1. Mariana

2. Story/narration This poem derives from a line in Measure for Measure : Mariana in themoated grange, where she waits for a lover, Angelo, who in fact has jiltedher. The poem is highly descriptive and contains some striking images but it isnot really a narrative: nothing happens. It is a poem that is aboutdepression, abandonment, isolation. Each stanza describes a different facet of the moated grange: thefarmhouse and barns are decrepit; Mariana stays in the grange, crying; shewakes, and walks, in the night, until the dawn; the sluice is full of moss andblack water and the poplar shakes in the wind; the trees shadow fallsacross her when the wind is up; the house is full of old faces and the noisesof small animals; other sounds upset her and she hates the evening. Each stanza ends with a four-line refrain which is pretty much the same Marianas voice complaining about her lover not coming, and wishing for herown death. 3. Form 7 twelve-line stanzas, composed of three quatrains using the rhymescheme ABAB CDDC EFEF. Central couplet perhaps binds stanzastightly, prevents advancement. The last quatrain is a four-line refrain (practically identical bit) sense of invariance therefore monotonous, chant-like, hypnotic,incantatory, generative of the depressed mood or sense (as in otherpoems by Tennyson) that she is under a curse. The line are written in iambic tetrameter (uses ballad metre/commonmetre) with the exception of the trimeter of the tenth and twelfthlines pulsing heartbeat with slight accelerations. Often reversedfeet (trochaics) in middle quatrain = missed beats, spondees inrefrain = stretched-out feeling. 4. Structure Static and monotonous day (stanzas 1, 4, 6) alternates withunending, lonely, broken nights (stanzas 2, 3, 5, 7). Perhaps day and night blend into one. Mariana is in a dream orreverie, composed of unevent and nothingness. There is no sense of progression, only of repetition, of being stuck. Lineation: mixtures of end-stopped, enjambed/run-on lines can beconfusing (deliberately?) Sometimes sense is also hard to follow (asin the last verse, possibly) and this dullness and confusionreplicates Marianas own upset and feeling that she is lost. 5. Language Imagery: visual but little metaphor, simile static/ metonymic Lexis/ diction focuses on synonyms for decay, negativity -everything is damp, decaying, mouldy, even the sense of thepoems freshness; has few active present-tense verbs Sound: assonance, assonantal hence sad Rhetorical figures: repetitiveness, sense of dullness, stasis Anaphora repetition of word at start of verse, clause, sentence old, old, old Epizeuxis immediate repetition aweary, aweary 6. Technique:The Pathetic Fallacy, Symbol The external world of the poem perhaps is meant to suggestMarianas empty, decaying self. Her collapsing house is a metaphorfor her collapsing mind, trapped, brooding on the past. As outside, so inside: identifying externalities with inner states isknown as the pathetic fallacy but can be used very successfullyand perhaps Tennyson does so here. Symbol: Poplars (the only thing of any height in the surroundinglandscape) are phallic symbols and shadow her bed (suggestingshe is blighted by her lover, or desirous of him) and features inOvids Metamorphoses (defines Latin idea of love). In it, Pariscarves his girlfriend Oenones name on a poplar, but then abandonsher, so the tree is a classical symbol of abandonment and brokenpromises. 7. AO2 first questionyou answer in theexam. 8. Write about the ways that Tennysontells the story in Mariana. Introduce your answer by summarising the story of Mariana. Begin to analyse some (maybe 3) of the features of language that have beenused. For example: synonyms that show decay and stasis; spondee long vowels placed at the ends of lines to lengthen the sound; the lack of voice all we hear is the narrator and Marianas declaration; the lack of verbs and when they do appear the negation of action; the contrast between her stillness and the movement of time. Comment on the structure of the poem and how this tells the story. Forexample: the use of the refrain; epizeuxis immediate repeated repetition; anaphora repetition at start of line, stanza; the collapsing rhyme pattern the lines folding in around the central couplet; the pace/rhythm/metre of the lines. the lack of narrative event Make a concluding comment analysing the form of the poem the resultingoverall style of the poem and how this affects the way the story is told.Use your ownannotations and ideas. 9. John Everett Millais,Mariana in the moatedgrange, 1851 10. John Everett Millais,Mariana in the moatedgrange, 1851