Extremely detailed A* essay plan page/summary for Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind'
Contains perceptive and nuanced assertions of high level context, language analysis, arguments and themes.
Undergraduate level analysis for A-Level English Literature Unit 3: Poetry, The Romantic Poets
Topic: Ode to the West Wind
- Explores a more strenuous dialectic between subject and object, past and present, internal drive and external forces
- First three stanzas describe the power of wind as it acts upon leaves, clouds and sea, while the final two stanzas turn inward with the poet expressing his own
desire to be transformed into a mediator of change.
- Central dilemma is the relation of imaginary/poetic power to political power
- Tries to recapture the spontaneity of youth, closely related to a state of nature
Themes/Context Literary/Dramatic Devices Techniques of
whole poem
West is towards I - Deconstructed
England from Europe ‘West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being’ – W alliteration, 3 stressed syllables are emphatic, simultaneously adresses and pays homage to sonnets with
Shelling tracking wind, subtle allit of Bs four tercets
(three line units)
powerful movements, ‘whose unseen presence’ – assonant ees and sibilant c/s
and a rhyming
both natural and Lexical field of death; ‘ghosts/black/pale’ contrasts field of hope and spring ‘driven’ couplet
political and how ‘Pestilence-stricken multitudes’ – summons up Peterloo - Stanzas form
they grown in ‘chariotest’ – wind is a vehicle/catalyst/medium by which ideas and things can be like a poem – to disseminate interlocking
intensity ‘azure sister’ – wind brings both death and rejuvenation relationships
Lyre – harp played ‘destroyer and preserver’ – shelley is sad he is not there, however, feels like wind can carry from Italy to Britain – paradoxical description of - fluidity of
by wind, Romantics wind, calvary yet sublime and ethereal presence winds and
see themselves as ‘hear, oh hear!’ – makes poem seem quite public or rhetorical (like HoC) moving through
seasons shown
instruments/ II – clouds show potential for thunder and lightning
through
prophets/ mediators ‘shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean’ – violent verbs = chaotic power, capitalised emphasise God and earth coming together enjambment
Prometheus – artist ‘spread/surge/bright’ – conflicting lexical fields of the ethereal and chaotic - first three
and revolutionary, ‘uplifted from the head/ Maenad’ – contrasting images – beauty and fairness – female warships of Dionysus (mad woman) stanzas
divine mediator ‘congregated’ – wind pushed leaves/clouds together – force that brings diverse peculiarities in a unified whole descriptive to
PETERLOO III – starts with calm picturesque image ‘thou’ –
‘quivering/ cleave/ tremble’ – oscillating motion yet fearful energy as waves pass addressing
MASSACRE
‘despoil’ – powerful visceral power object
‘suddenly grow gray with fear’ – visceral agedness couplet ‘oh hear!’ shows stanza to be a deconstructed sonnet, love letter to nature
IV
‘If I’ x2 – anaphora = want for powerful union between subject and nature, revelling in the anarchic, chaotic, unbounded power of the wind –
marked shift from ‘thou’ in stanza before to ‘I’ – transition from nature to the self
‘comrade’ – anticipates social companionship – responds to Peterloo by calling people to arms, feels isolated from homeland
‘skiey speed’ – sibilant, enjambment shows his desired power, speed and fluidity of wind
‘a wave, a leaf, a cloud!’ – tricolon, declaratively implores the wind uses him (the poet) as mechanism for change
‘heavy weight’ – stressed sounds contrasts excessive sibilance and enjambment in the section so far
‘bow’d/ proud.’ – rhyming couplet strained – Shelley alters quatrain form in poem to increase fluidity EXCEPT for this cumbersome couplet
V – if I could be like the wind I would invocation to hope, rather than the despair of previous REBIRTH!
‘be thou me, impetuous’ – prev. syntax shows state of being one – speaks to togetherness of wind in Sublime unity (Pantheism), language of
revolution – promoting spontaneous action
‘Drive/ Scatter’ – powerful verbs indicates investment, spontaneously and impulse knowledge and uprising
‘unextinguish’d’, ‘unawaken’d’ – double prefix, space that needs to change
‘behind?’ - uncertainty – final two lines are self-reflexive, wants his poem to work like the wind to carry out, disseminate ideas
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