Thursday, June 11, 2015

How do I write a draft begining this way as wanted by the Professor: "We see Autumn in the role of a person in each stanza as she . . . in the first stanza . . . in the second stanza, and is a . . . in the third stanza as we hear her. . . " This is supposed to be a draft in MLA.

This question seems to refer to Keats's famous poem about Autumn, not to his other famous poem about the Bright Star.
In Keats's poem "To Autumn," each stanza does offer a different version of the season, portrayed as an allegorical figure. The poem begins in energy and ripeness and ends in harvest and silence. The figure moves over the landscape as the season goes from fullness to emptiness, from color to white. In particular, the figure represents the period at the end of the year's life and offers a reflection on Keats's own imminent death from tuberculosis.
To write this essay, you want to capture the visual and aural imagery in each stanza. After you define the role of the allegorical figure Autumn (ripener, harvester, and musician) in each stanza, match up individual words that show this. To make your paragraphs conform to MLA standards, cite each word you quote as evidence in an in-text parenthetical citation: In stanza 1, Autumn brings "mellow fruitfulness" to the landscape (1), encouraging "fruit" and "vines" to grow around the "thatch-eves" (4). If you quote two lines, be sure to use the / mark to show where the lines break, and make sure you capitalize the first word of each new line.
Develop your paragraphs according to the visual and aural imagery in each one, showing how the poem moves as time does from early to late autumn. Connect these images to the role Autumn plays at each point in the arc of the season.
In the first stanza, we see images of autumn or harvest time. The personified season conspires with the sun to ripen and bring to fruition the fruits of summer. In this stanza, everything seems to be teeming with life.
In the second stanza, Keats addresses the figure, suggesting she is now in the winnowing room, separating wheat from chaff, cutting the crop in the field and growing drowsy by the late autumn labor.
The last stanza addresses Autumn as maker of music, and a song less vibrant but no less sweet than spring and summer. Here the makers of music are lambs who will go to slaughter, birds and insects who will soon be gone, and all things that will eventually settle into silence.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the theme of the chapter Lead?

Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...