Scanty Plot, Revisited

In the poem, “Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room,” Wordsworth utilizes metonymy and illustrates several characters but focuses only on their locations and conditions; in doing so, he removes the individual identities of the characters and instead illuminates their commonalities.  In my original blog post, I supported this idea by recognizing that the characters themselves would be insignificant without Wordsworth’s statement of their constraints. He goes through each character and informs the listener of their unique “prison.” The location of each character is very important and Wordsworth uses only location to define the characters, which I would consider metonymy. Instead of describing the characters, he describes their solitude or repetitious lifestyle through location.

In the second paragraph of my blog, I describe that he uses metonymy again but in a different way. He describes the beautiful location, Furness Fells, but fills this location with the same condition of life. As the poem progresses, so does the complexity of context. I pointed out how Wordsworth begins to apply the same principles of contentment with repetition to his own identity. At this point, he again uses metonymy and describes himself on the “Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.” It is an abstract location, which provides significance to his identity. He shows some defensiveness of his own life’s task being a writer, but describes his surroundings in such a way to convince the reader otherwise. Metonymy is used very productively in Wordsworth’s description of himself. He precedes his own description with that of the free soaring bees of Furness Fells in an effort to protect his own identity.

Scanty Plot

            In the poem, “Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room,” metonymy is an important motif used throughout the sonnet. Wordsworth uses the location of each of his characters: the nun, hermits, students, maids, weaver, bees, and even himself to signify their importance to his point.  The characters described have no importance without the recognition of their constraints. Metonymy is an indirect way of illustrating a character through the description of their surroundings. Each character has a prison in which they limit themselves.  He describes the rooms of the nun’s convent as “narrow” giving the reader an idea of entrapment and solitude. The workers that Wordsworth uses are “sitting” at their places of labor, which to the reader may seem monotonous and boring. The first few characters described by Wordsworth all seem to be boring and motionless through his use of metonymy; the cells and narrow room of the convent, especially.

Wordsworth’s tone changes at line 5. He brings in the characters, “bees,” which have a very different location. Bees “soar for bloom” and convey such positive and free images for the reader. The metonymy used is a location treasured by Wordsworth, “Furness Fells.” But even then, Wordsworth reminds the reader that the bees are limited to their one location, doing one task. Even the soaring creatures that we see as free are now recognized as another form of confined worker. He uses their location as metonymy to signify that the bee characters are too trapped in their own prison. This particular usage of location is where Wordsworth begins to understand how a person confined to a “prison” can be completely content (as all of his characters are.) He moves from a place of confusion to a place of understanding contentment with entrapment. The metonymy guides the reader through his journey towards recognition of the true comfort that a “prison” provides for its inhabitant. With understanding, Wordsworth applies the same principle to himself. He uses metonymy to describe his own prison: “the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.” While a sonnet is not usually something concrete, Wordsworth crafts an image to signify the relevance of his own poetic work. 

Sonnets: this is only the beginning

The sonnet form of poetry is highly structured and unique in its themes of tone. Often, sonnets serve as romantic and dramatic expressions but they are not limited to such themes. Other forms of writing, such as tweets have limits on the allotted amount of characters but not necessarily the syllables or lines. Tweets are small blurbs of information put forth by the writer. They serve as small updates, facts, quotes, jokes, or anything really that can represent a significant event in the writer’s life or express their emotional state. A person can display unique writing styles even through something so short as a Tweet. Sonnets serve a similar purpose. While there are obvious differences in structural freedom for the writer, they are both short segments of creative expression. Tweets are often cryptic and carefully worded like sonnets, as they are only small pieces of information meant to be significant and interesting to the reader. Sonnets do the same: in a limited amount of words they work to capture the reader and construe a significant emotional condition. The casual nature of most modern writing differs from the sonnets we went over in class. It can be very hard to read and comprehend sonnets when you are out of the practice of reading poetry. I feel that if something cannot be deciphered, its point is not going to be received. Honestly, I would prefer to read novels or even Tweets over poetry; not because I don’t like poetry, I just have a hard time understanding it (especially Shakespearean poetry.) Despite the effort I put in, I do not learn as much from something I do not understand and cannot read fluidly. One advantage of poetic writing is that people always expect it to be deep and significant. People take more time reading a poem and pondering the imagery and word choice. It is naturally expected to be a complicated piece of literature.

While I try to understand the relationships between words, my ears seem to be very stubborn entities. I have a tricky time trying to decipher the significance between rhyming schemes and accentuation. Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet 75 is one of despair and denial by the woman he desires and the beginning is a quatrain and takes the reader through a pattern of taunting hopefulness and desire but them washing it away. The sonnet leads the listener to the woman and washes away his hope and then repeats. This gives the listener a reinforced idea of his despair. The female tone comes across as dark and without sympathy. The ending couplet of the poem shows Spenser’s unwillingness to abandon hope. He doesn’t recognize that his love is unrequited but instead ends the poem with couplet that alludes to his lasting wishes that love will one day, triumph. The couplet is a good way to end a sonnet because it varies from the abnormal rhyming pattern of the main sonnet. It provides variation and a conclusive quick beat. I cannot for the life of me recognize the difference in stressed and unstressed syllables. I can guess?

Oscar WIlde

“When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.” Oscar Wilde

Through his statement, Wilde recognizes the relationship between the artist and critic as being codependent. The artist works with the critic’s disapproval in mind; the artist needs to be challenged. An artist looks to challenge through creation and a disapproving critic is only reassurance to the artist’s success in going against normalcy. Wilde exposes the rebellious nature of much art and shows twisted intentions. Some artists would be pleased with positive responses to their works from critics but a rebellious creator of art looks to challenge the art of those before him. I believe Wilde is referring to the innovative and rebellious figures of the arts.  It is these artists who make a significant impression on the world. It is new and truly inspired art the makes a change. Often, things that are produced and disregarded by critics are really amazing. It is hard to find interesting and worthwhile works of art when the publicized works (those accepted by the media) are not nearly as inspired. 

This relationship is paralleled by modern artists and critics. One guerilla artist, who goes by Crocheted Olek, covered the Wall Street bull in neon knit fabric right before a huge storm. It was a bold and risky move by Olek but it was a great move and tribute to the original artist, Arturo di Morica, who placed the bull there in Christmas of 1987 as a symbol of the "strength and power of the American people’ following the 1987 Stock Market crash.” The bull's "sweater" was removed after only two hours.