V.4. Robert Frost

• Focus of Study• Life Experience• Literary Career• Point of View• Style• Representative

Poems

V.4.Robert Frost

• One of America's leading 20th-century poets.

• A four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

• An essentially pastoral poet.

• The unofficial poet laureate of America.

Life Experience

• 1874 - Born on March 26 in San Francisco.

• 1885 - Father dies. Family moves to Lawrence, Mass.

• 1894- sells "My Butterfly: An Elegy" to The Independent.

• 1895 - works as reporter in Lawrence, and marries Elinor White.

• 1897-1899 attends Harvard College.• 1912 - moves in England and devote

s to writing full time.

• 1913 - A Boy's Will is published.• 1915 - Arrives in New York. North of Boston is publishe

d. • 1916- Mountain Interval is published.• 1924- receives a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for New Hamp

shire (1923). • 1938 - Elinor dies of heart failure.• 1939 - Awarded the Gold Medal by the national Institut

e of Arts and Letters in New York.• 1943 - Awarded Pulitzer Prize for A Witness Tree. • 1963 - Awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. Dies of

pneumonia

Literary Career

Point of View

• Frost was neither a conventionalist nor a radical modernist. His poetry shows a particular vigorousness of daily life and a remarkable understanding of modern man’s situation.

• Frost believes that we are living in a God-directed world, but he also ponders the mysteries of the universe; man lives with ambiguity;

• He rejects both permanent truth and the idea of alienation.

• He rejects the romantic view of daydreams, and advocates a life based on courage or facts.

• He emphasizes the value of society or human participation based on love and work.

Style

• A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.1. Frost's poetry is largely allegorical.2. Prefers to build up the tension between the two

ways of looking at one thing.3. Not a naturalist, but favors selected realism.4. Noted for his conversational style conducted in

the common speech of his native New England.5. Poetic devices are traditional, but his skillful use

of blank verse and lyric shows his ability to handle the old form for his new subject matter.

Foot of Poetry

• Iamb( or iambic foot): A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable or a short syllable followed by a long syllable, as in delay. (Trochee or trochaic foot)

• Anapaest( or anapaestic foot): A metrical foot composed of two short syllables followed by one long one, as in the word seventeen. ( Dactyl or dactylic foot, as in flattery )

• Monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter.

Representative Poems • "After Apple-Picking" • Form: no preordained rhyme

scheme ， basically iambic, and mostly in pentameter.

• Theme: The harvest of apples can be read as a harvest of any human effort--study, laying bricks, writing poetry, etc.

• The incredible quantity of fruit as possibility which is nearly achieved at the cost of physical and mental exhaustion.

The Road Not Taken• Form: four stanzas of five lines,

rhyme scheme is abaab, an iambic tetrameter base.

• Theme: archetypal dilemma, Identical forks symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: we are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between.

• There is no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making, the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path for life.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening• Form: iambic tetrameter. rh

yme scheme is aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd.

• Theme: reveal the contradictions in life: law and freedom, civilization and nature, reality and fantasy, etc.

• Life is beautiful, alluring as well as complex, arduous. Life is short and time flies, with responsibility on one’s shoulder, one should make sustained effort for his cause.

Study Questions

• Discuss the anticipation or remorse in "The Road Not Taken."

• What is ironic about the speaker's statements concerning his neighbor's opinion of wall-building in "Mending Wall"?

• Discuss Robert Frost's applications of "the sound of sense."

For Further Reading

• Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.

• Frost, Robert. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. Ed. Lawrance Thompson. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

• Jarrell, Randall. Poetry & the Age. New York: The Ecco Press, 1980.

• Oster, Judith. Toward Robert Frost: The Reader and the Poet. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1991.

•Thank You Very Much for Thank You Very Much for Attending This LectureAttending This Lecture