Pre-1900 Anthology critics

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

“Paradoxical desire that both draws and defeats”

• desire = inherently contradictory

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

• pursuit simultaneously motivating + destructive, suggesting that longing for something unattainable creates cycle of attraction/frustration from which 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 poem around tension between disclosure/secrecy

• hunting conceit conceals speaker’s true circumstances, simultaneously reveals deeper truths about desire, power, + exclusion.

• operates as coded expression of alleged affair = Anne Boleyn + Sir Wyatt

How does Luke McBratney describe difficulty from Hardy about his attitudes towards the addressee in At an Inn?

“Hardy’s control over his feelings”

• emotion = carefully restrained vs. openly expressed

• rooted in personal grief + regret, maintains measured tone

• attempt to regulate overwhelming feelings through reflection + observation

• emotional discipline intensifies poem’s poignancy,

• depth of feeling implied beneath 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”

• true love = something that transcends limitations of physical world

• love = constant/immutable, remaining unaffected by time/change/mortality

• elevates love beyond ordinary human experience

• transforms into idealised + almost eternal force, suggesting 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 unusually idealised vision of love appears almost unattainable in perfection

• love = depicted as unwavering, eternal + entirely resistant to change, creating conception of love that transcends ordinary human relationships

• “strangeness” lies in how absolute ideal is, suggesting perfect love exists more as aspirational ideal vs. 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”

• emotional decline partly self-inflicted, resulting from life of excess, indulgence, + reckless behaviour

• inability to escape his obsession with Cynara reflects damaging consequences of attempting to suppress emotional pain through pleasure/distraction

• suffering not simply as result of lost love, but inevitable outcome of 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 speaker’s emotional exhaustion + stagnation

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

• formal choice reinforces theme of ennui, poem’s rhythm embodies drawn-out, heavy feeling of emotional + 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 conventions of lyric poetry, familiar/conventional situations less important than intensity emotional expression they generate

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

• can also mean emotional/contextual weight of situation reduced, as poem prioritises aesthetic/dramatic effect over deeper political/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 descriptive but becomes form of intense, excessive examination that exposes speaker’s unstable/performative perspective

• scrutiny can be read ironically, poem turns judgement back onto speaker himself, revealing casual attitudes toward rel. + exposing moral/emotional inconsistency beneath confident voice.

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

“Compulsive addiction”

• desire = uncontrollable psychological dependency vs. rational emotion

• longing becomes habitual / self-perpetuating, trapped in cycle of craving + emotional withdrawal

• Love = addictive + destabilising

• speaker unable to regulate / 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”

• express selfless / compassionate desire for lover’s happiness after death, speaker = emotionally generous + forgiving

• subversive reading sees speaker asserting autonomy refusing continued emotional obligation, command “remember” becoming controlled final gesture allows her to reclaim agency + resist patriarchal expectations of lifelong devotion

How does Luke McBratney speak on the direction of Remember?

“Looking back rather than forwards”

• structured around retreat into memory vs. engagement with the future

• speaker’s focus on remembrance foregrounds reflective, retrospective stance

• love preserved through recollection vs. continued presence

• emphasis on looking back reinforces poem’s preoccupation with loss, separation, + desire to maintain emotional connection via memory vs. 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 femme fatale figure = alluring + destructive

• “belle dame” exerts power through seduction ultimately leads to knight’s suffering / collapse

• pleasure she takes = sadistic she dominates + disposes men emotionally

• reversing trad gender power dynamics

• embodies archetype of seductive temptress, beauty / charm masks dangerous / supernatural capacity to entrap + 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 poem’s rhythmic regularity, structural sense of instability

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

• form itself embodies doubt, leaving speaker’s memory + reader’s understanding unresolved + unsettled