"The Prologue" by Ann Bradstreet

Résumé du document

Ce document rédigé en anglais pour un cours de littérature américaine est une analyse strophe par strophe du poème "The Prologue" d'Ann Bradstreet.

Extraits

[...] On the other hand, she recognizes men's superiority (line 41) and asks them to understand women have skills as well (line 42). In the last stanza, she talks directly to the her male readers and tells them she does not want any reward for her poetry (line 46). Her verses are simple and compared to men's ones, they will not seem as good (line 48). The poem "The Prologue" is a way for Anne Bradstreet to show men that women are able to write, to be artistic, and to be good at something else than household. [...]

[...] Actually, people in the colonies believed women were not talented enough for that. Anne Bradstreet says on line 30 that even if her poem was good, men would say she has stolen it or has had luck when she wrote it. In the sixth stanza, she gives the example of the Greeks who had more esteem for women. They had several feminine figures in their mythology and the person representative of epic poetry was a muse, so a woman, called Calliope (line 33). [...]

[...] "The Prologue" by Anne Bradstreet The poem written by Anne Bradstreet, called "The Prologue", focuses on the differences between male and female writers and how they are perceived in the American colonies. In the first stanza, the poetess says that she does not feel confident enough to talk about major topics like "kings" or the foundation of cities (line 1). It seems to her that only historians should write about it because the way a poet talk can be quite obscure. [...]

[...] Art helped him to improve his speech skills. However, art cannot repair a "weak or wounded brain" (line 24). So, if at first he was not intelligent enough to make great speeches, the way he speaks them would not have changed anything. What matters is what you say and not the way you say it (line 23). However, she declares in the fifth stanza that it is not because she is less talented than Du Bartas that she should stop writing. [...]