英语专业本科生毕业论文(经典)

“When we two parted” is a poem of George Gordon Byron written in 1808 and published in 1813 in “The poetical works of Lord Byron” This poem is about the love, first, and later the hate a man feels towards who was his beloved because she left him. It’s a very typical Romantic poem, typical of a Romantic writer like Lord Byron, who expresses his feelings of love, a typical issue of Romanticism. This thesis mainly focuses on giving an introduction of the author Byron and analyzing the poem in every aspect.

Keywords: structure; rhetorical figures; emotion I. Introduction of the Author

Byron was a romantic poet, his writings develops a Romantic style as distinctive and as influential as Wordsworth’s works, one of the most representative romantic writers. Byron’s romantic subjectivity defines itself in spectacular terms, this subjectivity has been criticized as too theatrical by John Keats. But for other poets like Baudelaire, that theatrical style defined Byron’s greatness as a lyric poet. Lord Byron has a wonderful collection of poetic works, he started writing in 1806 to his death in 1824. Through this years he made a lot of famous works such as “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage”, “Don Juan” or “Manfred”. The main characteristic of Byron’s poems is its strength and masculinity, combined in a lot of cases with irony. “When we two parted” is a poem of heart broken, expressing strong feelings in a simple but full of meaning vocabulary. II. Appreciation of the Poem A. Structure

The poem is divided in four stanzas and each one in eight verses. The rhyme used by Byron follows this structure: abab cdcd efef ghgh ijij klkl mnmn kbkb. Separating each stanza in four verses, Readers can have the rhyme more clear, each even verse and each odd verse rhyme with its equivalent even or odd verse. This structure gives to the poem a lot of rhyme, giving the sensation of musicality.

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The vocabulary is easy to understand for everybody who studies the English language. The first verse of the poem is also the title of the poem, which means that the writer could not or did not want to find a title for the poem. Maybe the damage he felt was so strong that he was not able to find a good title for the poem, as he writes at the end of the third stanza (Long, long shall I rue thee/ Too deeply to tell). B. Rhetorical Figures

In this poem it is too difficult to find rhetorical figures, due to the most important of all the poem is the strength of the words. Despite of this, it can be seen, for example, in the third line a metaphor: “half broken-hearted”; the poet is expressing us how he and his lover feel when they are two parted.

Another striking thing found in the poem is the second part of the fourth stanza. It is the only stanza which repeats the rhyme of other verses and not just the rhyme, but the word itself. E.g. “To sever for years” and “After long years”. If we pay attention, there is also a correspondence of meaning, in the first stanza Byron is telling they are going to sever for years and in the last stanza he is thinking of what he will do when they meet again. With the other two verses is the same, at the first part: “In silence and tears” is how they react when they are two parted, and in the last part of the poem: “With silence and tears” is how he is going to have to greet her since they did not meet.

In the last stanza, the two first verses have two words that may be synonyms, but they mean a totally different thing, they are the contrast of the poem: In secret we met, here Byron wants to transmit the passion of two lovers in their first secret encounter. And In silence I grieve symbolizes that nobody can help this man to come back to smile after having been left by the woman he loved. C. Analyzing the Poem in Detail

In the first stanza, the poet begins with the main topic, remembering the separation of the two lovers, how they felt: “half broken-hearted”, showing his pain. Also he expresses the idea of what we think that this separation is due to the death of his lover with the metaphor of : “Pale grew thy cheek and cold,/colder thy kiss”. All that surrounds her is cold, and this cold is a perfect form to express the death in contrast

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with the warm involving the life.

Following with the poem, in the second stanza it can be found the relation of colder morning with the pain that the poet is feeling. Also another time we can see that his lover is dead: “thy vows are all broken”. Then, it followed with the shame that feels the poet when he hears her name; maybe shame because their relation was a sin. This idea will be developed later with some comments of people that “she” was a married woman.

The third stanza contains strong vocabulary showing again that “she” is dead: “A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o’er me”. These two verses remain to the sounds of the bells of a funeral, using the appropriated word “Knell”. Also he asked himself why he loved her so, and people who knew her well do not know any relation between them. Maybe that people who knew her well could be her family and husband.

At the last stanza, the poet is remembering when they met and transmits us a feeling of hope: “If I should meet thee”. Maybe life exists before death and they can reopen their love, and the poet also tells us how they greet: “With silence and tears”. The whole poem is an expression of feelings of hate from the man towards the woman because she left him. Also, the whole poem, from the first line to the last one, is written in the first person, in plural (When we two parted), and in singular (I hear thy name spoken). It means that this poem maybe autobiographical or not, maybe the woman was a real woman or not, or simply the work is an ode to disappointed love. I would like to emphasize the contrast between two verses (the second one and the last one), seemingly equal in form but with different meanings, it depends on what the previous line said. In the first pair of verses (When we two parted/ In silence and tears) the man feels true love towards his beloved, but she, as we will see some verses later, does not, and the last verse is the definitive confirmation of what he feels is disgust and pity because of what could be and was not. The third verse of the poem may have two different meanings too: Half broken-hearted: the man can have his heart broken because he loves her completely and he would do anything for her, and can have his heart broken because she has left him and he will never see her again.

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“When we two parted” is included in the historical movement of Romanticism which is “an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution.” Moreover, unfaithfulness is a topic of all the times and the separation of two lovers due to death or for something else happens then, now and after. For that reason this poem of pain can be considered as a poem for all the times.

References:

[1] 张倓; 论拜伦诗歌中的东方主义思想倾向[D]; 东北师范大学;2009年 [2] 杨德豫，查良铮译．拜伦诗歌精选[M]．北岳文艺出版社．1994．

[3] 王士强; 形式的“内容”与文化身份认同——浅析拜伦诗歌的形式及其变化[J];国外文学;2010年01期

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