative w’s and
elongated vowels: slowness and gentleness, reflecting a warm night.
- ‘Praised both light and darkness; not embarrassed yet not quite at ease’
contradicting images and sense of awkwardness, suggests ideas of
young love but also foreshadows uncertainty in the relationship.
- ‘Soon / You blushed, and seemed to doubt’ combines enjambment and
caesura conveying and awkward, choppy rhythm as opposed to the
smooth slowness at the beginning. Again suggests inexperienced youth
but may also imply the person is uncertain about their feelings.
- ‘We wandered far back and took no note of time’ sense of timelessness,
freedom, carelessness, reinforcing idea of young love.
- ‘Church bells: we turned hastily’ symbolises an abrupt rejection of
marriage, the colon reinforces the hastiness as opposed to a full stop
- ‘A second chime’ could suggest death; a knell. Rossetti ties ideas of
marriage and death together.
- ‘But what’ signals the volta and a change in tone, from somewhat wistful
and reminiscent, to accusatory and bitter.
- ‘Ah how then is it I cannot forget’ frustrated tone: the lover has forgotten
but the speaker cannot forget.
- The poem starts with ‘we’ and ends with ‘you’ and ‘I’, illustrating the
distance between the characters.
Structure - Petrarchan sonnet: 14 lines, follows an ABBA rhyme scheme (until line 11
which illustrates the change in relationship). The volta occurs in the last
two lines, indicated by the conjunction ‘but’.
- Iambic pentameter: spoken rhythm, directly addressing.
Themes - Love: disappointing: one-sided. Hints at a link between love and death.
- Disappointment: of a failed relationship, frustration of a memory that
cannot be forgotten.
- Memory: at first a sweet nostalgia, but appears to turn sour by the end.
Links - Echo: a different type of lost love - yearning for memory to become reality
as opposed to frustration of remembering.
- Amor Mundi: describes being with a lover in summer, portraying a
relaxed, carefree relationship, but turns to a darker, bitter tone by the
end, linking love with death and regret.
Context - Rossetti’s failed relationships: three rejected proposals, although she had
a 2-year engagement with James Collinson: could have inspired the
abrupt turn away from marriage and frustration that she cannot forget.
- Rossetti’s views on marriage: subtly links it to death, and may be
presenting the relationship as childish and foolish.
Critics - Dr Ross Wilson: ‘Rossetti is the poet of disappointment’. Portrays the
relationship romantically at first: a warm summer night, the moon and
timelessness, suggesting disappointment.
- Lars Wallner: Rossetti’s love poems express ‘the pain of love and nothing
else’. Describes the bitterness and frustration of remembering a failed
relationship.
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