"To the Nightingale" is also important in the history of poetry for another reason. Which setting do you prefer? In this sense "The Petition" stands as a potent manifesto of a way of composing poetry that could resist the pressure of writing to satisfy the demands of patriarchal readers, a constraint to which, Finch reveals elsewhere, she often felt compelled to succumb. 1, 5th ed., edited by M. H. Abrams et. Her two most famous nature poems, "The Petition for an Absolute Retreat" and "A Nocturnal Reverie," are not really descriptive, as is James Thomson's georgic "The Seasons," but elegiac or invocatory, summoning up a landscape that is either absent or hypothetical. Zephyr was the Greek god of the west wind, which was considered the most gentle and inviting wind. "Adam Posed" 2. Out of this came a view of the individual as very important, along with a deep appreciation for art and nature. She was buried in Eastwell. Barbara McGovern devotes two chapters to Finch's use of the pastoral, a genre to which she returned constantly throughout her life and which she adapted to a wide range of styles and themes. The speaker prefers this setting to that of her everyday life. Miller, Christopher R., "Staying Out Late: Anne Finch's Poetics of Evening," in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. POEMS FROM ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA (1661-1720) CONTENTS 1. "The Introduction" 4. Dowd, Michelle M., and Julie A. Ackerle, Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England, Ashgate, 2007. The end of the poem, however, reveals the comment the poet makes about the struggles of daily life in civilization. She hears the curlews. Experiencing nature for an extended period of time might involve travel. "The Apology" 5. Key Words: Qualitative Data Analysis, Unit of Analysis, and Qualitative Research. Like the speaker, the reader experiences the flow and relaxation of the nighttime setting. ." Mendelson, Sarah, and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England: 1550-1720, Oxford University Press, 2000. a nocturnal reverie analysis line by line. They relied on allusion to draw clear comparisons between their society and that of ancient Rome, or to bring to their verse the flavor of classical poetry. Today: Well-educated young women have the option of pursuing any number of career fields, including medicine, writing, teaching, law, science, or ministry. It is written in iambic pentameter, a meter that consists of five feet (or . The poem is serene in tone and rich in imagery. Using personification, Finch breathes life into the natural elements in "A Nocturnal Reverie" so thoroughly that the scene seems populated with friends, old and new, rather than with trees, animals, and breezes. There she befriended other young women with literary interests, and Finch began to dabble in poetry. Nature is humanized through extensive use of anthropomorphism and personification, and the effect is that nature is characterized as being friendly, welcoming, and nurturing. Finch's style in "A Nocturnal Reverie" is also very lush and descriptive, as so much of romantic poetry is, and the experience is described in relation to the speaker's emotional response to it. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Despite what it says on the cover, this book is definitely not "a true story". 14 line lyric poem the first eight lines, called the octave, rhyme abbaabba, the content usually presents a problem. Personification is a literary device with which the author assigns human characteristics to non-human entities and is similar to anthropomorphism. The speaker's recognition of this impotence is undoubtedly accompanied by the loss of a conviction in the possibility of a union of sound and sense. It is as if they were waiting for just the right air for their arrival. . Through the contrast between music and speech, Finch acknowledges a collapse of faith in the power of the poet as singer rather than as persuader. al., W. W. Norton, 1986, pp. //