The poem ‘Church Going’ represents the thoughts of the poet as he enters a church. He is an agnostic but accepts the importance of religion in human culture. In the poem, the speaker questions the utility of churches and hence religion in our life and also seems to make anContinue Reading
The poem ‘Church Going’ represents the thoughts of the poet as he enters a church. He is an agnostic but accepts the importance of religion in human culture. In the poem, the speaker questions the utility of churches and hence religion in our life and also seems to make anContinue Reading
An aubade, deriving from the medieval French word for dawn, is a lyric poem with no prescribed form in which the poet typically celebrates the beauty of his mistress as the sun rises and he must leave her bed: John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” is a well-known example. Philip Larkin’sContinue Reading
An “aubade” is a morning love song (it is the opposite of a serenade, which takes place in the evening). Sometimes it is written about when lover’s separate at dawn. Or, as in this poem, a song or poem announcing dawn; the lover in this scenario is death, when theContinue Reading
Philip Larkin (1922–1985) was one of the most significant English poets of the 20th century, renowned for his poignant, ironic, and often melancholic reflections on modern life. Born in Coventry, England, Larkin studied at Oxford University and later became a librarian, a profession he held for over three decades atContinue Reading
John Keats (1795–1821) was one of the leading figures of the second generation of English Romantic poets, alongside Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Though his literary career was brief—spanning only about six years—Keats produced a body of work that has become a cornerstone of English poetry, celebrated for itsContinue Reading
In Hardy’s novel chance and coincidence play very vital and dominating role in determining the destiny of the character. In his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge too, there are a series of chances and coincidences throughout the whole plot structure. He is guided by his fate in every step ofContinue Reading
In The Mayor of Casterbridge there are two very strong forces working – sometimes together, sometimes regardless of each other. On the one hand this is predestination, defined by the characters own feature which are peculiar to each character; on the other hand this is chance which is external forContinue Reading
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing the poet’s grief at a loss. This form of poetryContinue Reading
Thomas Gray (1716–1771) was one of the most important English poets of the 18th century, best known for his elegiac and reflective verse. Born in London, he was educated at Eton College and later at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Though he lived a quiet and scholarly life, his literary output left aContinue Reading
