阿诺德Dover Beach的解析
Time and Place
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote "Dover Beach" during or shortly after a visit he and his wife made to the Dover region of southeastern England, the tting of the poem, in 1851. They had married in June of that year. A draft of the first two stanzas of the poem appears on a sheet of paper he ud to write notes for another another work, "Empedocles on Etna," published in 1852. The town of Dover is clor to France than any other port city in England. The body of water parating the coastline of the town from the coast of France is the Strait of Dover, north of the English Channel and south of the North Sea.
Point of View
班级学情分析The poet/persona us first-, cond-, and third-person point of view in the poem. Generally, the poem prents the obrvations of the author/persona in third-person point of view but shifts to cond person when he address his beloved, as in Line 6 (Come), Line 9 (Listen! you), and Line 29 (let). Then he shifts to first-person point of view when he includes his beloved and the reader as co-obrvers, as in Line 18 (we), Line 29 (us), Line 31 (us), and Line 35 (we). He also us first-person po
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int of view to declare that at least one obrvation is his alone, and not necessarily that of his co-obrvers. This instance occurs in Line 24: But now I only hear. This line means But now I alone hear.
Who Is the Listener? (Line 29)
The person addresd in the poem—Lines 6, 9, and 29—is Matthew Arnold's wife, Frances Lucy Wightman. However, since the poem express a universal message, one may say that she can be any woman listening to the obrvations of any man. Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851, the year they were married and the year Arnold was believed to have written "Dover Beach." At that time Arnold was inspector of schools in England, a position he held until 1886.
Theme
Arnold’s central message is this: Challenges to the validity of long-standing theological and moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in God and religion. In Arnold’s world of the mid-1800's, the pillar of faith supporting society was perceived as crumbling under the weight of scientific postulates, such as the evolutionary theory of English physician Erasmus Darwin and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Conquently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things wa
s cast in doubt. Arnold, who was deeply religious, lamented the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he es in “Dover Beach” on the coast of France, which gleams one moment and is gone the next. He remained a believer in God and religion, although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of traditional religious thinking. In God and the Bible, he wrote: "At the prent moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."
Type of Work
“Dover Beach” is a poem with the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue. Becau the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is said to be in free ver--that is, it is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional versification. However, there is cadence in the poem, achieved through the following:
Alliteration Examples: t o-nigh t, t ide; f ull, f air; g leams, g one; c oast, c liff (Stanza 1)
Parallel Structure Example: The tide is full, the moon lies fair (Stanza 1); So various, so beautiful, so new (Stanza 4); Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light /Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (Stanza 4)
Rhyming Words Examples: to-night, light; fair, night-air; stand, land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in(Stanza 1)
Words Suggesting Rhythm Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cea, then begin again (Stanza 1); turbid ebb and flow (Stanza 2)
Year of Publication
Although Matthew Arnold completed "Dover Beach" in 1851 or 1852, the poem was not published until 1867. It appeared in a collection entitled New Poems, published in London.
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
1
The a is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the a meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cea, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in (14)
Notes, Stanza 1
moon . . . straits: The water reflects the image of the moon.
A strait is a narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water. In this poem, straits refers to the Strait of Dover (French: Pas de Calais), which connects the English Channel on the south to the North Sea on the north. The distance between the port cities of Dover, England, and Calais, France, is about 21 miles via the Strait of Dover. light . . . gone: This clau establishes a n of rhythm in that the light blinks on and off. In addition, the clau foreshadows the message of later lines--that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong, now flickers. Whether an obrver at Dover can actually e a light at Calais depends on the height of the lighthou and the altitude at which the obrver es the light (becau of the curvature of the earth), on the brightness of the light, and on the weather conditions.
cliffs . . . vast: The are white cliffs, compod of chalk, a limestone that easily erodes. Like the light from France, they glimmer, further developing the theme of a weakening of the light of faith. The fact that they easily erode supports this theme.
moon-blanched: whitened by the light of the moon.
grating . . . .pebbles: Here, grating (meaning rasping, grinding, or scraping) introduces conflict between the a and the land and, symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges against them. However, it may be an exaggeration that that pebbles cau a grating roar. strand: shoreline
2
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human miry; we
弘化公主
Find also in the sound a thought,裹凉皮
Hearing it by this distant northern a (20)
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Notes, Stanza 1
4
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which ems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
陈涉世家选自So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confud alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night (37)
Notes, Stanza 4
neither . . . pain: The world has become a lfish, cynical,
amoral, materialistic battlefield; there is much hatred and
pain, but there is no guiding light.
darkling: dark, obscure, dim; occurring in darkness;
menacing, threatening, dangerous, ominous.
Where . . . night: E.K. Brown and J.O. Bailey suggest that
this line is an allusion to Greek historian Thucydides' account
of the Battle of Epipolae (413 B.C.), a walled fortress near
the city of Syracu on the island of Sicily. In that battle,
Athenians fought an army of Syracusans at night. In the
darkness, the combatants lashed out blindly at one another.
Brown and Bailey further obrve that the line "suggests the
confusion of mid-Victorian values of all kinds . . . " (Brown,
E.K, and J.O. Bailey, eds. Victorian Poetry. 2nd ed. New
York: Ronald Press, 1962, Page 831).
Interpretation
Let us at least be true to each other in our marriage, in our
moral standards, in the way we thnk; for the world will not be
小说撒野true to us. Although it prents itlf to us as a dreamland, it
is a sham. It offers nothing to ea our journey through life. Figures of Speech
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