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Summary ENG210 LECTURE NOTES ROY CAMPBELL POETRY
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IN DEPTH GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING CAMPBELL'S POETRY
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English 210Roy Campbell Poetry
Lecture 1:
- Campbell focused on regeneration & new beginnings in his poems
- Found source of energy in nature
- Power & beauty in nature is bred from hardships
- 1920s SA context
1. The Flaming Terrapin:
- Tells story of Noah’s Arc being towed by a giant turtle
- Verbs convey energy
[Part 4]
- Begins with rejection of English poetry: not immediately in touch with life
- Modernist English poets have lost vigor in writing poetry: “Far be the bookish Muses” “pale”
- “My task demands a virgin muse to string”: Campbell compares his poetry to musical
instrument that brings forth a new kind of tune, a new kind of African poetry
- Bold & energetic nature of African poetry he proposes as substitute for English poetry
- Campbell attempts to inject African world into sunlessness of English modernist culture:
“Nourished on sunlight in a world of stone”
- “Helicon”: European poetic inspiration (Campbell wants to establish new version of this figure
from African continent)
- “Native sun” = African sun
- Image of militant African force: “armed and crested with a sable plume”
- “Write what I say in red corroding flame”: acids have corrosive effect that strips away old, same
effect as Campbell’s poetry
2. The Zebras:
- Form: sonnet (traditional structure), iambic pentameter (all lines are 10 syllables)
- Celebration of natural world
- Opening handles zebras that emerge from dark woods: menace & danger
- Wild animal life: energy, freedom, delight, generosity, beauty, eroticism
- Zebras = symbol of vigor
- Beauty & danger coexist in African wild
- Unknown & mysterious is associated with danger
- Evokes senses: imagery of light, colour, smell, movement
THIS IS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF JENNA ROSE LOPES- DO NOT ILLEGALLY DISTRIBUTE.
(SUMMARIES MADE USING ENG 210 LECTURES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA: INTELLECTUAL
CREDIT IS DUE TO THE LECTURERS OF THIS MODULE.)
, - Packed with figurative language (metaphor): rays of sunlight are ropes, strings of musical
instruments, flowers are pools of water, zebra stripes are electric bars, steaming breath is
smoke & fire
- “the zebras draw the dawn across the day”: rewrite of Greek myth where sun is drawn by
chariot, sun’s rays are imagined as ropes; rewriting of European tradition in African terms
- Stripes on zebras: imagined as strings of musical instrument, as well as electric bars indicating
vibrating with electric current
- Breath of zebras in early morning: breath is in such dense clouds that they wade through them
like smoke “the smolder round their feet in drifting fumes”
- Light imagery: fire, burning (links back to his poetry that will be “red corroding flame”)
- “dove-like voice”: suggests kind of beauty & softness
- Immediately beauty is combined with energy “the stallion”
- “volted”: another electricity image to convey energy, Campbell has used noun to turn it into
verb, in this way charging poetry with force
- Beauty is always associated with power & vibrance in Campbell’s poetry
- “trampled lilies”: sexual force, zebras mating
- Nature is also sensual & erotic; part of energy & force
- Overall effect: rich, dense, vivid, forceful, but richness is kept under tight control which is
evident in poem’s traditional & structured form
- Paradox: content of poem is new & African, form is traditional
- Energy & force is tightly controlled: evident in rhyme scheme= intricate
3. The Sisters
- Form: strict rhyme scheme (ABAB) & rhythm (pentameter)
- Expansion on The Zebras in 2 ways: energy & force has sensual, sexual, erotic component;
introduces sense of humanism in animal world
- Animal & human fused: girls are 1 with horses
- Sensuous imagery: fire, smoke, colour, movement
- Sensuality: physical/ sexual desire
- Power & beauty
- Celebrating physical world charged with energy & passion
- Dream-like & disturbing: danger
- Paradox of pleasure & pain fused
- “stealthy prowling hands”: add to erotic drive of poem, idea that illicit happening
- Continuities: burning, fire, smoldering (energy & passion)
4. Horses on the Camargue:
- South of France: white wild horses
- Emblem of natural wildness, freedom, energy
- Parallels The Zebras in opening: image of darkness (represents danger)
- World of dread evokes Europe that Campbell found after WW1, where English writers were
trying to engage with this shattered world to produce poetry
- Out of world of dread he retrieves natural harmony: “harmony of hooves”
THIS IS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF JENNA ROSE LOPES- DO NOT ILLEGALLY DISTRIBUTE.
(SUMMARIES MADE USING ENG 210 LECTURES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA: INTELLECTUAL
CREDIT IS DUE TO THE LECTURERS OF THIS MODULE.)
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