University Guide to Literature: Poetry, Prose and Drama

Department of English Language & Literature Introduction to Literature

The academic curriculum for the First Grade level ($2023$-$2024$) at Wasit University’s College of Education for Human Sciences, Department of English Language & Literature, provides a comprehensive introduction to Poetry, Prose, and Drama. The course material is authored and instructed by Dr. Thamir Az-Zubaidy and Assistant Instructor Karrar Essa. This definitive study guide serves as a structured exploration of foundational literary texts, encompassing diverse poetic forms, varied prose styles, and seminal dramatic works that define the English literary canon.

Part I: Poetry - "The Sick Rose" by William Blake

Situated within William Blake's $1794$ collection "Songs of Experience," the poem "The Sick Rose" is a concise yet dense exploration of innocence, experience, and the destructive nature of desire. Structurally, the poem consists of two quatrains following an ABCB rhyme scheme. It utilizes an apostrophe, where the narrator addresses the rose directly as if it were a person, employing personification to attribute human sorrow to the plant. The central imagery of the rose serves as a symbol for innocence, love, beauty, and femininity, while the "invisible worm" represents an insidious, corrupting force associated with decay and decomposition.

The narrative describes an "invisible worm" that flies through the night in a "howling storm" to find the rose's "bed of crimson joy." The term "crimson" emphasizes passion and physical love, while the "bed" represents both a literal flowerbed and a metaphor for a sacred, intimate space of purity. The "dark secret love" of the worm ultimately destroys the life of the rose. Blake uses this allegory to illustrate the destructive consequences of hidden desires and corruption on what is pure, serving as a cautionary tale against forces that undermine beauty.

Part I: Poetry - "Break, break, break" by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Break, break, break" is a Victorian elegy composed in memory of his deceased best friend, Arthur Hallam. The poem consists of four stanzas, each being a quatrain. The work is characterized by a tone of agony, nostalgia, and profound loss. The speaker addresses the sea in the first and last stanzas, contrasting the persistent, indifferent rhythm of the waves with his own internal inability to articulate his grief. The adjectives "cold" and "gray" used to describe the stones reflect the speaker's emotional state.

In the second stanza, the speaker observes the joyful activities of a fisherman’s boy and a sailor lad, who sing and shout in contrast to his gloom. The third stanza focuses on stately ships moving toward a secure "haven under the hill," juxtaposing their purposeful movement against the static absence of the friend's "vanish’d hand" and "voice that is still." The final stanza returns to the refrain "Break, break, break," noting that the "tender grace of a day that is dead" will never return. The poem emphasizes the unstoppable force of time and the cyclical nature of the world versus the finality of human death, leaving the speaker trapped in a cycle of despair.

Part I: Poetry - "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s landmark poem, written between $1797$ and $1798$ and published in $1798$, is a long narrative ballad. The excerpted stanzas from Part II describe the supernatural curse that befalls a ship after a sailor shoots an albatross. The poem utilizes archaic language and vivid atmospheric imagery. Coleridge employs high-speed alliteration in the lines produced by the ship’s movement: "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / The furrow followed free." Here, the "furrow," a metaphor borrowed from a ploughed field, describes the track the ship cuts into the sea. Internal rhyme, such as "burst" and "first," further quickens the poem’s pace.

As the curse takes effect, the atmosphere shifts from energetic to stagnant: "Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down." The sailors are trapped in a "silent sea" under a "hot and copper sky" where the "bloody Sun" stands above the mast, no bigger than the Moon. The repetition in "Day after day, day after day" and "Water, water, every where" underscores the monotony and the cruel irony of being surrounded by undrinkable salt water while the boards of the ship shrink from heat. A famous simile compares the stationary vessel to a "painted ship / Upon a painted ocean." The poet’s intention is to demonstrate the necessity of living in harmony with nature and the dire consequences of disrupting that balance.

Part I: Poetry - "Lucy" by William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth composed "Lucy" in $1798$ at the age of $28$. It is a three-stanza ballad with an ABAB rhyme scheme that mourns an idealized, young woman who lived in the English countryside. Lucy is described as dwelling among "untrodden ways," suggesting a life of remoteness and solitude near nature (the springs of Dove). The speaker emphasizes that she was "unknown" and had very few people to love or praise her, yet she held immense value to the poet.

Wordsworth uses metaphors to describe her quiet virtue, calling her "A violet by a mossy stone / Half hidden from the eye." She is also compared through a simile to a star: "Fair as a star, when only one / Is shining in the sky," suggesting she is like the goddess Venus, unique and beautiful in her isolation. The final stanza acknowledges the uncertainty of the time of her death but notes the profound emotional impact of her passing with the exclamation: "The difference to me!" The transition from past to present tense indicates that her isolation persists even in death, as she remains "in her grave."

Part I: Poetry - "Winter" by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's "Winter" is a pastoral song featured at the conclusion of his comedy "Love’s Labour’s Lost." It consists of two nine-line stanzas with an ABABCCDEE rhyme scheme. The poem provides a vivid, realistic depiction of rural life during harsh weather. In the first stanza, icicles hang from walls, Dick the shepherd blows on his fingers to stay warm, Tom carries logs for the fire, and milk freezes in the pail. The owl’s hooting is described through onomatopoeia as a "merry note" (Tu-whit, tu-whoo!) because it signals a time when Greasy Joan is inside "keeling" (stirring/cooling) the pot.

In the second stanza, the wind blows heavily, and the coughing of the congregation drowns out the parson’s sermon (his "saw"). Birds sit "brooding" in the snow, and Marian’s nose is "red and raw" from the cold. Roasted crabapples hiss in the bowl—another instance of onomatopoeia. The poem repeatedly contrasts the biting cold of the outdoors with the warmth and activity found inside the home. The onomatopoeic phrases contribute significantly to the auditory experience of the winter night, engaging the listener with the sounds of the environment.

Part I: Poetry - "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" by William Butler Yeats

Written during World War I, this poem was inspired by Major Robert Gregory, the son of Yeats' mentors Lady Augusta Gregory. The speaker is the airman himself, using first-person pronouns throughout sixteen lines divided into four quatrains. The airman acknowledges his impending fate "among the clouds above," yet he expresses a strange detachment: "Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love." He identifies his true country as "Kiltartan Cross," a barony in western Ireland, and notes that the outcome of the war will not change the fate of its poor inhabitants.

The speaker rejects conventional reasons for fighting such as law, duty, politics, or "cheering crowds." Instead, he was driven by a "lonely impulse of delight," an internal, personal motivation to join the "tumult in the clouds." In the final stanza, he reflects on his past and future, describing both as a "waste of breath" when balanced against the intensity of his current life and imminent death. By equating life and death as balanced forces, the airman accepts his destiny, finding meaning in a singular moment of personal choice rather than nationalistic fervor.

Part I: Poetry - "Lord Randal"

"Lord Randal" is a traditional Scottish ballad structured as a dialogue between a mother and her young son. The poem reveals, through a series of questions and answers, that the handsome nobleman Lord Randal has been poisoned by his "sweetheart." He claims to have been hunting in the "wild wood" (an example of alliteration) and repeatedly asks his mother to "make my bed soon" because he is "weary with hunting, and fain would lie down." The mystery of his condition deepens when he reveals he ate "eels boiled in broth" and that his bloodhounds "swelled and died."

The poem reaches its tragic climax when the mother realizes her son is poisoned, and he confirms it, stating he is "sick at the heart." The phrase "sick at the heart" serves as a metaphor for both physical poisoning and the emotional betrayal of his lover. As a narrative poem, it utilizes a clear plot (return from hunting), characters, dialogue, setting (the greenwood), and foreshadowing (the death of the dogs). The repetition of phrases like "my handsome young man" is typical of the oral tradition of ballads.

Part I: Poetry - "To---" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Written in $1821$ and published in $1824$, Shelley's "To---" explores the endurance of memory and love. The poem consists of two quatrains following an AABB rhyme scheme. Shelley argues that sensory experiences persist long after their physical sources have vanished. Music, when the voices cease, "Vibrates in the memory," and the scent of sickened violets lives within the senses they once stimulated. Shelley utilizes alliteration of the /s/ sound in phrases like "soft voices die" and "sweet violets sicken" to create a lyrical, harmonious effect.

In the second stanza, the leaves of a dead rose are described as being "heap'd for the belovd's bed." This serves as a metaphor for how the thoughts of a departed loved one are gathered and preserved in the mind. Shelley compares the leaves of the rose to the thoughts of the person who is gone, suggesting that love "shall slumber on" even after death. The poet’s intention is to highlight the immortality of emotion and the persistence of the essence of things beyond their physical existence.

Part I: Poetry - "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" by John Keats

John Keats’ "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" is a Petrarchan sonnet of $14$ lines, divided into an octave (rhymed abbabba) and a sestet (rhymed cdecde). The octave presents a general statement: "The poetry of earth is never dead." During the intense heat of summer, when birds find shelter in "cooling trees," the grasshopper "takes the lead" in continuing nature’s song, running from hedge to hedge. Keats personifies the grasshopper as an active, happy participant in summer’s luxury who rests beneath "pleasant weeds" only when tired out with fun.

The sestet transitions to winter, asserting that the "poetry of earth is ceasing never." When frost has created a silence outside, the cricket’s song "shrills" from the warmth of a kitchen stove. To a person half-lost in drowsiness, the cricket’s song might even be mistaken for the grasshopper’s among the hills. The poem utilizes structural contrast (summer vs. winter, cold vs. heat), personification, and alliteration of the /s/ sound. Keats celebrates the immortality of nature’s beauty through the persistent voices of these two insects.

Part I: Poetry - "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116," published in $1609$, is a definitive statement on the constancy of true love. It follows the Shakespearean form: three quatrains and a concluding couplet with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The speaker asserts that true love does not admit "impediments" and does not alter "when it alteration finds." Using the metaphor "marriage of true minds," Shakespeare suggests a spiritual connection that transcends the physical.

Love is metaphorically compared to an "ever-fixed mark" (a lighthouse) and the "star to every wand'ring bark" (the North Star), providing guidance through life's "tempests." Shakespeare further personifies Time as a figure with a "bending sickle" (the Grim Reaper) that harvests "rosy lips and cheeks," but insists that love is not "Time's fool." Instead, it bears out even to the "edge of doom" (Doomsday). The final couplet offers a bold challenge: if these assertions are proven wrong, then the poet never wrote, and no man ever truly loved.

Part II: Prose - Narrative Expression in "Wuthering Heights"

Prose is defined as written work that does not follow a rigid poetical form, allowing authors to express meaning directly. In the narrative excerpt from Emily Bront’s "Wuthering Heights," the narrator describes discovering the death of Mr. Heathcliff. On a wet morning after a storm, the narrator sees Heathcliff's window "swinging open." This small detail serves as a structural device for unity and curiosity, leading to the climax of the scene. Upon entering, the narrator finds Heathcliff dead on his back in a rain-soaked chamber.

The description is characterized by horror: Heathcliff's eyes are "keen and fierce" and will not shut, seeming to "sneer" at the narrator along with his parted lips and "sharp white teeth." The used of the word "sneer" adds color and intensity to the narrative style. Heathcliff's "frightful, life-like gaze" suggests that he continues to haunt even in death. The scene relies on atmospheric description, such as the "very wet" evening and "dripped" bed-clothes, to immerse the reader in a stormy, foreboding setting.

Part II: Prose - Descriptive Expression in "Nicholas Nickleby"

Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby" ($1839$) utilizes descriptive prose to create a vivid portrayal of the character Mr. Squeers. Dickens links moral characteristics with physical attributes through a sardonic tone. Squeers is described as having only one eye, which is "decidedly not ornamental" and resembles a "fan-light of a street-door." His face is "wrinkled and puckered," giving him a "sinister" and "villainous" appearance, particularly when he smiles.

The description extends to Squeers’ attire: he wears a "scholastic black" suit that fits poorly, with coat sleeves that are too long and trousers that are too short. This makes him appear "ill at ease" in his clothes, reflecting his inner discomfort with respectability. Dickens describes him as being in a "perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable." The unity of the passage lies in how every physical detail—the harsh voice, coarse manner, and mismatched clothing—collectively reinforces the character's unpleasant personality and societal hypocrisy.

Part II: Prose - Argumentative Expression

Argumentative prose deals with ideas and facts, requiring the logical development of a statement toward a conclusion. Frieda Fordham's "Psychology and Education" argues that teachers act as "substitutes for parents" during school hours. She posits that the "mutual relationship" between teacher and student is more important than any teaching method. Fordham concludes that no amount of "preaching" or "clever technique" can replace the influence of a "well-developed personality" in an educator. She asserts that for teachers to be successful, they must possess sound, balanced personalities because children are influenced by the character of their mentors.

Similarly, T.S. Eliot’s "Modern Education and the Classics" addresses the drift of education toward technical efficiency and social mobility. Eliot argues that education is often sought merely as a means of "getting on." Individuals seek it for personal advancement, nations for competitive advantage, and social classes to maintain dominance. He concludes that education is increasingly associated with rising in society rather than the acquisition of wisdom. Both authors demonstrate the argumentative structure of presenting a problem, developing a logical case, and reaching a firm conclusion.

Part III: Drama - Sophocles' "Oedipus Tyrannus"

Greek tragedy often features a hero who acts with virtuous motives but discovers too late that his actions had an effect opposite to what was intended—a contrast between intention and result. Oedipus is the quintessential example of the "Play of Men and Fate." Before his birth, an oracle prophesied that he would kill his father (King Laius) and marry his mother (Queen Jocasta). To avoid this, Laius ordered the baby exposed on Mount Cithaeron with a stake through his feet. Saved by a shepherd and raised by King Polybus of Corinth, Oedipus fled Corinth to avoid the same prophecy, only to fulfill it at a cross-roads by killing Laius in a quarrel.

After solving the riddle of the Sphinx (Man), Oedipus becomes King of Thebes and marries Jocasta. The play begins with Jocasta beseeching Apollo for help during a plague. A messenger from Corinth arrives to say Polybus is dead, which Jocasta initially sees as proving the oracles false. However, it is revealed that Oedipus was a foundling. The climax occurs when the Theban Herdsman confirms that the baby he gave away was Laius’ son. Upon this realization, Jocasta hangs herself in her chamber. Oedipus, in agony, uses golden brooches from her robe to stab his own eyes, wanting to never again see the shame he has wrought. The play concludes with a theme of human powerlessness against destiny, and the Chorus warns the citizens of Thebes to "remember the inevitability of death" and count no man truly happy until his life is complete.

Part III: Drama - "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus"

Christopher Marlowe’s play begins with a soliloquy where Faustus, in his study, rejects traditional scholarship—Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and Theology—because they do not grant him power over life and death. He turns to "necromantic books" which he ironilly calls "heavenly," aspiring to become a god-like figure. The play incorporates Morality Play elements through the Good Angel and Evil Angel, who represent Faustus’ internal conflict. Faustus makes a pact with Lucifer, via Mephistophilis, for $24$ years of power in exchange for his soul.

As the time of his damnation nears, an Old Man appears, urging Faustus to repent through Christ’s mercy. However, Faustus is overwhelmed by despair and his obsession with sensual beauty, such as Helen of Troy, whom he desires as his mistress. In his final soliloquy as the clock strikes eleven, Faustus begs for time to stand still: "Slowly, slowly, run, ye horses of the night." He sees a vision of Christ’s blood in the atmosphere but feels pulled down by the devil. At midnight, as he wishes his soul could transform into a beast or dissolve into the air (referencing Pythagoras’ metempsychosis), the devils take him away. The Chorus concludes the play with a moral warning: Faustus’ "hellish fall" serves as a lesson for wise men not to practice "more than heavenly power permits," symbolizing the burning of Apollo's laurel-bough.