Moonlight (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Paul Verlaine
- First Published: 1867
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Love or romance, Nature, Music or musicians, Spiritual life or spirituality, Beauty, Emotions, Reality, Hallucinations or illusions, Meditation, Moon or moons, Joy or sorrow, Aesthetics
The Poem
Composed of twelve ten-syllable lines, “Moonlight” is divided into three stanzas, each of which possesses its own regularly alternating rhyme scheme (abab, cdcd, efef). The title of the collection in which the poem originally appeared, Fêtes galantes, bears considerable importance on a visual level to the interpretation of this piece. Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was renowned as the painter of “fêtes galantes,” jewel-like renderings of men and women dressed in satins, lounging gracefully in nature’s lushness. In the same way that...
[The entire page is 1579 words long]
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