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WILLIAM BLAKE (part 2)

tyger





  

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Для прослушивания аудиозаписи требуется MP3 player

  A. Listen to the poem and read it.

The Tyger (from "The Songs of Experience")

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

tyger: ( in Blake's time possible but rare spelling of the word) tiger
frame: make, create
thy: your
fearful: frightening, terrible
symmetry: beauty of form arising from balanced proportion.
thine: your
aspire: (old poetic meaning) rise up, fly high
seize: take and hold something
&: and
sinews: tendons (strong substance that connects muscles to the bone)
dread (old form of dreaded): frightening, fearful
furnace: an apparatus in a factory in which metals are heated to very high temperatures
anvil: heavy iron block on which pieces of iron are being shaped using a hammer
grasp: the way you hold something
clasp: to hold something tightly

B. Answer the questions.

  1. Apostrophe is a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply. Who does the speaker address in this poem? What question does he ask in the first stanza?

  2. Does the poem contain an answer to the question?
  3. How is the tyger depicted in stanza 1? Is the expression "burning bright" used literally or figuratively?
  4. Find other references to burning and fire in the poem.
  5. What are the stages of the tyger's creation?
  6. What job is the creation of the tyger compared to in stanza 4?
  7. Which line shows that the work is dangerous?
  8. What words in stanzas 1 and 3 show that it is not only physical work? What other occupation can it be compared to?

  9. Allusion is a reference to a work of literature or to an actual event, person, or place, which the speaker expects the audience to recognize. Allusions to the myths of ancient Greece and Rome are common in literature. Find two allusions in the second stanza. What ancient heroes do you recall? What do they have in common? How did they challenge the gods?

  10. What words describe the tyger's creator?
  11. How are the first and the last stanzas different? What sides of the character of the tyger's creator do they emphasize?
  12. Find personification in lines 17-18.
  13. How did the stars react to the creation of the tyger? Why?
  14. How do you understand line 19?
  15. What animal is contrasted with the Tyger? What do the two animals symbolize?
  16. Why does the poet ask if the same creator made both the lamb and the tyger?
  17. What is the main idea of the poem?
  18. Some critics say that "the tyger" is an image of the industrial civilization created by man. Do you agree with this idea? Why?

  19. Find an eye rhyme.
  20. Find examples of alliteration.
  21. Is the meter of the poem iambic or trochaic?
  22. Is the rhythm of the poem gentle and soothing or strong and striking? Is it appropriate to the theme of the poem?


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