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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 8 page essay/research paper that offers an explication of Victorian poet A.C. Swinburne's poem "The Sundew." Drawing heavily on an article by J. Smith (2003), the writer argues that Swinburne used this small carnivorous plant to establish a view of nature that was at odds with the climate of the Victorian age, which sought to explain anything and everything through scientific analysis. The sundew is presented as holy because it is a part of nature. Yet, inscrutable and mysterious, Swinburne presents the plant as neither wholly good nor evil, but simply part of a greater cycle of life and death that human beings work diligently to ignore. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khsundew.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
an ode to this inconspicuous flower entitled "The Sundew," which reflects the a British cultural fascination with this plant, an obsession that extended from the 1860s well into the 1880s
(Smith, 2003). As the following explication of the poem will demonstrate, Swinburne drew heavily on nature analogies in developing his verse. However, in order to understand the poem, it
is also necessary to see it within the cultural context in which the poem was written. Swinburne, like the rest of the British public, was fascinated with the sundew
"not because it is beautiful, or good, or modest, or retiring, but simply and solely because it is atrociously and deliberately wicked," as it is a plant that kills
(Smith, 2003, p. 131). While it was later determined that these plants trap and "eat" insects for their nutrient value, at the time, the reason why the plant was
carnivorous, or even if it was carnivorous, was a matter of some debate during Swinburnes era (Smith, 2003). Swinburne uses this ambiguity to establish a view of nature that was
at odds with the climate of the Victorian age, which sought to explain anything and everything through scientific analysis. The sundew is presented as holy because it is a part
of nature. Yet, inscrutable and mysterious, it is neither wholly good nor evil, but simply part of a greater cycle of life and death that human beings work diligently to
ignore. In the opening stanzas, Swinburne begins by offering a very accurate description of the sundews appearance and environment: "A little marsh plant, yellow green,/ And pricked at lip
with tender red" (lines 1-2). In the second line, however, Swinburne begins to anthropormorphize the plant, in an erotic fashion, by suggesting that the red outer filaments constitute a mouth,
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