Lecture 2.4.0 - Poetry that Traces Life’s Journey
Lecture Overview
Today’s lesson will focus on a selection of poetry that will take us on a journey through some of the important stages in human life. In addition you will be introduced to some familiar and not so familiar literary devices that will enhance your appreciation, understanding and ways of thinking about literature. We have already encountered some in other poems that you’ve read. In Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break we learned what it might be like to face the death of a younger sibling, how some children feel that school is a waste of their youth, how some children were made to work at hard labour cleaning chimneys, how we can be depressed and spend our nights wandering the city. The troubles, struggles and trials we all face as we grow up are part of every world literature. Literature is about people and their lives – the good, bad and the ugly. Texts that focus on growing up are known as COMING OF AGE – one of Literature enduring genres or types Coming of age stories focus on the protagonist's journey from being a child to being an adult. They are relatable stories that often feature common themes like losing one's childhood innocence, conflict (with parents, friends, society) and accepting that life is not always going to be perfect. Movies and novels, because they are longer than poems, do a better job of covering the life of a person from childhood to adulthood. Elizabeth Brewster’s poem Is The Pathetic Fallacy True? manages to follow the narrator from childhood exploring nature to an adult:
When I was a child / the stones were living. ... (jumps forwards to today as an adult) ...Nevertheless / sometimes lately / at night in dreams ... (jumps again to a time in the grave) when I lie with the living grass above me ...