Please post the completed essay to Turnitin.com. If you would like more time, you can post it as late as Friday, January 16th at 11:59 pm. I look forward to your responses.
Directions: You will be given a passage from a Jane Austen novel you have not read, and be asked to compose an essay using direct evidence from the text. Please bring a charged computer, and be ready to post the essay to Turnitin.com during the allotted time.
Know the following literary devices: personification, ellipsis, simile, metaphor, verbals, dramatic irony, iambic pentameter, paradox, inversion, and alliteration
NOTE: I will be formally grading blogs beginning Monday, January 21st. This is your last opportunity to get your work completed before the end of the term. Please use the weekend to get caught up. Also, make sure your Henry V essays are posted to Turnitin.com!
So farewell—to the little good you bear me.
Farewell? a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls as I do. I have ventur’d,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride
At length broke under me, and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!
I feel my heart new open’d. O how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
EXAM REMINDERS FOR NEXT WEEK:
Wednesday, January 23rd - 10:00- 11:30 am
Wednesday, January 23rd - 10:00- 11:30 am
Know the following literary devices: personification, ellipsis, simile, metaphor, verbals, dramatic irony, iambic pentameter, paradox, inversion, and alliteration
NOTE: I will be formally grading blogs beginning Monday, January 21st. This is your last opportunity to get your work completed before the end of the term. Please use the weekend to get caught up. Also, make sure your Henry V essays are posted to Turnitin.com!
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ReplyDeleteTragedies back in Shakespeare’s time describe the sad downfall of a character who began as an honorable figure. In Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey experiences his unfortunate downfall. Beginning as the advisor to King Henry VIII, Wolsey describes his downward spiral in a speech. It begins at the beginning of his life when he was the king’s advisor and he had so much honor and prestige. He was a man who everyone wanted to be. However, there was then a turning point in the speech where he describes the beginning of his fall. Wolsey finally ends at his lowest point in life, or the bottom of his fall. Throughout this entire speech, Shakespeare purposefully used an appropriate tone to emphasize his point and allusion and figurative language to magnify the tone of the speech; all of these factors added up to a vivid speech.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, the tone of Shakespeare in this short speech given begins in a very light tone as Wolsey describes the peak of his life. He talks about how he “bears his blushing honors thick upon him”. He was a figure to be admired with such a high status in life. Then the tone suddenly shifts as the speech has reached it’s turning point: “And then he falls as I do”. This abrupt change in the tone indicates the transition in the speech and, in other words, the beginning of Wolsey’s downfall. Finally, in the end of the speech, the tone is dark and depressing. The last line of his speech, “Never to hope again.”, gives the feeling of despair. Shakespeare uses tone to indicate the shift in the speech and describes the speaker’s feelings.
To add onto this, Shakespeare also uses figurative language to emphasize the tone of the speech. During the transition phase of the speech, just after Wolsey has described the joys of his life, he personifies his pride to make the turning point feel even heavier: “My high-blown pride / At length broke under me, and now has left me”. Here Cardinal Wolsey has been left with nothing. By personifying the character’s pride, Shakespeare emphasizes the fact that Wolsey is now a broken man with nothing left. He makes it feel like Wolsey’s pride kept him going well in life, but now he is unable to do anything without it. Another example was at the very end of the speech where Cardinal is describing the horrors of the bottom of his downfall. Here, Shakespeare uses a simile to accentuate the character’s tragedy. As spoken in the speech, “when he falls, he falls like Lucifer”. He makes the character feel like they were an angel (the reference to Lucifer) and this shows how much Cardinal has lost and how far he has fallen. This is also an allusion. This reference to Lucifer, an angel, makes the reader feel like Wolsey was above the level of human and now has fallen below the human level.
Shakespeare has implemented many elements into this speech in his play, Henry VIII. By doing so, the reader is able to feel the depth and loss of the character Wolsey. The vivid descriptions through the use of allusion, figurative language and tone thoroughly convey Wolsey’s downfall in this tragedy. By cleverly mixing in the emphasis and facts, Shakespeare produces a very powerful speech from his character.
Were we supposed to post them here, too?
DeleteCardinal Wolsey isn’t King Henry VIII’s advisor anymore. The royal spokesmen have also left him alone. His reaction to the situation is really complicated, for he probably doesn’t really know what to think. But he uses a lot of figurative language, so maybe if we decipher it, we will know what he’s on about.
ReplyDeleteWolsey personifies all his greatness, and gives it “a long farewell.” He compares being in such a high-ranking position to having a lot of close friends. Or maybe he did have a lot of close friends when he was among the nobility, and won’t see them again now that he’s been dismissed. Either way, it makes sense.
He then goes on to liken the state of man to the seasons. “To-day he puts forth the tender leaves of his hopes, to-morrow blossoms, and bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killer frost, and when he thinks, good easy man, full surely his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, and then he falls as I do.” This metaphor shows how many things can change on short notice. However, the seasons aren’t very convincing for this, because they occur in the same order every year.
Wolsey has “ventured, like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory.” The King’s Advisor must’ve been a glorious position for him, and he obviously pondered that glory the whole time. Unfortunately, this may mean that he was conceited. However, I don’t see how the use of bladders, or life jackets, fit the simile. Did he have some sort of protection?
One moment, he’s the King’s Advisor; the next, as far as I can tell, he’s about to be banished from the government. He has fallen “like Lucifer, never to hope again.” Lucifer Satan is said to have once been an angel, but somehow, his career turned upside down, and to this day, he is frequently associated with the dark arts. With this allusion, Wolsey is actually being a little harsh on himself. Fallen like Lucifer, indeed! He’s at least more likely to start over as a businessman than as a beggar. It can’t be that dire.
So there you are. Cardinal Wolsey has just been fired, and the rest of the nobility have left him alone. He didn’t directly explain how he was feeling, but he was using figurative language. But after careful analysis, I’ve surmised that he will miss his coworkers, his conceit will lift, and he feels really hopeless. Sometimes, it all comes to that.
Did I need to put this here?
DeleteWilliam Shakespeare wrote seven plays on King Henry the IV through King Henry the VIII, each with unique storyline and perspective on the lives of these kings. A speech in Henry VIII which is a stand out moment in the play is the soliloquy (a speech a character gives when left alone on stage) Wolsey, an advisor to the King, gives after he is left alone on stage following his downfall from advisor to the King. Throughout the soliloquy Shakespeare uses metaphors and allusions all tied together with a cohesive theme. Shakespeare writes in iambic pentameter, which means we know exactly which words he wanted to emphasize for affect and which aids us in understanding the meaning behind the complexity of old Shakespearean English.
ReplyDeleteIn the opening stanzas (3-8) Shakespeare begins to explore a metaphor for what Wolsey has just experienced:
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes to-morrow blossoms
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he think, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his roots.
Within this passage the metaphor of a plants life is being used in explantation to his life as the King’s advisor. Wolsey connects the hope he once had at the beginning of his experience with the King as the “tender leaves of hopes to-morrow blossoms,” meaning Wolsey had the hope that his life with the King would work and that it could blossom. Shakespeare does a very smart thing of describing the death of this hope as a frost because if it were to be described as someone cutting the blossoms, for an example, it would make the death sudden and expected; but to describe it as a frost is a slow death, but a death no one expects. Then he describes his roots being cut, that is the final death, just like when a gardener sees that their plants have died they uproot them and plant new ones, just as Wolsey will be replaced with someone who is fresh -- young. In addition Wolsey feels like that glory he received was beyond what he should have been getting, maybe the King didn’t want him to have the glory, thus the stanzas 11-12 “This summers in a sea of glory, /// By far beyond my depth.” The metaphor of the sea of glory is something he once felt, but now it is out of his depth. Shakespeare's use of metaphors in the first few stanzas truly gives the reader a clear message on how Wolsey is feeling and the complexity of those emotions.
At the ending of Wolsey’s soliloquy he gives an allusion to the biblical story of Lucifer, God’s favorite son as the fallen angel. “When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, /// Never to hope again.” An allusion in Shakespearean writing is a specific kind of reference: to well-known characters, events, or themes that come from classical works of literature, such as biblical stories or mythology. This was consistent with ideas of the Enlightenment age, which Shakespeare was working, it sought to bring back the classics. So the allusion to Lucifer would’ve caught Shakespeare's audience right where he wanted them; Wolsey has fallen from the grace of the King, just as Lucifer fell from the grace of God. Connecting God’s grace and the King’s grace would’ve please his audience that was of the aristocratic society or the royals because it enforced the idea of Divine Right, the idea that kings have the right to be king because God put them as king. The allusion Shakespeare uses the allusion of Lucifer to grab the attention of every class of person in the audience.
The main theme throughout the soliloquy is hope. Hope is suppose to eternal, Shakespeare challenges that with a soliloquy from a man who has nothing left to hope for. Hope symbolized what Wolsey was losing, it wasn’t that he was losing his hope for a better future he was losing the ability to hope for a good outcome. The beginning talks of hope as a blossom and at the ending hope has become something Lucifer, the devil, had and something he will never be able have again. Wolsey never wants to hope for hope again.
DeleteThe use of metaphors, allusions and themes in this soliloquy creates a persuasive, heartbreaking speech. Shakespeare knew exactly where to place each use of figurative language throughout his writing. Every choice, every word, every movement of syllables had to be exactly correct for this soliloquy to portray the emotions indicative in this scene. Whether it be the fall from grace or the loss of hope each line in this soliloquy has a purpose and place in this moment, without one the whole speech would feel incomplete.
Many elements can be used to portray a characters feelings towards a certain proceedings. Such elements include ethos, pathos, logos, personification, rhyme, and other forms of such elements. In Cardinal Wolsey’s excommunication from his position as advisor to the king, Shakespeare chiefly uses various forms of personification, one instance of synecdoche, metaphors, and similes. These forms of speech elements enable the user better understand the meaning Shakespeare is trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteShakespeare is well known for his various plays, spanning 1585 to 1613. His Henry VIII play was published(posthumously) in 1623, yet first performed in 1613. It was said that during a performance of Henry VIII at Globe Theatre, a cannon went off(for special effects), igniting the thatched ceiling and burning the theatre down(Globe Theatre will be rebuilt next year, 1614). This play was a collaborative historical play(with John Fletcher) based on the real life events of King Henry VIII of England, but I digress. The scene in which Cardinal Wolsey’s excommunication by the king was rich in various figures of speech, including the synecdoche of “a long farewell to all my greatness!”(Ln 2) in which Wolsey refers to his fall from grace, and the personification of “a killing frost”(Ln 6)in which he believes that his fall from grace was because of some evil force of nature, and “a rude stream”(Ln 15). There are many more instances of metaphors and similes alongside these other figures of speech. As he refers to his previous position as a “sea of glory”(Ln 11) and how it has “now(has) left me”(Ln 13), and the simile of him “falls like Lucifer”(Ln 23), which refers to Satan, the fallen angel.
Shakespeare uses a lot of figures of speech to personify his various plays during his 28 active years. Using such methods, his plays became much more vivid to the reader or spectator, endearing his literature from the 14th century all the way to the 21st century. This is the reasons that his plays are the most read and studied.
, and why they are most studied, but I once again digress. This speech is a marvelous example of the use of various figure of speech to convey deep meanings.
DeleteIn the speech from Shakespeare’s play Henry VII, Shakespeare writes about Cardinal Wolsey considering his sudden downfall from his position as king’s advisor. In this speech, Shakespeare uses elements such as allusion, figurative language, and tone to portray the meaning and Wolsey complex response to his dismissal from the court.
ReplyDeleteAn allusion is used by referring to Lucifer in this speech “And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer”. Lucifer is a myth of a fallen angel that became the lord of the underworld after being kicked out of heaven by God. This comparison shows his belief that it is useless to hope and he only feels unhappiness and pain from having hope. Emphasizing his change in position similar to Lucifer.
The tone of the speech at the start of the speech is anger and indignant. He uses negative words at the beginning of the speech such as “farewell”, “killing” and “falls”. Toward line 17, the tone shifts from anger to despair and hopelessness. In the last line, he says “Never to hope again” showing just how hopeless he feels and even compares himself to Lucifer which in that time was like comparing your self with satan. This tone makes us feel bad for him and wonders what he did to get to this horrible state of mind.
Figurative Language was also used in the speech by Shakespeare in line 4-9 and 10. Line 4-9 was an extended metaphor of seasons. The Blossoms representing spring and the killing frost representing the winter. This change from blossoms to frost show Wolsey's vulnerability. The frost is when the king dismisses him and killing frost is used after frost with repetition displaying Wolsey's anger. The Wanton boys floating on the bladders in line 10 is a metaphor for him being supported by the king and his power that put Wolsey where he is.
This parts of speech were used to enhance the speech showing the feeling of the speech in the tone, figurative language, and allusion that was used. Shakespeare uses this to his advantage making it easier for the audience to understand and leaving some of what is thought to interpretation.