Context #3

Context of Reception

There are two main things that influence how we read:
• When we are reading (at the time the poem was published, or later)
• What kind of reader we are (man or woman, young or old, political views etc.)

Think about how readers respond differently to Shakespeare today than they would have done in Elizabethan times. (The Merchant of Venice is a good example)

The following lines by Wordsworth would have been considered quite revolutionary in 1800 because they were as close as a poet could get to plain, almost conversational language. Today we would find the inversion of the first line very old-fashioned

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

How we read a poem is, of course, dependent on when we read it. Imagine reading Auden in 1939.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

(From ‘In Memory of WB Yeats’)

This may remain a powerful verse at the beginning of the 21st century, but it would have had a very different impact if we read it when it was written, on the eve of the Second World War.

How we read a poem is also determined by who we are. Age, gender, ethnicity, are only three of the things that might affect what we think of a poem. Look at the following two poems. How might age, gender and ethnicity affect what a person might think of them? Imagine some famous people reading them. How might their interpretations be different? What might they say in a dialogue about the poems? Take as an obvious example, George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. If that seems too obvious, consider how might your teacher react differently to a poem compared to you or another student.









Rudyard Kipling From “The White Man’s Burden” 1899
(A poem urging America to take up the ‘burden’ of creating an Empire, and to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War.)

Take up the White Man’s burden-
Send forth the best ye breed-
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need,
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child .

Take up the White Man’s burden-
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;




Claude McKay: “If We Must Die” 1919
(Born in Jamaica and living in America, McKay wrote this sonnet in response to race riots, during which there were many attacks on Black neighbourhoods.)

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!