Close Reading – Page 29 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella 31: ‘With how sad steps, O moon’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Sonnet 31 from Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (sometimes Astrophel and Stella), which begins with the line ‘With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies’, is one of the most famous poems in the entire sonnet sequence.

Astrophil and Stella was the first substantial sonnet sequence composed in English, in the early 1580s. Sidney (1554-86) was inspired by his unrequited love for Penelope Rich (nee Devereux), who was offered to him as a potential wife a few years before. Sidney turned her down, she married Lord Robert Rich, and Sidney promptly realised he was in love with her.

A Short Analysis of Andrew Marvell’s ‘Bermudas’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Fancy a voice to a tropical paradise? Andrew Marvell (1621-78) provides just the poem in ‘Bermudas’. Marvell is one of the most critically acclaimed and studied poets of the seventeenth century, and his work is often associated with the Metaphysical Poets. In this post we’re going to offer a brief summary and analysis of ‘Bermudas’, one of his finest poems, which is written in tetrameter rhyming couplets.

Bermudas

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th’ocean’s bosom unespied,
From a small boat, that row’d along,
The list’ning winds receiv’d this song.
‘What should we do but sing his praise
That led us through the wat’ry maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?

A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hysteria’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) published his first collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. This slim volume included poems written in a wide variety of styles and modes, from vers libre to Shakespearean blank verse, from dramatic monologues to short lyrics. The volume also included one prose poem, ‘Hysteria’, which T. S. Eliot had written in November 1915. Below we offer some notes towards an analysis of ‘Hysteria’, which you can read here.

A Short Analysis of Philip Larkin’s ‘Toads’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Toads’ is one of Philip Larkin’s most famous poems. When asked later in an interview how he came up with the idea for the toad as a metaphor for work, Larkin replied, ‘Sheer genius.’ He probably had his tongue in his cheek when he said this, but it is an inspired and instantly memorable analogy. Larkin wrote ‘Toads’ in 1954, and it was published a year later in his second collection, The Less Deceived.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4: ‘Unthrifty loveliness’

A critical reading of a Shakespeare sonnet

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4 sees the Bard analysing the Fair Youth’s refusal to have children from a slightly different perspective, using the metaphor of economic and financial activity. In what follows, we analyse Sonnet 4 (‘Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend …’) in terms of its images of money and spending, as a way of elucidating its meaning.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?