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English Literature

Before You Were Mine

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Comparison

In the exam, you will be required to write about several poems, some pre-1914 and some post-1914. To which poems would you compare Before You Were Mine? There will be a number of ways in which the poems can be compared, and you may well be able to think of ones which we have not!

Poet and poemWhat to look for in your comparison
Clarke: Catrin
  • Both poems are a conversation between a mother and child, but in Catrin it is the mother, not the child, who is speaking.
  • Both poems describe memories of family; but Catrin focuses on the creative tension, the 'love and conflict' between child and parent
Jonson: On my first Sonne
  • Again a conversation between parent and child; again a kind of love poem
  • Duffy's poem takes pleasure in the continuing relationship between child and parent, Jonson's poem is an elegy (lament) for his dead son
Blake: Little Boy Lost / Found
  • In part this too is a conversation between son and father; but instead of real memories of a real family, this relationship is symbolic of something else - that between man and God.
  • The language is much less like real conversation than either the Clarke or the Jonson poems

Now try a Test Bite

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