5 philip freneau.ppt

1. List some sayings included in Poor Richard’s Almanac; 2. List the 13 virtues Franklin set for himself. Notes for the 1st stanza: retreat: place of seclusion; secluded place No roving foot shall crush thee here, / No busy hand provoke a tear: iteration; parallelism; synecdoche; provoke: shall provoke, cause to shed; “Thy, thee”: apostrophe, personification Notes for the 2nd stanza: Nature: personification (she) in white array’d: dressed in white; purity bade: past tense of “bid”; command, ask shun: avoid summer: metaphor repose: lie dead The 2nd stanza: ① the advantages of the suckle: bade, shun, planted, guardian shade, sent, soft waters (nature’s protection) (contrast) ② the disadvantages of the suckle: quietly . . . goes, declining, repose Notes for the 3rd stanza: smit with: past tense of “smite”; impressed by, stricken by; they died: the charms of the flower faded away; nor were those flowers less / more gay, / The flowers that did in Eden bloom: Those flowers that did bloom in Eden were not less / more gay; not only the flowers hidden in the silent, dull retreat will die, but all flowers will die; vestige: trace * §4 Philip Freneau (1752-1832) Freneau’s position in American literature and his major poems: the most significant poet of the 18th century America; the “father of American poetry”; used his poetic talents in the service of a nation struggling for independence, writing verses for the righteous cause of his people and exposing British colonial savageries; the first important poet to turn his eyes to America; almost alone of his generation, he managed to evade the pervasive atmosphere of imitativeness, to see life around directly, and to appreciate the natural scenes on the New Continent and the native Indian civilization social poems and lyrics; social poems: in them he relentlessly attacked the British colonial domination and zealousl