Pre-1900 Anthology critics

How does Luke McBratney establish a dual purposed harmful desire in Whoso?

“Paradoxical desire that both draws and defeats”

• desire as inherently contradictory

• irresistibly attracted to the hind, yet the very object of his desire guarantees his failure

• the pursuit is simultaneously motivating and destructive, suggesting that longing for something unattainable creates a cycle of attraction and frustration from which the speaker cannot escape.

How does Carol Rumens commment on the alleged affair Sir Thomas Wyatt had wiht Anna Boleyn in Whoso?

“A matrix for revelation within concealment”

• constructs the poem around a tension between disclosure and secrecy

• hunting conceit appears to conceal the speaker’s true circumstances, it simultaneously reveals deeper truths about desire, power, and exclusion.

• the poem therefore perhaps operates as a coded expression of the alleged scandalous affair between Anne Boleyn and Sir Wyatt himself.

How does Luke McBratney describe difficulty from Hardy about his attitudes towards the addressee?

“Hardy’s control over his feelings”

• presents emotion as carefully restrained rather than openly expressed

• rooted in personal grief and regret, the speaker maintains a detached and measured tone

• suggesting an attempt to regulate overwhelming feelings through reflection and observation

• emotional discipline intensifies the poem’s poignancy, as the depth of feeling is implied beneath the surface rather than directly articulated

How does Wasiolek establish a similarity in the nature of love in Gatsby and Sonnet 116?

“Has to be lifted beyond time and reality”

• presents true love as something that transcends the limitations of the physical world

• love is depicted as constant and immutable, remaining unaffected by time, change, or mortality

• by elevating love beyond ordinary human experience, transforms it into an idealised and almost eternal force, suggesting that genuine love exists independently of the temporal realities that govern human life.

How does Tucker Brooke establish an almost paradoxical mood about the ‘true love’ presented in Sonnet 116?

“Strangeness of perfection”

• presents an unusually idealised vision of love that appears almost unattainable in its perfection

• love is depicted as unwavering, eternal, and entirely resistant to change, creating a conception of love that transcends ordinary human relationships

• “strangeness” lies in how absolute this ideal is, suggesting that perfect love exists more as an aspirational ideal than a common reality.

How does Luke McBratney establish the outcome for taking apart in the Decadent lifestyle and movement in Non Sum Qualis?

“Consequence of riotous lifestyle”

• speaker’s emotional decline is partly self-inflicted, resulting from a life of excess, indulgence, and reckless behaviour

• speaker’s inability to escape his obsession with Cynara reflects the damaging consequences of attempting to suppress emotional pain through pleasure and distraction

• the poem therefore presents suffering not simply as the result of lost love, but as the inevitable outcome of a self-destructive lifestyle.

How does David Wheeler comment on the Alexandrine rhythm of Non Sum Qualis?

“Length mirrors the languor and ennui”

• extended alexandrine rhythm reflects the speaker’s emotional exhaustion and stagnation

• elongated line structure slows the pace of the poem, mirroring the speaker’s lethargic state and sense of weariness

• formal choice reinforces the theme of ennui, as the poem’s rhythm itself embodies the drawn-out, heavy feeling of emotional and psychological decline.

What is Luke McBratneys concept surrounding the misogynistic contents of The Scrutiny?

Songs often present cliched situations “focusing more on the evocation of drama and emotion”

• operates within the conventions of lyric poetry, where familiar or conventional situations are less important than the intensity of emotional expression they generate

• focus is not on originality of circumstance, but on how effectively the poem dramatizes feeling

• can also mean that the emotional and contextual weight of the situation is reduced, as the poem prioritises aesthetic and dramatic effect over deeper political or gendered critique.

What AO5 ideas does David Wheeler offer on the actual title of The Scrutiny?

“Exhaustive scrutiny” / “ironic scrutiny of the speaker and casual promiscuity”

• poem’s detailed observation of women is not simply descriptive but becomes a form of intense, almost excessive examination that can expose the speaker’s unstable or performative perspective

• scrutiny can be read ironically, as the poem subtly turns judgement back onto the speaker himself, revealing his casual attitudes toward relationships and exposing a kind of moral or emotional inconsistency beneath his confident voice.

How does Luke McBratney describe the addiction the grips the speaker in A Song (Absent From Thee)?

“Compulsive addiction”

• presents desire as an uncontrollable psychological dependency rather than a rational emotion

• speaker’s longing becomes habitual and self-perpetuating, suggesting he is trapped in a cycle of craving and emotional withdrawal

• Love is therefore framed as addictive and destabilising, with the speaker unable to regulate or escape his fixation.

What does Luke Mcbratney suggest about the selflessness about the speaker in Remember?

“Optimistic and altruistic wish” / “trying to break free from the control of men”

• can be read in two competing ways: on the surface, it appears to express a selfless and compassionate desire for the lover’s happiness after death, presenting the speaker as emotionally generous and forgiving

• a more subversive reading sees the speaker asserting autonomy by refusing continued emotional obligation, with the command to “remember” becoming a controlled final gesture that allows her to reclaim agency and resist patriarchal expectations of lifelong devotion.

How does Luke McBratney speak on the direction of Remember?

“Looking back rather than forwards”

• structured around a retreat into memory rather than an engagement with the future

• speaker’s focus on remembrance foregrounds a reflective, retrospective stance in which love is preserved through recollection rather than continued presence

• emphasis on looking back reinforces the poem’s preoccupation with loss, separation, and the desire to maintain emotional connection through memory rather than anticipation.

What comment does Eleanor Bance make on the nature of the ethereal being seen in La Belle Dame?

“Sadistic pleasure in men’s pain” / “seductress and a temptress”

• constructs the femme fatale figure as both alluring and destructive, where the “belle dame” exerts power through seduction that ultimately leads to the knight’s suffering and collapse

• pleasure she takes can be read as sadistic in the sense that she dominates and disposes of men emotionally, reversing traditional gender power dynamics.

• same time, she embodies the archetype of the seductive temptress, whose beauty and charm mask a dangerous, almost supernatural capacity to entrap and ruin those who desire her.

How does Luke McBratney establish the evocation of mood in the shortend last line of eahc and every stanza in La Belle Dame?

“An air of doubt, uncertainty and incompleteness”

• disrupts the poem’s rhythmic regularity, creating a structural sense of instability

• formal incompleteness mirrors the knight’s fragmented experience and unreliable perception, reinforcing the idea that the narrative is shaped by confusion and uncertainty

• form itself therefore embodies doubt, leaving both the speaker’s memory and the reader’s understanding unresolved and unsettled.