time periods

• Absent from Thee:

  • The Restoration took place in 1660 when Charles ii returned from exile from Europe.
  • The period saw a new political settlement and a return to the natural and divine order.
  • Charles ii's reign is known as one of liveliness and new life.
• Absent from Thee:

  • John Wilmot was a courtier of Charles ii
  • His poetry was censored during the Victorian era due to his libertinism
  • He was a nihilistic atheist
• Ae Fond Kiss:

  • Robert Burns' work was mostly poems with tunes to make songs for the Scottish public
  • The poem was written in a traditional Scottish ballad form
• At An Inn:

  • In the Victorian period, it was deemed inappropriate for a man to go for a drink with a woman if they were not together
  • New scientific discoveries meant that there was a challenge posed to the church
• At An Inn/The Ruined Maid:

  • Hardy opposed the constraints of the Victorian society
  • There was moral panic over female prostitution
  • Hardy was agnostic
• Non Sum Qualis:

  • Britain was becoming an empire under Queen Victoria
  • There was a growing political and artistic cynicism and interest in romanticised childhood
• Non Sum Qualis:

  • Dowson's love Cynara was allegedly half his age, and his devotion to her tormented him for years
  • The Decadent movement was a movement led by the idea of nostalgia. The poem embodies the movement due to the speaker's indulgence in food and wine
• Sonnet 116:

  • Shakespearean sonnets are organised differently to the usual Petrarchan sonnets: they contain three quatrains and conclude with a rhyming couplet.
  • Shakespeare was living through a time of uncommon peace after external turmoil, accounting for the popularity of the love sonnets
• The Flea:

  • Donne likely wrote this in the 1590s, a time when love poetry was extremely popular as it was during a time of peace in the country
  • Donne satirises typical love poems
  • During Elizabeth i's reign, her celibacy was celebrated as the reason for the political stability of the country
• The Flea:

  • Metaphysical poetry was popular in the late 16th and 17th centuries
  • It was concerned with the nature or existence of the universe
  • They usually touch on religion
• The Flea:

  • Donne hated the idea of making his poetry widely available; he considered it beneath his dignity as a gentleman
  • His work circulated exclusively in manuscript among a select group of friends and patrons
• The Garden of Love:

  • It was first published in 1789 in part of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience collections
  • Garden imagery is typically religious - like the Garden of Eden - but Blake subverts this by presenting it as bleak and a place of death
• The Garden of Love:

  • Blake had a hatred of organised religion, believing the codification of faith is less freeing
  • He was a child of Dissenter parents
• To His Coy Mistress:

  • The poem was written during the English Interregnum, which was an unstable time for the country
  • Marvell had controversial opinions on both sides of the civil war
  • He tried to remove politics from his work
• To His Coy Mistress:

  • Example of a Cavalier Carpe Diem poem
• Who So List:

  • Renaissance poetry was usually about unrequited and courtly love
  • A part translation and imitation of Petrarch's Rime 190