essay dover bitch

Anthony Hecht was born in New York City in 1923. His books of poetry include The Darkness and the Light (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001); Flight Among the Tombs (1996); The Transparent Man (1990); Collected Earlier Poems (1990); The Venetian Vespers (1979); Millions of Strange Shadows (1977); The Hard Hours (1967), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and A Summoning of Stones (1954).He is also author of On the Laws of Poetic Art: The Andrew Mellon Lectures, 1992 (1995) and Obbligati: Essays in Criticism (1986); co-translator of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes (with Helen Bacon, 1975); and editor of The Essential Herbert (1987) and Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (with John Hollander, 1967).Hecht has received the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Loines Award, the Librex-Guggenheim Eugenio Montale Award, and the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy in Rome, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and lived in Washington, D.C. He died on October 20, 2004.
For all its mockery of Arnold, Hecht’s dramatic monologue is a tribute to the power that its predecessor continues to exert. Moreover, for all its irreverence, “The Dover Bitch” is nevertheless a love poem, though it is a poem about love without illusions—as if that were not a contradiction in terms, as if love were not irreducibly itself an illusion. As an alternative to the elevated but perhaps empty sentiments that the speaker in “Dover Beach” proffers his companion, Hecht’s speaker offers a kind of love that is candid and carnal, and all the more ardent for his acceptance of his beloved’s imperfections. While Arnold can love the woman standing beside him on the coast at Dover evidently only by elevating her into a disembodied philosophical principle, Hecht’s speaker embraces concrete love by embracing a woman who is alive in an imperfect body, one “running to fat.” In The Study of Poetry Arnold called poetry “a criticism of life,” by which he meant not an attack on, but a disinterested examination of, the subject as it is in itself. Hecht echoes the phrase in the subtitle he attaches to “The Dover Bitch,” as though the poem that follows is, in contrast to Victorian obfuscations, going to allow readers to examine life for what it is in itself. Hecht’s appropriation of the phrase “a criticism of life” is perhaps also a coy play on the contemporary sense of criticism as deprecation, as though the shabby world. (The entire section is 454 words.).
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them, And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me, And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad All over, etc., etc.' Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read Sophocles in a fairly good translation And caught that bitter allusion to the sea, But all the time he was talking she had in mind the notion of what his whiskers would feel like On the back of her neck. She told me later on That after a while she got to looking out At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad, Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds And blandishments in French and the perfumes. And then she got really angry. To have been brought All the way down from London, and then be addressed As sort of a mournful cosmic last resort Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty. Anyway, she watched him pace the room and finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit, And then she said one or two unprintable things. But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is, She's really all right. I still see her once in a while And she always treats me right. We have a drink And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year Before I see her again, but there she is, Running to fat, but dependable as they come, And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.  The Dover Bitch is a taunt at the romanticism of Matthew Arnold's poem ' Dover Beach'. He seems to be mocking Arnold's ideas of a last resort love to the woman in the poem. It's a mockery of the Victorian values in 'Dover Beach.' With the lines 'And then she said one or two unprintable things.' he shows that unlike the women of the Victorian age, she was not one to sit quietly and do what is told by her husband. She is portrayed equal to men and her unfaithfulness shows that she is not to just stand by his side for his every beck and.
Only available on StudyMode Read full document → Save to my library Two Views on Love What is love? This is a question that is often discussed and argued about. Everyone seems to have a different perception on what love truly is. These perceptions help categorize what type of person you are when it comes towards love. This can range from being a hopeless romantic to a person who doesn’t even believe that love exists. A perfect example of how the views of love can be drastically different can be illustrated by these two poems; “Dover Beach” and “Dover Bitch”. “Dover Beach”, was written by Matthew Arnold in the 19th century. The love Arnold speaks of in his poem is a deep love that is indestructible. “Dover Bitch” was written by Anthony Hecht, in response to “Dover Beach” and refers to love as being a joke and nonexistent. Arnold can be portrayed as being a hopeless romantic while Hecht is skeptical and a cynic when it comes to love. There are many factors which influence the authors’ literary works including: the time period, the object of love in their poem and their overall view of the world. These components as well as the tones of the of the poems help convey the author’s view point on love and its place in society. Matthew Arnold’s legendary poem “Dover Beach” encapsulated the era that the poem was written in. He wrote this poem during the 19th century while he was honeymooning with his wife. Rumor has it that the newlyweds were honeymooning at Dover Beach but no one can be certain. In order to get a better grasp on what the text of the poem is referring to we must know what’s going on during the time period. When “Dover Beach” was written there was large transformation in how people thought and what knowledge was deemed acceptable. English society was changing from a primarily religious based society with high religious morals and standings into one that praised.
The structure of Hecht's poem is free verse, lacking the semi-formal structure and rhyme evident in Dover Beach. The structure of this poem and the lack of rhyme underscore the fact that this speaker is repeating a rant from the beloved of the speaker in Dover Beach. By using this structure, the speaker's voice and attitude come off more like natural speech, for this speaker is voicing the disgust and disappointment of Arnold's speaker's beloved. She is not an ugly or an unread girl, but she is disappointed that with all the potential for romance in the air, the speaker in Dover Beach is only worried about the woe in the world, she got to looking out / At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad, / Thinking of all he wine and enormous beds / And blandishments in French and the perfumes (Hecht 1).The worldview of the speakers in both poems is radically different. In Dover Beach, the speaker is painting a very dismal view of the world in which he lives. He informs us in stanza four that none of the values that human beings exist for are offered by existence, we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight (Arnold 1). Word choice is significant here, as Arnold's speaker is bringing up the most basic of human reactions to existence, the fight or flight response. While this speaker only views the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery in his observations of nature, the speaker in The Dover Bitch is less concerned with deep philosophical notions of existence (Arnold 1). For in The Dover Bitch, the speaker informs us that the beloved of Arnold's speaker is not moved by bitter allusion to the sea or the writings of Sophocles , instead, she is more interested in enjoying the moment at hand: But all the. More on Comparison & Contrast: Two Poems on Dover Beach. APA     MLA     Chicago Comparison & Contrast: Two Poems on Dover.
If we compare The Dover Bitch to Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, the irony lies in the comparison. While Dover Beach is mournful and serious, The Dover Bitch is straight forward and flippant. The narrator in The Dover Bitch is a friend or acquaintance of Matthew Arnold and he uses The. Read the Rest of this Answer for Free Please view an ad from one of our sponsors to see the rest of this answer. Get Answer If we compare The Dover Bitch to Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, the irony lies in the comparison. While Dover Beach is mournful and serious, The Dover Bitch is straight forward and flippant. The narrator in The Dover Bitch is a friend or acquaintance of Matthew Arnold and he uses The Dover Bitch to provide commentary on Arnold and the woman Arnold speaks to in Dover Beach.   In Dover Beach, Arnold mourns the fact that the world is no longer united by the power of religion. The Sea of Faith / Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore / Lay like the folds of a girdle furled. Arnold turns to his beloved, noting that in the absence of some unifying doctrine and/or faith, and he tells her that they should be true to one another because all they have is each other.  In The Dover Bitch, the speaker is not nearly as serious and almost mocks Arnold:  And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me, And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad, All over, etc., etc.'  Then the speaker in The Dover Bitch mentions that he knows the girl and has even had sex with her. And while Arnold is rambling on about the loss of faith in the world, the girl is thinking about his whiskers and perfumes. The further irony, again in comparison with Dover Beach, is how she reacts to Arnold's plea that they be true to one another. In Dover Beach, the reader might assume that the girl is swept up in Arnold's melancholy about the loss of faith and that she is humbled that the love between the.