2. Questions to Ask Yourself…
• Who is the speaker?
• Who is the speaker speaking to?
• Why is the speaker speaking?
• What is the speaker saying?
• How is the speaker saying it?
• Diction, tone, syntax, allusion,
sentence structure, symbolism and themes
3. What Does Fudge Have to Say?
Erica Fudge- Animal
Bestiaries: a collection of medieval animal
lore presented their subjects not as
specimens of the natural world but as
exemplars of morality (Fudge, 92)
“Like fables, bestiaries tell us more about
ourselves than about the animals, but it is
through animals we learn.” (93)
4. Who is the Speaker?
• Identity
• Gender?
• Class?
5. What is the Speaker Saying?
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains (1-3)
• What do these lines reveal about the
speaker?
• Foundation of the identity of the
speaker
6. How is the Speaker Speaking?
• Use of personal pronouns
• What does this say about speaker?
• Pronouns
• Help to establish who the speaker is speaking to
7. Example:
That thou, light-winged Dryad of
the trees (7)
Singest of summer in full- throated
ease (10)
• “Thou”- Directly speaking to the nightingale
• “light-winged Dryad of the trees”
• “summer”
• “full- throated ease”
8. Why is the Speaker Speaking?
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: (19-20)
• What does this stanza reveal about the position
poet?
• Any possible themes?
• Poem about escapism
9. Why is the Speaker Depressed and Want to Escape?
The weariness, the fever and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few , sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale and spectre- thin and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs (23-28)
What do we learn about the speaker?
10. Why the Nightingale?
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No Hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown: (61-64)
11. Questions to Consider:
What are the implication of the poet’s voice and the bird’s song within the poem?
Do you think that the poem would differ if the poet was not using the nightingale as a
symbolism?
Do you agree or disagree that the nightingale becomes a passive object?
