Georgian Poetry: Features and Themes

The Georgian School

• Georgian Poetry is a series of anthologies displaying English poetry from King George V's reign.
• These anthologies are collections of literary works chosen by a compiler that may include plays, poems, short stories and songs
• Georgian poetry spans from 1910 to 1935.
• Georgian poets shared common features and wrote poetry in a typical way for the time.
• Edmund Marsh first used "Georgian" and edited five Georgian Poetry collections from 1912-1922.
• This school of poetry appearance was connected to scientific progress, modern life complexity, war horrors, and loss of values.

Features of Georgian Poetry

• Poetry has a positive intention.
• Nature is portrayed naturally and beautifully.
• It lacks complicated thoughts and expressions.
• Love, childhood, old age, sleep, and animals are common themes.
• Poetry appeals to common people, not just the educated.
• It has pure melody
• Philosophical and religious themes are avoided

Walter John de la Mare

• Walter John de la Mare (1873–1956) was a British poet, short story writer and novelist of French origin.
• Most known for stories, books, magazines, and poems for children.
• "The Listeners" was published in 1912 and is about a "Traveller" who arrives at a silent house with his horse to fulfill a promise.
• The Traveller is met with silence from phantom listeners inside the house.

"The Listeners" Poem Analysis

• The action occurs late on a moonlit evening in a forest dwelling during the late 19th or early 20th century.
• Tone is serious, creating an eerie and otherworldly atmosphere.
• The poem starts with the Traveller and his horse at a house door, expecting someone to answer.
• The narrative shifts inside, revealing a certain presence of "phantoms" that "listen" to the traveler.
• Thematic threads include mysterious atmosphere, imaginary ghosts, and romantic situations.

Poetic Devices

• Poetic devices enhance the impact and convey ideas, feelings, and messages.
• Assonance is repeating vowel sounds in the same line, e.g., the /o/ and /oo/ in "Knocking on the moonlit door."
• Alliteration uses successive consonant at the beginning of words e.g., the /f/ in "forest's ferny floor" and /h/ in "his horse."
• Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line, e.g., the /s/ in "And his horse in the silence champed the grasses".
• Enjambment is a thought in verse that continues past a line break.
• Imagery makes readers perceive things through their five senses e.g., "Their stillness answering his cry".
• Metaphor compares different objects, such as the metaphors of atmosphere, ghosts, and man.
• Personification gives silence, shadowiness, and stillness human emotions and life.
• Rhetorical questions are used, such as "Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller".
• Symbolism uses symbols to signify ideas, giving them symbolic meanings, with the night, stillness, the traveler, and the ghosts symbolizing mystery and supernatural elements.