how to write the first paragraph of assignment on analysis of the poem isolation to Marugurite.
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
At first glance, “Isolation: To Marguerite” by Matthew Arnold is a poem about the isolation of unrequited love; upon a deeper reflection, the poem shows how perspectives on human connection shifted between the Victorian and Modernist Eras.
Matthew Arnold, late Victorian poet and philosopher, was known to write about the “Crisis of Faith” that came as a result of a quickly changing culture. Industrialization had swept large numbers of people into city apartments, and put many of them into jobs that were mechanizing in nature. Darwinian theories of evolution caused Victorian culture to fear mankind’s quick degeneration into animalistic tendencies and the chaos of immorality. The theory of evolution also made the largely Christian culture fear that they had no purpose, and that mankind was not tended to by a Shepherd God, but rather a mere miracle of chance. Advances in psychology, which delved into the differences between individuals and caused many who were philosophical to turn the eye inward and wax introspective, made people question whether or not one self could truly know and understand another fully. By the end of the Victorian Era, many philosophers and poets were experiencing what was coined a “Crisis of Faith,” which was not simply religious, but tied to all these factors destabilizing culture.
This theme is most obviously reflected in the last stanza:
Of happier men—for they, at least,
Have dream’d two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolong’d; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.