What is the literal meaning of Dover Beach?
“Dover Beach” is the most celebrated poem by Matthew Arnold, a writer and educator of the Victorian era. The poem expresses a crisis of faith, with the speaker acknowledging the diminished standing of Christianity, which the speaker sees as being unable to withstand the rising tide of scientific discovery.
What figurative language is used in Dover Beach?
Matthew Arnold succeeds in beautifying the language of the poem “Dover Beach” by incorporating several figures of speech, namely, metaphor, simile, alliteration, pathetic fallacy, allusion, and anaphora.
What literary techniques are used in Dover Beach and how are they used?
Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Such as, “The tide is full, the moon lies fair”; “Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling” and “Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land.”
What literary devices are used in Dover Beach?
Some of the literary devices used in “Dover Beach” are personification, metaphor, simile, and repetition.
How is the metaphor of the sea used in Dover Beach?
Answer : In ‘Dover Beach’, Matthew Arnold gives expression to people’s declining faith in religion (Christianity). In a beautiful metaphor, he compares faith in religion to the sea of faith. In other words, it is the lack of faith which is accountable for much suffering and agony in the world.
How does Dover Beach reflect the Victorian era?
Dover Beach has been said to be a great representation of the Victorian Period as a whole, and depicts a tone and mood of society and how they felt at the time. Universal problems that Victorians experienced at the time are made present, such as a loss of faith.
What is Dover Beach a metaphor for?
Line 21: This is one of the major, go-for-broke metaphors in “Dover Beach.” The speaker uses the idea of the sea that he’s spent so much time building up, but this time he turns it into a metaphor for the human belief in a higher power. The real sea of the English Channel is reimagined as a “Sea of Faith.”
How does the speaker describe the scene at Dover in Dover Beach?
The poem opens with the description of moonlit scene at Dover Beach. The sea is calm and the tide is full. The moon shines brightly on the Dover Strait, while the light on the French coast becomes dimmer and dimmer and then disappears totally. On the English side the rocky cliffs stand firm, bathed in the moonlight.
Is there personification in Dover Beach?
Matthew Arnold achieves a lonely tone in the poem “Dover Beach, ” through the use of imagery, simile, and personification. The poem begins with a simple statement: “the sea is calm tonight”. An ephemeral contrast to the timeless sea is introduced: “on the French coast the light gleams and is gone” (emphasis mine).
How is Dover Beach a dramatic monologue?
“Dover Beach” is a dramatic monologue because the speaker is addressing a companion who is part of the scene but does not answer back. Lines that cue us to the presence of this beloved companion include “Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!”
How can Dover Beach be regarded as a modern poem?
The sea brings “the eternal note of sadness in.” Even the classical reference to Sophocles tells of “the turbid ebb and flow /Of human misery.” The next “modern” theme to be expressed is the absence of a Sea of Faith except for its “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” This pessimistic strain is modern.
What is the metaphor in stanza 3 of Dover Beach?
Lines 21-22 Ooh, now we’re really getting deep. Suddenly the sea grows from being just a thing you look at or listen to, to a full-blown metaphor. Here the “Sea of Faith” represents the “ocean” of religious belief in the world—all of our faith put together.
What is the meaning of the poem Dover Beach?
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold is a dramatic monologue lamenting the loss of true Christian faith in England during the mid 1800s as science captured the minds of the public. The poet’s speaker, considered to be Matthew Arnold himself, begins by describing a calm and quiet sea out in the English Channel.
What are the figures of speech in Dover Beach?
Figures of Speech in Dover Beach OR Poetic Devices in Dover Beach. Matthew Arnold succeeds in beautifying the language of the poem “Dover Beach” by incorporating a number of figures of speech, namely, metaphor, simile, alliteration, pathetic fallacy, allusion and anaphora.
What can we learn from the last lines of Dover Beach?
Thus, from these last lines in “Dover Beach” one can derive the idea that according to the poem, “the only way to survive what Arnold in another poem called ‘this strange disease of modern life’ [is] for people to ‘be true to one another’” (Rosenblatt 80). The speaker in the poem is holding on to love as his only means of salvation.
What does the Sea of faith mean in Dover Beach?
And naked shingles of the world. In the third stanza of ‘Dover Beach’, it becomes clear that Arnold is in fact speaking about the diminishing faith of his countrymen and women. He describes, “The Sea of Faith” once covered all of the “round earth’s shore” and held everyone together like a girdle.