Paper details:
Poetry is a particularly meaningful source for the historian as it tends to tap into the feelings of the time. Poetry is also a challenging source to analyze as it often requires very close and attentive reading to discern all of its meaning. Analyzing poetry as a historical source is also different than analyzing poetry for an English course. As historians, we are not concerned with how the poem makes you feel, whether you liked it or not, or its structure (unless that structure has some historical relevance). Instead, we are interested in what the poem reveals about the time in which it was written.
In this assignment you are to analyze five poems (I uploaded the poems file), written between 1755 and 1877 in England. What do the poems reveal about England and the Industrial Revolution? What did people think about the Industrial Revolution? What do the poems tell you about what life was like during this period of history?
Please, analyze the poems that conforms to the standards laid out in the writing workshop. For instance, to cite a poem in the footnote you put the author, “Title,” and then the line number. Some of the poems have line numbers every 5 or 10 lines. Those that don’t, you will just have to count for yourself. So, for example, John Dalton, “A Descriptive Poem,” 9.
Remember, the point is to make an argument that ties together all the poems and reveals something about the past. This is not an English paper, it is a History paper. Also pay attention to change over time.
