. To most, the idea of a woman writing serious poetry was still a bit far-fetched. Anne Finch was a great English poet from the late 17th century, beginning of the 18th. "A Nocturnal Reverie" by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea. The effect of the ongoing punctuation is that the poem reads like a natural flow of thought as the speaker experiences the nighttime setting and allows her feelings to respond. She next mentions sheep grazing and cows chewing their cud without being bothered by anyone at all, and then she turns her attention to what the birds are doing. But Finch lacks More's faith in the superiority of a divinely inspired human art to nature: while the muse of "To The Nightingale" may inspire, she is finally powerless. Augustan writers were not interested in the kind of rhetoric that seeks to sway readers to the author's point of view, but wrote merely to comment and let the reader decide. Skip to main content.us. The wind is not merely a lucky turn of the weather, but an act by the Greek god of the west wind himself. Her reputation was largely based on "The Spleen" and "A Nocturnal Reverie." The poem opens on a serene and gentle remark. Further, the giants of the Augustan Age were in full force at the time Finch wrote "A Nocturnal Reverie." Barbara McGovern sets out to redress the balance. A better understanding of the neural processes during sleep inertia may offer insight into the awakening process. Poets adhered to conventions of form and versification, but also experimented with adaptations. When an author employs anthropomorphism, he or she assigns these human characteristics literally, such as having a character who is a talking animal. Ultimately, Finch's use of personification evokes the theme of nature as a living community. Barbara McGovern has dealt efficiently with the biographical and historical material, although the lack of much in the way of documentary evidence means that her account of Finch's childhood and education, in particular, is based largely on surmise from what is known about her as an adult and from what is known about the typical upbringing for girls from upper class families at the time (p. 10). This distinction is linked to Henry More's contention that while "a Nightingale may vary with her voice into a multitude of interchangeable Notes, and various Musical falls and risings should she but sing one Hymn or Hallelujah, I should deem her no bird but an Angel." The S, Auden, W. H. Her critical biography of Finch covers new ground in a number of ways. The Finches' support of James and their Stuart sympathies cost Colonel Finch his position when James was deposed in 1688. Barbara McGovern includes, as an Appendix, a selection of poems from the Wellesley Manuscript. Amazon.com: A Study Guide for Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie": 9781375375061: Gale, Cengage Learning: Books. In one way, the very lushness of the natural setting and the poetry that describes it acts as a corrective to institutionalized cultural (human, male) rigidities of politics or social grace. Alternatively of course, it could be both, happening by night and about night. It is often said of Finch that she was a pivotal writer, echoing predominant seventeenth-century poetic patterns (in particular, the theme of female friendship in Katherine Philips and the poetry of pastoral retreat); using popular eighteenth-century forms to her own, sometimes feminist, sometimes sociopolitical aims; and finally, gesturing toward the inward-looking preoccupations of the Romantics. 45, No. Still, it has been poems such as "A Nocturnal Reverie" and "The Spleen" that have kept Finch's work in the canon of English literature of interest to scholars. The dominant "I" gives an. He continued to work in government affairs, and they first lived in Westminster before moving to London when Colonel Finch became increasingly involved with work duties upon the accession of King James II in 1685. Women can soothe and rejuvenate each otherunsurprisingly feminine tasks that take on subtly new meaning in the context of a definitively feminine spacebut also, more defiantly, they can discover themselves capable of "Mixing Words, in wise Discourse," of using language with "such Weight and wond'rous Force" that it would "charm," "disarm," and "Chea[r]" one another in a way that seems magically "delightful." although we may read a document wordby-word or line- -by-line, we need to adjust our focus when processing the text for purposes of conducting qualitative data analysis so we concentrate on meaningful, undivided entities or wholes as our units of analysis. FRANK BIDART This position is supported by the fact that William Wordsworth, one of the fathers of romantic literature in English, referenced Finch's poem in the supplement to the preface of the second edition of his famous collection Lyrical Ballads (1815), coauthored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 31, No. Little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Line 18, is also a paradox as his new life is full of 'absence', 'darkness' and 'death' which means basically, he does not exist. W. H. Auden What does the poet wish for in these lines from a nocturnal reverie? Taking the pseudonym "Ardelia," she wrote poetry about her husband, whom she loved and honored. The first four opening lines of the poem sets. There is no room in this version of the nightingale for an explicit allusion to the mute Philomelathe classical archetype of woman as victim, nor for Sidney's nightingale whose "throat in tunes expresseth / What grief her breast oppresseth, / For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing" (lines 6-8). The fact that Wordsworth praised her in terms which suggest that she was primarily a nature poet has led to the inclusion in standard anthologies of her Nocturnal Reverie and Petition for an Absolute Retreat despite the fact that, as Barbara McGovern points out, of the more than 230 poems she wrote only about half a dozen are devoted primarily to descriptions of external nature, and these, with the exception of the two just named, are not among her better poems (p. 78). He feels joy and pain, an ambivalent response. The idea of being a hero in the battlefield is as tantalizing as it is fatal. There is a river with large trees hanging their leaves over it, and as it flows, its surface reflects the leaves and the moon. This makes it easier for the reader to surrender to the imagery of the poem. Philomel was a person who, according the Greek mythology, was turned into a nightingale. Finch's husband, Colonel Heneage Finch, built a career in government affairs and was active in James II's court. 61-80. 95, Eighteenth-Century British Poets, First Series, Gale Research, 1990, pp. Thus the poem in part exhibits what is both "male" and "female"but in such a way as to deprive each category of ontological status. In what follows, I will argue that poetry, for Finch, becomes a site of contest over the refracting discourse of "fair." GENRE: Poetry, Nonfiction Written in 1713, Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie" is among the works that has garnered serious critical attention for the poet. Zephyr was the Greek god of the west wind, which was considered the most gentle and inviting wind. Today: People are still drawn to the outdoors for recreation and relaxation. Many of the most well-known living poets are women, including Adrienne Rich and Louise Glck. The pleasures of that world, she feels, are pursued but rarely reached. It lacks all the peace and sensitivity of the natural setting she enjoys at night. "A Nocturnal Reverie" also boasts highly technical construction. As Brower said, though in another context, "there are in Lady Anne's poetry traces" of a "union of lyricism with the diction and movement of speech." The universality of the figure of the poet who "when best he sings, is plac'd against a Thorn" (line 13) depends upon a figure herself mute, unable to make herself intelligible. The natural world is the 'inferior world', even when the poet's soul 'thinks it like her own' - a joyful delusion, but a delusion nonetheless. Romanticism as a literary movement lasted from 1798, with the publication of Lyrical Ballads to some time between the passage of the first Re, Imagism 1713. Today: Well-educated young women have the option of pursuing any number of career fields, including medicine, writing, teaching, law, science, or ministry. She also met Colonel Heneage Finch, a soldier and courtier appointed as Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York. Part 2 "A Nocturnal Reverie" "A Nocturnal Reverie" does convey a message. The speaker is completely enthralled by her experience outdoors, and she appreciates every aspect of it, making sure to include every animal, plant, flower, cloud, river, and glowwormin her telling. In his essay, he openly regards Finch's work as a masterpiece in its own right. Clouds pass gently overhead, at times allowing the sky to shine through to the speaker. Some scholars claim that this poem was a pre-romantic poem. The Colonel courted the young maid until she agreed to marry him in 1684 and leave her position in the court. Mendelson, Sarah, and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England: 1550-1720, Oxford University Press, 2000. Like the speaker, the reader experiences the flow and relaxation of the nighttime setting. With the benefit of significant historical and literary hindsight, some scholars regard the poem as an example of the Augustan literature that was so popular in England at the time the poem was written (1713). Toward the end of the poem, the speaker longs to remain in the nighttime setting. This loss of faith is consistent with the new understanding of language that emerged in the late seventeenth century. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. In the twentieth century, Finch's work was rediscovered and appreciated. Pope's classic An Essay on Criticism was published in 1711. The speaker states in the first line, "To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name," where name represents Shakespeare's poetry and dramas, above which appear his name as author. They relied on allusion to draw clear comparisons between their society and that of ancient Rome, or to bring to their verse the flavor of classical poetry. These poems, she goes on to argue, are products of their age which do not prefigure Romanticism in any significant way: Finch sees human beings as providing the spiritual continuity and depth to life, even within the context of a natural retreat. In this sense the poem proliferates and reiterates a set of interlocking worries that pervades much of Finch's work. Despite Finch's obvious importance, however, the standard edition remains Myra Reynolds's The Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea (Chicago, 1903), although this has long been recognized as incomplete: it omits, among other things, the large body of manuscript poems held at Wellesley College, Massachusetts and recently edited by J. M. Ellis D'Allesandro (Florence, 1988). But even this conventional estimate of her poetry as descriptive rather than inspired or reflective appears misleading. The leaves shake partly because of the flow of the river, but also because the leaves themselves are moving with the wind. A large edifice seems menacing in the darkened setting, and unshaded hills are hidden. Read at least five romantic poems and write an essay examining how Finch's poem is like or unlike the other romantic poems you have selected. The ambiguity of "allow'd" conveys the point exactly: that women have been excluded from the ranks of male poets not because they can't produce good work, but because of the "mistaken rules" of men who won't concede women as equal participants in artistic creation ("The Introduction"). The poet used anaphora at the beginnings of some neighboring lines. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), has the distinction of being one of the few women poets whose workssome of them, at leasthave consistently found their way into anthologies. The fantasized locale of "The Petition" is an abundant natural place laden with "All, that did in Eden grow" (except the "Forbidden Tree") (35-36), a place of "Unaffected Carelesness" (71) far "from Crouds, and Noise" (126), a place where, the speaker exults, she might "remain secure, / Waste, in humble Joys and pure" (202-3). The characteristic late seventeenth-century forms of beast fable, religious meditation, pastoral dialogue, and moralizing reflection, functioning as they do within the framework of the poetic enunciated in "To The Nightingale," recognize something substitutive and sentimental in lyric inspiration. Or pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued." The majority of this poem contains detailed descriptions of a nighttime scene. Author Biography In this research the poem of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, "A Nocturnal Reverie" will be analyzed from an ecological perspective. Bird sounds at night are familiar and something to which the reader can readily relate. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because of this mention, some scholars place the poem in the pre-romantic tradition, while others maintain that the poem rightly belongs among the Augustan poetry of Finch's time. Having been appointed, at the age of 21, maid of honour to Mary of Modena, the future wife of James II, she (and her husband) remained loyal to James when he was forced into exile by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and were among the Non-jurors who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new monarchs William and Mary. Yet it is precisely this collapse of faith which may help us to assess the main body of her poetry. He constructed all that preliminary tableau of paternal pleasure in order . Women, once situated in the symbolic realm of the "Retreat," will be able to enjoy a wider set of options for how to be and behave, both individually and in consort with each other, than the earlier description of wedded happiness had seemed to offer. The speaker describes the plants and flowers as not only being colorful but also as almost having personalities and interactions with one another. Stanza three begins with anguish. Edmund Gosse is typical in his assessment of her capacity for "seeing nature and describing what she sees" and so of offering "accurate transcripts of country life." Such a reading turns a private lament about the failure of interpersonal communication into a direct statement about the poet's wish for public approval of her writing as well as her careful perusal of readers' responses for the approbation she hopes they might contain. At her funeral, her husband honored her memory by expressing to those in attendance how much he admired her faith, her loyalty, her friendship and support, and her writing. Such women also retain the choice to marry men of their choosing and to stay home to care for their families. There is instead a process of idealization, an exchange of attributes, which transforms the grief-stricken female singer into an exemplary model, one that applies to all poets. Analysis: "Ode to a Nightingale" . Writing during this period intentionally paid homage to classical literature, using allusion to draw parallels between their own world and that of the ancients. In the following excerpt, Mintz discusses how Finch's nature poems, including "A Nocturnal Reverie," utilize the natural world as a spiritual and political counterbalance to an anti-feminist society. What were their backgrounds and what subjects did they choose for their work? All of these elements make it easy to see why so many scholars are anxious to line "A Nocturnal Reverie" up with the classics of romantic poetry. The muse and the nightingale are not, however, to be allowed to collapse into one another. Like the novelists, playwrights, and essayists of the time, Augustan poets observed and commented on the world around them, but often retained a level of detachment. Overall, however, the book is a useful addition to a relatively new field of English studies. "A Nocturnal Reverie" is strongly associated with Augustan writing in England. Another chapter is devoted to The Spleen, the Pindaric ode for which Finch was best known in her own lifetime and throughout the eighteenth century. Capable of both serious reflection and satirical wit, of tender tributes to marital love and female friendship as well as harsh judgements on the modes and manners of her time, she was clearly a considerable poet, and it is easy to agree with Barbara McGovern's judgement that she has been seriously underestimated. It is written in iambic pentameter, a meter that consists of five feet (or units), each containing an unstressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. After her mother was remarried to Sir Thomas Ogle in 1662, the couple had a daughter named Dorothy who was a close sister and lifelong friend to Finch. The speaker describes how the scene inspires silent, peaceful musings about profound things that are hard to put into words. The image (the psychical "syntax," as it were) of arriving at a feminized realm of writing and psychic pleasure through "Windings" and "Shade" works to establish an opposition far more pointed (if deceptively counterintuitive) than a dichotomy between an idealized, pure, female landscape and the corrupted involutions of patriarchal civilization. For her to explore romantic tendencies, there would have to have been something influential in her world leading her to turn her attentions to the things that would be uniquely romantic. Because the invocation to the muse is evoked in terms of its possible relation to a surrogate self with whom the poet cannot identify, we become aware that poetry cannot become the unequivocal reappropriation of natural song. The speaker's senses next pick up certain aromas that are not present during the day but only waft through the night air. A."Till the free soul to a composedness charmed," B."In such a night let me abroad remain," C."Whose stealing pace, and . Arminda, then, serves as less the singular exception than as an embodied metaphor for what might obtain for women by pursuing "those Windings and that Shade"what the speaker herself calls, later in the poem, "Contemplations of the Mind" (283). Poetry for Students. Philomel was a person who, according the Greek mythology, was turned into a nightingale. The footnotes are extremely full and satisfyingly scholarly, although a reasonably well-informed reader may feel that some of the better-known historical backgroundthe Great Fire of London, or the Glorious Revolution, for examplehas been annotated rather too heavily. In "A Song" ("'Tis strange, this Heart"), for example, the speaker longs to know "what's done" (4) in the heart of her other (lover, husband, friend? Such variety implies another form of "winding," the trying-on of different poetic styles (and selves) that manifest the search for a way of writing that could both legitimize her and solidify an interior sense of poetic integrity. That "The Tree" is epideictic and commemorative only serves to confirm its detachment from a surrogate which the poet seeks to praise rather than to emulate. By acknowledging a gulf between the nightingale's song and the poet's speech, Finch tacitly adopts the point of view of theorists like Hobbes and Locke who deny the naturalness of the received link between signifier and signified. Twelve Years A Slave (Illustrated) - Solomon Northup 2014-08-22 Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is a memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup, as told to and edited by David Wilson. The song of a nightingale (Philomel) is heard, along with the sound of an owl. NATIONALITY: British How does being outside at night make you feel? Clouds do not randomly float across the sky but act to hide and reveal the mysterious night sky. John Brown is an interesting anti-war lyric which describes the horrors of war and the ease with which young men find themselves trapped in one. Posted on February 19, 2021 by JL Admin. As a result of their persistent Jacobitism they were exiled from court and faced a future of persecution and financial hardship. ." The novel saw tremendous growth as a literary form, satire was popular, and poetry took on a more personal character. Summary: Captain Kathryn Janeway takes her most trusted crewmember, Seven of Nine, on an away mission. Finch was hindered in seriously pursuing poetry by her society and her status in it. "A Nocturnal Reverie" by Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661 - 1720) From Winchilsea, Anne (Kingsmill) Finch, Countess of. "To the Nightingale" is also important in the history of poetry for another reason. That the retreat holds out the promise of intellectual stimulation for women in particular becomes clear in the relationship between two passages, one requesting "A Partner" (106), the other "a Friend" (197). Written by Mary Howitt in the 19 th century, The Spider and the Fly is a cautionary fable that falls in this dark humour category. Still. "A Nocturnal Reverie" is a fifty-line poem describing an inviting nighttime scene and the speaker's disappointment when dawn brings it to an end, forcing her back to the real world.