PO1 - Lesson: Structure within a Text

A man stands looking out over a hilly landscape covered in fog. Painting.Structure and Contrasts within a Text

Although poetry shares a lot of the same features as short fiction (i.e., characters, contrasts, point of view), it is its own literary genre. The single most important feature that distinguishes poetry from prose is the arrangement of the words on the page. The arrangement of the parts and sections of a text, the relationship of the parts to each other, and the sequence in which the text reveals information are all structural choices made by a writer that contribute to the reader’s interpretation of a text.

Image note: The image to the right is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich called Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog). It was painted in 1818.

Structure in Poetry

To understand how structure functions with poetry, consider its central unit of organization—the stanza and contrasts.

Stanzas serve as the following:

  • Line and stanza breaks contribute to the development and relationship of ideas in a poem.
  • The arrangement of lines and stanzas contributes to the development and relationship of ideas in a poem.
  • A text’s structure affects readers’ reactions and expectations by presenting the relationships among the ideas of the text via their relative positions and their placement within the text as a whole.

Essentially, a stanza is like a prose paragraph in that it contains an idea.

Contrasts serve as the following:

  • Contrast can be introduced through focus; tone; point of view; character, narrator, or speaker perspective; dramatic situation or moment; settings or time; or imagery.
  • Contrasts are the result of shifts, or juxtapositions, or both.
  • Shifts may be signaled by a word, a structural convention, or punctuation.

Shifts may emphasize contrasts between segments of a text.

Lord Byron's "Solitude" - Stanzas

Read the poem “Solitude” by Lord Byron. As you read, consider the difference in tone or attitude in each stanza.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

Lord Byron's "Solitude" - Self-Check

Lord Byron's "Solitude" - Additional Analysis

Now that you have read and comprehended the poem, what is the different idea in the two stanzas?

  • Stanza 1 – We are not alone in nature; we are in the company of the natural world.
  • Stanza 2 – We ARE alone in a crowd; we have become unnatural.

Next, read a little bit closer and consider the last two lines of stanza 1 and the first two lines of stanza 2. Consider how the pacing of each pair of lines is different.

Comparing Stanzas in Lord Byron's "Solitude"
Stanza Text from Poem Analysis

Stanza 1

This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

 Calmer pacing is created by both diction such as “converse,” “charms,” and “unrolled” and the idea of being one with nature.

Stanza 2

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,

More frantic pacing increased by both the diction such as “midst,” “shock,” and fragmented sentences.

Every time you see a break in a stanza ask yourself if its function is to accelerate or decrease the tempo of the poem.

A chart like the above can be a very effective analysis tool as it helps you to better visualize the abstract nature of a poem’s structure.

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