Blogging Assignment #3

My thesis is that In Nuns fret not at their Convent's narrow room, Wordsworth describes the theme of confinement as something that is not negative, but as something that can be used in a constructive manner. In my first paragraph, I would use the examples in lines 1-4, where nuns' and hermits' confine themselves in order to find their own inner peace, and students confine themselves in order to build their own knowledge. This would refute my thesis because, even though all of these people are shutting themselves in various rooms and restricting their own movement, they do so in order to achieve something that they find important to their own personal welfare. In my second paragraph, I would describe how in Lines 6-7, bees are free to fly wherever they wish to, but they choose to confine themselves to foxglove bells because they find comfort in the food found there. This is again, a type of confinement, but one that satisfies hunger, a basic need of all creatures. Therefore, this confinement is also constructive.

In the third paragraph, I would describe how in lines 7-8 of the poem, Wordsworth himself claims that, “… the prison unto which we doom ourselves, no prison is.” This would be the main piece of evidence in my poem, because it directly describes that Wordsworth himself describes this imprisonment as something that is
not at all limiting, especially when one chooses it on their own. Wordsworth seems to feel that when we choose our own confinement, it gives us something to do and and provides us a good environment within which to progress and be constructive. I would conclude my piece with this evidence, because I feel
that it is the strongest piece of evidence in this poem that supports my thesis.

English blogging assignment #2

In Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room, the theme of confinement is explored in many different ways. In the first 3 lines of the poem, Wordsworth describes small, restrictive places such as “[the] Convent’s narrow room” (Line 1), the “Hermits’ cells,” (Line 2), and the “students’ citadels” (Line 3) very negatively, as places of physical confinement. In Line 4, the tone changes slightly to describe “maids at the wheel” and “weavers at their looms,” now describing a type of confinement by work and by necessity, but not quite physical restriction. Lines 6 and 7 describe bees that are free to soar however high they please, but end up limiting themselves “by the hour in Foxglove bells” (Line 7), once again confined by work, necessity, and arguably also by the comfort of food.

In contrast to the first half of the poem which describes physical locations of confinement, the second half describes abstract places within which people choose to close themselves. In lines 7-8 of the poem, Wordsworth says, “… the prison unto which we doom ourselves, no prison is,” claiming that those limitations which we place upon ourselves are not true limitations, but simply the decisions by we choose to live our lives. He later describes a sonnet as a physical place, or a “scanty plot of ground” (Line 11) in which one can choose to reside, especially those who “have felt the weight of too much liberty” (Line 13). By this, he means to say that those who lack important responsibilities, or those who lack enough restraint in their lives, can find relief within the limitations of a sonnet. This contrast between the physical, almost forcible confinement in the first half of the poem and the chosen confinement in the second half of the poem demonstrates how the concept of confinement is not necessarily negative, but can lead to many constructive events as well.

First blogging assignment!

Pick one of the sonnets we read for class and write two paragraphs for your first blog post. Write 300 words. In the first paragraph, compare the sonnet form

with the form of a tweet and a novel. What do these different forms allow you to do? Are there different expectations for these forms? In the second paragraph,

show how the author uses the sonnet form to express a problem. You can say how the sonnet form express a problem by analyzing the significance of the rhymes,

rhythm, or final couplet. You could address SOME, NOT NECESSARILY ALL, of the following questions: What relationship do the rhyming words have with each other?

Are they synonyms, antonyms, or in no relation to each other? What is the effect of a couplet? Some of us in class today thought that a couplet produces a sense

 of conclusion, a sense of an end. Does that usual effect apply to the poem you’re analyzing? How? Finally, are there any significant changes in the rhythm?

For example, after a number of iambs, is there a spondee? If so, what might that suggest about the word or words that make a change in the rhythm?

The sonnet form has similarities and differences with the form of a tweet and with that of a novel. When comparing a sonnet and a tweet, a sonnet is found to be far more elaborate than a tweet, and incorporates far more eloquent language. However, sonnets and tweets resemble each other in the aspect that they are both" snapshots" of a larger story. Tweets are generally short sentences or even phrases that describe a part of a person's life; meanwhile, sonnets can be described as snapshots in the sense that they are not written individually, but are rather written in a sequence of sonnets that eventually comes together to form an entire story. As quoted from Mr. Weise, "a tweet is a modern sonnet." A novel differs from a sonnet in the sense that it is the entire story while a sonnet is only part of the story; parallels can be drawn between the chapters in a novel and a single sonnet in a sequence of sonnets. However, a novel is similar to the sonnet is the sense that it is made up of elaborate language and describes events in detail.

In Sonnet 75 by Spenser, the rhyming scheme tends to generally follow a spondee-iamb-iamb-iamb-iamb pattern until line 4, where this pattern changes, as well as the speaker in the poem. This illustrates that a change in rhythm also usually represents another kind of change in the poem, whether it is a change in speaker, a change in the emphasis/importance of the lines, or any other kind of change. The final couplet in this poem, which also shows a change in rhythm, illustrates the solution to the problem addressed in the poem; the main character finds a way to immortalize his love: through the poem itself. These final two lines demonstrate a rhyme-scheme change in emphasis; the change in the rhythm of the poem illustrates the conclusion by finding or acknowledging the solution to immortalizing the love that these two characters share.