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"To a Wreath of Snow" is a poem written by Emily Brontë in December 1837.The poem was penned the same month Anne Brontë fell ill and had to be taken care of by her sister, Charlotte Brontë, who was working as a teacher.
"To a Wreath of Snow" features Brontë writing from the point of view of the character Augusta Almeda, the Queen of Gondal. Gondal was a fantasy world created by Emily and Anne Brontë three years previously. The context in which this poem was written suggests that Emily Brontë was attempting to escape the reality of her sister's illness by falling back into the fantasy world they created together.
Brontë describes the snow as a "transient voyager of heaven" and "angel like," suggesting that she sees the snow as coming directly from God. In addition, the fact that the poem is addressed to the snow, gives it status. This is then reinforced when she describes the mountains as "crowned" in snow. When Brontë was alive, royalty was seen to be chosen by God and so the imagery of the mountains portrays the snow as being a gift from God. The concept of preciousness is strengthened by the adjectives "crowned" and "silvery."
Sibilance is used most successfully in stanzas one and five. The writer uses sibilance to imitate the sound and atmosphere which she is describing. In stanza one, she is imitating the "silent sign" and in stanza five she is trying to create a serene atmosphere that is "soft" and "sweetly spoke" by using the soft "s" sound repeatedly.
Brontë uses punctuation throughout to emphasize her meaning. The first two lines of stanza one both begin with "O" and end with an exclamation mark which suggests that these lines are bursts of Augusta's (and therefore possibly the author's) emotions. Brontë also develops caesura in the first line of stanza four. By combining repetition and the comma in "For many a week, and many a day", Brontë mimics the length that she is describing.
Juxtaposition and contrasting imagery are used effectively in stanza four to conclude the poem. Brontë makes a metaphor of Augusta's heart "sinking" when the morning "rose". This visualizes for the reader that when one characterized object descends, another ascends. Brontë suggests that to compensate for God's gift of the snow falling, Anne's life has to be given back to God.
Anne Brontë was an English novelist and poet, and the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel written by English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication in England until 1854.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths.
A paracosm is a detailed imaginary world thought generally to originate in childhood. The creator of a paracosm has a complex and deeply felt relationship with this subjective universe, which may incorporate real-world or imaginary characters and conventions. Commonly having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is often developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time, months or even years, as a sophisticated reality that can last into adulthood.
Aurōra is the Latin word for dawn, and the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry. Like Greek Eos and Rigvedic Ushas, Aurōra continues the name of an earlier Indo-European dawn goddess, Hausos.
Patrick Branwell Brontë was an English painter and writer. He was the only son of the Brontë family, and brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Brontë was rigorously tutored at home by his father, and earned praise for his poetry and translations from the classics. However, he drifted between jobs, supporting himself by portrait-painting, and gave way to drug and alcohol addiction, apparently worsened by a failed relationship with a married woman. Brontë died at the age of 31.
Common metre or common measure—abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The metre is denoted by the syllable count of each line, i.e. 184.108.40.206, 86.86, or 86 86, depending on style, or by its shorthand abbreviation "CM".
The Brontë Parsonage Museum is a writer's house museum maintained by the Brontë Society in honour of the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. The museum is in the former Brontë family home, the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England, where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels.
"A Death-Scene" is a poem by English writer Emily Brontë. It was written on 2 December 1844 and published in 1846 in a book collecting poetry by Brontë and her siblings.
"Lines" is a poem written by English writer Emily Brontë in December 1837. It is understood that the poem was written in the Haworth parsonage, two years after Brontë had left Roe Head, where she was unable to settle as a pupil. At that time, she had already lived through the death of her mother and two of her sisters. As the daughter of a parson, Brontë received a rigorously religious education, which is evident in much of her work. "Lines" is representative of much of her poetry, which broke Victorian gender stereotypes by adopting the Gothic tradition and genre of Romanticism, allowing her to express and examine her emotions.
"Come hither child" is a poem written by the English poet Emily Jane Brontë, one of the four Brontë siblings famous for literature in the first half of the 19th century. The poem was written on 19 July 1839. It is set in the imaginary realm of Gaaldine, referring to Ula, a province of Gaaldine.
F. De Samara to A. G. A. is a poem by British author and poet Emily Jane Brontë, written on November 1, 1838.
"To Althea, from Prison" is a poem written by Richard Lovelace in 1642. The poem is one of Lovelace's best-known works, and its final stanza's first line "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage" is often quoted. Lovelace wrote the poem while imprisoned in Gatehouse Prison adjoining Westminster Abbey due to his effort to have the Clergy Act 1640 annulled.
"Neutral Tones" is a poem written by Thomas Hardy in 1867. Forming part of his 1898 collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses, it is the most widely praised of his early poems. It is about the end of a relationship, and carries strong emotional appeal despite its "neutral tones".
Gondal is an imaginary world or paracosm created by Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë that is found in their juvenilia. Gondal is an island in the North Pacific, just north of the island Gaaldine. It included at least four kingdoms: Gondal, Angora, Exina and Alcona. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of speculative fiction.
The Glass Town is a paracosm created and written as a shared fantasy world by Charlotte Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, siblings of the Brontë family. It was initiated by Charlotte and her brother Branwell; Emily and Anne Brontë later participated in further developing the stories and geography of its world, although they also broke away to conceptualize Gondal, while Charlotte conceptualized Angria.
To Walk Invisible is a British television film about the Brontë family that aired on BBC One on 29 December 2016. The drama was written and directed by Sally Wainwright and focused on the relationship of the three Brontë sisters; Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and their brother, Branwell.
"The Glass Essay" is a poem by Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson. This thirty-six page poem opens Carson's Glass, Irony and God, which was published in 1995.