Gwendolyn and Cecily break gender roles. Firstly, they are very persuasive and they manipulate Jack and Algernon marriage proposal. Both women are smart, persistent and in pursuit of goals in which they take the initiative. Gwendolen follows Jack to the country and Cecily pursues Algernon from the moment she lays eyes on him.

 One important aspect that I observed in this play is the two women not are humble; Gwendolyn and Cecily are perfectly capable of outwitting their jailers. Gwendolen escapes from her dominating mother, Lady Bracknell; Cecily outwits Jack by arranging for Algernon to stay, and she also manages to escape Miss Prism to carry on a tryst with her future fiancé. Thus, they break a characteristic so common in the woman at that time. For both women, appearances and style are important. Gwendolen must have the perfect proposal performed in the correct manner and must marry a man named Ernest simply because of the name’s connotations. Cecily also craves appearance and style. She believes Jack’s brother is a wicked man, and though she has never met such a man, she thinks the idea sounds romantic. In my point of view they consider marriage as pleasure, they believe in the romantism and in the love. But, when we observed the other characters in the play, we see that they consider marriage as a business. An example of this thought, it is Lady Bracknell, when in the first act of the play, she submits jack to an investigation about his identity, his habits and his economy situation.

It is important to observe that Gwendolen and Cecily are differences, the first is a cosmopolitan and sophisticated woman, and she represents the upper class with her ideas and ideals. Cecily is middle-upper class girl. She is a romantic and ingenuous girl that creates an imaginary diary about her date with Ernest. Spite of these differences, the two women are obsessed with the idea to marry with a man called Ernest, because in the point of view of them, this name transmits security, sense of duty, and solemnity.

 I think that spite of, these women break the gender role, and they need to pretend to be equal the other women in their society. Because in that time, it was more important the appearance than the essence.

(Read the rest of this story.)

The poem “To Counter Malthus” by Margaret Avison has intextuallity with the population of Malthusian theory. Before starting to analyze the poem that I guess it is necessary make some considerations about this theory and on the work of the poet Margaret Avison. Avison’s poetry explore spiritual discovery in the form Reminiscent of the 17th century Metaphysical poets. Avison combines a sense of social concern with moral and religious values in her work.

Now let see some important points of the theory of Malthus: The English political economist and demographer  analyzed population growth and noted the potential for populations to increase rapidly, often faster than the food supply available to them.

In the poem Margaret make a dialogue with the theory of Malthus. The poet explains the theory with a poetic language and soon after the man recalls the post-modern existence of God. The word Presence in the poem represents the dialogue between man and God, even in this time where humankind tends to forget this. Another issue addressed in this poem by Margaret is human relations. She says that is impossible to teach how to live and especially how we should relate with others. In this poem we can still address the issue of distance, especially if treated in the post-modernity. We note that people who live together all the time often we do not knows the name of her partner. It is interesting to note that the territorial distance references were broken, but we fail to break the distance between the individuals.

While criticizing the theory of Malthus, Margaret Avison reflects on the consequences of that theory. And about the extermination of this desperate and hunger man able to do that other people live better. At the end of the poem Margaret returns to talk about God and here she makes a contrast using the words “Presence” and “Quantity”, as it shows that the poet in spite of that quantity of people s? To the few who believe in God and trust in its promises.

Another important point in this poem is the use of an ellipse in the last line of penultimate stanza “Concern …” using this, the poet leads the reader to have their own considerations about the message of the poem and then in the last stanza, it is the turn of Margaret show us her view on the theory of Malthus.

To Counter Malthus

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity.

1. Lampamn’s Poetry

The poetry of Archibald Lampamn has characteristics of impressionist art. His poetry is visual because as the reader reads the poem he/she can see the pictures you go being formed by the poet. Lampaman build his poem in the same way as a painter to create the images in his paintings.

1. The Rhythm in the Poem

In the poem ‘A Thunderstorm’ is a sonnet composed of 14 verses and a system of regular rhymes: ABBAACCADEFFDE. The poem has 14 rhyming lines with a regular alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables. It is called iambic pentameter. It can be shown through the scansion of the first four lines:

ˇ      /    ˇ          /     ˇ         /    ˇ        /    ˇ      /
A moment the wild swallows like a flight

ˇ     /     ˇ           /         ˇ           /          ˇ    /       ˇ     /
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

ˇ       /   ˇ          /   ˇ            /   ˇ       /      ˇ         /
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky

ˇ          /           ˇ        /       ˇ    /       ˇ        /       ˇ  /
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight

1. Analysis of the Poem

A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

In these four first lines implies the moment that the poet starts to create an image of the thunderstorm. In this case, he shows a moment before the thunderstorm. In this scene of the poem we can see two senses: the sight and the hearing. The poet sees the change of the atmosphere and he hears the sounds of the wind. Another important characteristic in this part of the poem is the movement. The movement of wind taking the leaves for the air.

The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,

In this part of the poem the poet describes the movement of the thunderstorm. Here, he starts describing the movement and the force and how the rain goes touching everything that it meets. This image is very beautiful because the reader can see the rain been formed with it all power. The colours presents in theses lines are dark colours that represents the force of the thunderstorm.

With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,

Two elements influence the presence of the sound in these verses. They are: the wild and the water. The more important sense here is the hearing. Another important fact of these lines is the manner how the thunderstorm goes more strong. For me, this part is the climax of the poem because the thunderstorm is complete now.

Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.

In the last two lines, the poet describes the consequences of the force the thunderstorm. Now with the end of the thunderstorm the nature returns for normal situation.

1. Brief Conclusion

The poetry of the Lampman is very interesting because he goes creating the pictures in his poems in many phases. In this way, the reader can see and contemplate each image, as result of this fact the great impact of the reader in the end of poem.

The poem ‘A Thunderstorm’ of Canadian poet Archibald Lampamn is a sonnet. Since it is composed of fourteen verses, that are three quartets and a couplet. This poem is composed of syllables poetic scheme called Iambic Pentameter that is a regular schedule alternating stressed syllables and unstressed syllables forming ten poetic syllables in total. The system of rhymes the sonnet is: ABBAAACCDEFGGEF.
In the first line of the poem, ‘A moment the wild swallows like a flight’, the poet describes the moment what is happening, and it uses a comparison. In the second line ‘Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high’, the poet describes the action of wind causing the leaves that have been in its path. In the third verse ‘Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky’, the poet talks about the movement of wind going the leaves to the sky. On the fourth line ‘The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight’, the poetic voice talks on the leaves and how they behave in this line there is a process of personification as the poetic voice gives actions of human beings for the leaves. So the first quartet of the sonnet ends.
In the second quartet the poet starts with the verse ‘Above the weird twilight,
the hurrying center of the storm unite’, in the first and second lines of the poem, the poetic voice describes the meeting of the leaves with the thunderstorm. In the third line: ‘And spreading with huge trunk and rolling Fringe’, the poet talks about the union with the thunderstorm and leaves spreads to other objects. In the fourth line’ Each wheeled tremendous hinge upon its own ‘, the poetic voice talks on the interaction with the thunderstorm and other elements.
In the third quartet, the poet has already started this part of the poem describing the arrival of the thunderstorm in the sky, the sounds of trees that are encountering with the thunderstorm. In the last two lines of the quartet, the poet describes how the thunderstorm acts on contact with water and it goes down the plains and it diving in a vacuum going to meet with the deserted landscape and these lines which the poet describes the early thunderstorm with the clang of thunder.
In the last two verses of the sonnet, ‘Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed, Column on column comes the drenching rain’ the poetic voice describes how the thunderstorm falls on the fields and gardens and as the rain will go drenching the plains.

The poetry of R. S. Thomas is charged of religion and nationalism. the Welsh poet brings his poems in issues related to the Welsh language. Welsh History in this poem, RS Thomas works the issue of recovery of the past for the Welsh people. The poem entitled Welsh history, in my point of view, this poem is divided into three parts: past, present and future.

The first part, the poet shows us the glorious past of the Welsh nation, its battles and its tradition war, its former kings and the importance of this past history for these people. In the second part, the poetic voice shows us the current moment lived by the Welsh people and its dependence on the past. The Welsh people not forgotten that past and therefore do not enjoy this, because if they continue to boast of its past history. Thus, this nation is stalled at the present time that happens the living poem of his victories of the past.

In the third and last part of this poem, which represented the future. the poet complains that the time has been wasted by the Welsh, because for him his people forgot to take the time to develop and progress and well. Welsh peolple lives of the crumbs of the English people. for voice poetic, the Welsh culture would die, but the second poem, there is hope for this nation and to begin this transformation, the Welsh people should forget the glorious past letting him rest in peace and live the present.

We can see this poem the presence of the repetition ‘we were the people …’, as the use of the repetition the poet divides the poem in three phases: past, present and future. In the past, the Welsh people was a fighter nation, a nation war. At present, the Welsh people is a country that lived for its legends and its history and in the future, the Welsh people is a nation that lives from the crumbs, it is a country that is leaving their culture disappear and only the Welsh people can change that history.

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