British Literature/ poetry - Essay Example

[Techer's British Literature/ poetry 8) Compare and contrast Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." What similarities and differences do you noteIn their poems "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, both Marvell and Ralegh look at perhaps the most cliched topic of poetry: 'love'. Through these poems Marvell and Ralegh successfully put forward their original and unique thoughts and feelings on the topic.Divided into three sections, "To His Coy Mistress" deals with the sexual tension of the male character and narrator of the poem, and his courting of the female character and audience of the poem, his 'coy mistress'.

Amongst the emotion and passion conveyed by the male voice, the overall tone is one of melancholy and desperation, rather than the joy one would expect from a poem concerning love. While Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" tells another story of love with little different style where doubt is challenging the spirit of love. The poem which is a response to Marlowe's poem, offers the perspective of a woman skeptical about the shepherd's sincerity who doubts his love will endure if she allows herself to believe his pretty words.

A main theme proposed by Marvell in the poem is one of time, or more accurately, the lack of time when considering the courtship of the female character. The male character sees 'time' as an enemy that stands between him and his mistress. The poem ends by describing the events that might take place were time not an issue or, more accurately, if his mistress would give in quickly to his courtship. "To His Coy Mistress" is written in iambic tetrameter while also employing rhyming couplets in order to continue the ever changing pace represented by the three sections of the poem.

As the male character becomes ever desperate in his plea, the pace of the poem becomes faster, encouraging the mood of each section to follow the tone of the male voice. "To His Coy Mistress" highlights key aspects of metaphysical poetry, and in my opinion Andrew Marvell is indeed worthy of the reputation he has achieved.On the other hand in Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd", men are trying to win a lady. In Ralegh's poem he has absolutely nothing to offer her and feeds her with a bunch of lies "gold buckels" he's a shephers and has absolutely nithing.

In "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" Ralegh takes a more realistic path to win her over.4) Do you think Gulliver's Travels holds up the land of the Houhynhnms as an ideal utopia, which we Yahoos should try to emulate Explain your answer.Out of all the places Gulliver visited, he only admired the Houyhnhnms. The Lilliputians were too violent and the Brobdignagians were too peaceful and fair. This passage shows that whenever Gulliver got back from his adventures he was glad to see his family and was happy with them, this time when he got back he was sickened by his family and everyone else he met.

This demonstrates that wherever he went he could accept the people there, except the Yahoos, and when he came home he compared everyone to Yahoos. As a result he can't stand himself or anyone else.Swift points out in the passage how much people are like Yahoos and are disgusting to be around. The Houyhnhnms all have Reason which Gulliver discovers that humans don't have, or at least they choose not to use it. Humans are animals just like Yahoos and though we try to act better we naturally go back to cheating, lying, flattering, stealing, robbing, etc.

It demonstrates that the Yahoos act very primitive and Swift was showing them the worst way and when you read it you were disgusted. As a result, when Swift had Gulliver begin to realize people were Yahoos it made them see themselves in a new light.In conclusion this paragraph establishes that humans are as revolting as the Yahoos and anyone who has been to the Houyhnhnms land would not be able to stand people afterwards. That humans attitudes, appearances, and acts are not like the Houyhnhnms even though people like to think of themselves like them.

Some people many be a little more Houyhnhnm then Yahoo, but not to Swift. In his opinion people were no better than a filthy animal.