Rossetti - form etc

babylon the great

• petrarchan sonnet (ironic, warns against false idols), deviates rhyme final sestet

• iambic pentameter

our mothers, lovely women pitiful

• petrarchan sonnet (love for women), deviates rhyme final sestet

• iambic pentameter

• didactic

• direct speech (dialogic relationship between past & present)

as froth on the face of the deep

• devotional

• first 7 lines octosyllabic, regular meter. final line, hexasyllabic (catalectic)

• 1 octet

• list of subordinate clauses which anticipate final main clause

• macro → micro (omnipotence)

a helpmeet for him

• roundel

• 2 quatrains & a tercet

piteous my rhyme is

• lyric

• bipartite

• harmonious mirrored dual structure

• curtailed (disappointment v satisfaction)

passing and glassing

• 3 octaves

• varying line lengths, no regular metrical pattern (non-conformist, non-linear, radical)

• regular rhyme scheme (natural inevitability of ageing)

a christmas carol

• devotional

• 5 octaves

• 3rd person narrative

• didactic (response to mass doubt?)

• varying meter, shortening to final line (value simplicity)

memory

• bipartite

• 9-ish quatrains

• regular rhyme scheme (measured introspection, incantatory)

• iambic pentameter first 3 lines, iambic trimeter 4th (containment, stasis)

• pervading lexis of self-discipline, stoicism, deliberacy, rationality

• end-stopped stanzas part 1, not part 2 (semicolons)

twice

• bifurcated structure (duality / parallelism)

• rhyme pattern shifts stanza 4

• shifting pronouns

what would i give

• lyric

• 3 tercets contrasting hot & cold in 1st & last

• long lines, 6 feet (slow, emphasises memory)

• highly rhetorical structure

• salient religious rhetoric

• monosyllabic language

up-hill

• dialogic anthophonic which does contain a lyric speaker

• catechism, alternating narrative perspectives, dialogic

• questions an unknown interlocuter

• biblical, archaic ‘yea’: divine truths

• literal, symbolic, metaphorical levels

at home

• fits within lyric tradition

• four octaves

• iambic tetrameter, shortened final line → trimeter

maude clare

• ballad

• in media res

• 3rd person narrative

• direct speech (external voices: society)

• deviation from rhyme scheme (creates strange dissonances)

• medieval setting

a birthday

• devotional / lyric

• iambic shift to trochaic tetrameter

• euphonic

• eschatological / Parousia

• pre-Lapsarian bits

may

• truncated petrarchan sonnet (curtailment, ending abruptly, subverts form as is not joyous ☹ )

• octet: arrival of spring, sestet: its departure

• near-perfect rhyme: perfection

• largely monosyllabic endings

the world

• petrarchan sonnet, subverted to reflect temptation of earthly love > divine love

• octave: exploring desire, sestet: consequences of giving into it

• rhyme scheme also altered

• binary oppositions (internal conflict / resistance)

• serpents: hellenic OR prelapsarian (octave as Edenic narrative, female figure as Satan)

an apple gathering

• ballad-like

• personal lament for virginity & social acceptance

• iambic pentameter, 4th line trimeter

• 1st person

• shift in tenses (past → present): temporal division marks permanency / irreversibility

echo

• lyric

• elegiac

• echo & narcissus: allegorical framework to evoke themes

some ladies dress in muslin full and white

• satirical subversion of petrarchan sonnet

• irregular rhyme scheme for PS

• iambic pentameter, largely regular

• voyeuristic, detached, ungendered onlooker

remember

• a subverted petrarchan sonnet

• a valediction / elegiac

• an apostrophe

• altered rhyme scheme - opennes / lenience abt. being remembered