Literature 2 Taylor Swift & William Wordsworth

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Literature 1

Road Map

English literature - Lesson 2

Focus:

Taylor Swift  & William Wordsworth

- literary tools

- The Romantics

Lesson goal

At the end of this class you are able to:

• define the Romantic movement in literature;
• discuss Swift's and Wordsword's contexts;
• analyse a poem;
• understand Swift's song and Wordsworth's poem and discuss their relevance;
• discuss at least three of the literary tools used in them.
• create a 4-line poem, using 2 literary tools.

Periods of British Literature

Renaissance = also called 'Early Modern Period'

Romanticism

• focus on personal, unique experience;
• focus on individual and their feelings.

Wordsworth: poetry is 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling'

Romanticism

• Emphasis on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive, unspoilt view of the world, nature.
• Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, Keats, Byron

Paintings: William Turner

The Romantic Sublime

The idea that there was some kind of ultimate truth in nature. By being in nature you could get to ‘the heart of things’ as nature was thought to be capable of generating the strongest sensations in the people experiencing it. 

William Wordsworth 

(1770 - 1850)

Born in Cockermouth 

French Revolution

'The Lake Poets' 

With Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads

Taylor Swift (1989 - now)

(1989 - now)

Context

• Taylor Swift 
• 1989 - now
• Singer-song writer 
• Folklore -  2020
• Covid 19
• Influenced by the Romantics

Literary tools

Reread 'The Lakes' by Taylor Swift

Reread 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' by Wordsworth

Understand their meaning

Read the literary tools section in your hand-out.

Identify three of them in both song and poem and discuss their effects. 

The Lakes

Jack Antonoff & Taylor Swift, 2020 (Folkore)

Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?

I'm not cut out for all these cynical clones

These hunters with cell phones

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die

I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

I'm setting off, but not without my muse

What should be over burrowed under my skin?

In heart-stopping waves of hurt

I've come too far to watch some name-dropping sleaze

Tell me what are my words worth

elegies - eulogise = assonance

rhetorical question: Is it romantic ....me?

Romantic - homophone for Romantics (the poets), romantic as in having feelings of love for someone else, romantic as in having an idealised view of the past.

alliteration: peaks, perfect, place

words worth = allusion to Wordsworth, the man himself.

heart-stopping waves of hurt =metaphor

rhyme: clones, phones, cry, die, hurt, worth

simile: Windemere peaks look like the perfect place to cry.

anaphora: I want ... I want .. I want

I wandered lonely as a cloud A

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, B

When all at once I saw a crowd, A

A host, of golden daffodils;B

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, C

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. C

Continuous as the stars that shine D

And twinkle on the milky way, E

They stretched in never-ending line D

Along the margin of a bay: E

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, F

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. F

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

I wandered lonely as a cloud - simile

daffodils are fluttering and dancing - personification

enjambement 

what wealth - alliteration

assonance - Ten thousand saw I at a glance and They stretched in never-ending

metaphor: inward eye - metaphor for memory of the daffodils. 

 Relevance

Both poem and song deal with seeking and finding an escape from everyday life in one way or another. What is your preferred way of dealing with dark moods/sad thoughts or events that have occurred in your life? If you have never experienced anything difficult, think of ways in which you might deal with this.

In your notebook, write a paragraph on how you would deal/have dealt with tough situations in life and how that compares to what Swift describes in her song or what Wordsworth says in his poem. Cite relevant examples from the text of your choice. Use between 30 and 50 words.

 Create

Write your second reading diary entry on both song and poem.

Write a short poem of at least 4 lines on the topic of escaping everyday life. Use at least two literary tools from the list on p. 9 and 10.

Lesson goal

At the end of this class you are able to:

• define the Romantic movement in literature;
• discuss Swift's and Wordsword's contexts;
• analyse a poem;
• understand Swift's song and Wordsworth's poem and discuss their relevance;
• discuss at least three of the literary tools used in them.
• create a 4-line poem, using 2 literary tools.