Victorian Visual Imagination

Her subsequent years at the Lowood Institution, although glossed over by Brontë, are when Jane emerges as an artist. Her first sketch is landscape with a crooked cottage whose graphic limitations bring about a daydream that evening in which she envisions a feast of “more accomplished imagery”(72).

In any piece of lyrical poetry, authors must masterfully use the language of the poem to covey the intended meaning. In order to ensure the meaning is not lost, it is imperative that the author incorporates various aspects of the narrative to escalate the poem past its face value. Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shallot” is no exception to the rule. From lines like “blue unclouded weather” and “the gemmy bridle glitter’d free”, one can draw that descriptive language is Tennyson’s tool to revealing the underlying meaning (Griffith 334). In each of the four parts of “The Lady of Shallot”, Tennyson uses descriptive language to convey his intended meaning to the audience.

Imagery is a common form of technique used in poetry in which the author uses visualization to demonstrate a vivid scene for the readers. In the poem, “Digging”, he discusses his father’s aging figure and recreates the feeling of the passage of time by mentioning his grandfather digging in a similar fashion. When Heaney says, “Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds; Bends low, comes up twenty years away”, he is most likely referring to a past memory of his father, indicating he has passed away twenty years ago. Heaney vividly remembers his father digging, and compares his father’s digging to his own penmanship when he says at the beginning of the poem, “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”, and at the end of the poem when he says, “Between my

Imagery is used consistently right through the poem to evoke sensory experiences and to endorse the theme. For instance: ‘A stark white ring-barked forest’-‘the sapphire misted mountains’-‘the hot gold lush of noon’ and many more. All of these appeal to the readers senses and places brilliant visual image(s) in our minds by illuminating the various features of the country, from the perspective of the poems persona. This is attained using; adjectives, ‘the sapphire-misted mountains¬¬¬’, which gives us a picture of mountains with a bluish haze embracing it, this image would thus give an impression of a composed environment and evoke a sense of tranquillity. Additionally by using ‘sapphire’ to illustrate the mist surrounding the mountains we get a sense of Australia’s uniqueness as sapphire is a rare gem. Imagery is also displayed through a metaphor used to appeal to the sense of hearing. For example: ‘the drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain’. Here Mackellar depicts the rain as an army and allows us not only to visualize but get a sense of the sound of the rain, which is presented through the adjective ‘drumming’. This line also presents to us the intensity of the rain again through the adjectives ‘drumming, steady and soaking’.

The themes of loneliness, exile and escape from reality are important aspects that characterize the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. During the 1800s, these aspects differentiated him from other Victorian poets, distinguishing him as one of the most popular poets of the Victorian era. In Tennyson's poems Mariana, and The Lady of Shalott, the artists express loneliness in their isolation from the rest of the world. The following essay will compare and contrast the displays of temporary and permanent loneliness of these artists through Tennyson's use of imagery, repetition, and word painting.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

Robert Frost, author of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, and Mark Twain, author of Two Ways of Seeing A River, explore the idea of beauty by putting their personal feelings into what they see. Both of these American authors use nature to interpret the ways of beauty into words. Frost and Twain go hand in hand with each other in the aspect of their diction. While Frost and Twain both use imagery to demonstrate fleeting beauty, frost includes time indicators, while Twain uses rhetorical questions.

In the Poem, “The lady of Shallot”, the main character, Lady of Shallot spends the entirety of her life perceiving the outside world through the reflection of her window through a mirror. As the Lady of Shallot observes the obscured reality, she weaves all that she sees in the mirror to create a quilt. However, what the lady sees in the mirror is not an accurate representation of the real world outside of her castle. Thus, by this action, the Lady of Shallot is an accurate representation of how all artists create their artwork. In other words, the layers behind reality that is not palpable to human eyes are what artists visualize and then illustrate on their canvas. To illustrate the emblem of Lady of Shallot, famous artist, Vincent van Gogh,

Nature can be one of the most awe inspiring things in the world. Nature has been the inspiration and basis for which man has created many things in this world. Nature is also one of the most beautiful things in the world and has so much to offer people, but some people don’t take the time to go out and enjoy nature often enough. Some people are surrounded by nature’s beauty every day, but often fail to fully appreciate nature’s beauty. However, that is not the case for poets Elizabeth Bishop and Lord Alfred Tennyson. In Bishop’s poem “The Fish” and Tennyson’s poem “The Eagle”, the poets do a masterful job of telling the world how beautiful nature truly is and showing their reverence for nature through numerous literary methods. One can see how the poems “The Fish” and “The Eagle” both present a theme of reverence for nature by looking at the poet’s use of imagery, symbolism, and structure.

Robert Browning chooses specific elements to make his piece effective. His choice of diction, voice, imagery, figures of speech, sound, sentence structure and symbols are essential to understanding the poem’s meaning. The

During the 19th century, the en plein-air paintings were introduced to many artists. Since that，natural light became particular important to the Hudson River School. Also, art and literature were constantly entwined, such as American Romanticism. Significant individuals became familiar with one another’s work, resulting in inspiration that led to creative works that pay homage to another artists’ work. For instance, Asher Brown Durand’s Landscape-Scene From “Thanatopsis” was inspired by the romantic poet William Cullen Bryant, whose work was influenced by the multifaceted cultural creations. Both Bryant and Durand investigated the themes of men, nature, individualism, and the inner and after lives. Through detailing natural elements that emphasized the life cycle, Durand created literary art by paying tributed to Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”.

Victorian visual artists illustrated many of the works throughout the 19th and early 20th Century. When the artists illustrated a scene, they had to make choices about color, tone, facial expression, body posture and various other aspects that either were established or not clearly portrayed in the literary works. As a result, many artists used their own ingenuity to interpret the literary work, as seen in the illustration of Dante Gabriel Rossetti for Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “The lady of Shallot” (Norton). Rossetti brings the final scene of Lancelot overlooking the body of the Lady of Shallot to life through his detailed portrayal of the aspects of both characters as well as the positioning of the overall illustration, creating an understanding from readers and a connection between Lancelot and the Lady of Shalott.

The first passage analyzes two of Turner’s late paintings, The Snowstorm and The Burning of the Houses of Parliament. The second passage critiques Turner’s early painting style. A comparison of the two passages shows the evolution of not only Turner’s painting style but also his goals in painting. In the second passage, John Berger describes Turner’s early landscape paintings as having “far more to do with art than nature” (215). His art has “a kind of restlessness or desperation” (215).

Lastly, the Romantic Era blended human emotions with nature. The interfacing of emotion and nature was emblematic of Romantic poetry, whether it engrossed the idea of bequeathing human emotions to an innate article like a river or connecting the scenery to the temperament of the writer. (James, 491) This kind of beauty that is

The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,