Hello, everyone! My name is Ms. Keller, and welcome to today's lesson.

In this session, we are going to be exploring how Shelley uses language, form, and structure in his poem, "Love's Philosophy." Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, we will be able to explore how Shelley uses language, form, and structure to express a powerful desire for someone else.

So let's have a look at today's keywords.

We have divine, rhetorical question, sensual, religious imagery, and trochaic metre.

So what do these words mean? Well, divine means supremely excellent, like a god or the work of a god.

Rhetorical questions are questions that are asked for effect or to provoke thought.

They do not require an answer, but rather they require the audience to think about the question, to consider what they think.

Sensual is a word that means relating to the senses, especially pleasure derived from physical gratification or aesthetic experiences, so when a sensory experience is enjoyable to us for one reason or another.

Religious imagery are symbols or representations that evoke spiritual themes.

And finally, trochaic metre is a poetic rhythm with stressed syllables followed by unstressed syllables, and it occurs in words like footsteps or poetry, so words where that first syllable of the word is the one that we stress.

So how is today's lesson going to look? We are going to analyse "Love's Philosophy" by starting to explore Shelley's use of persuasive language.

And then when we've done that, we're going to explore Shelley's use of form and structure.

I'd like to start by thinking about some important interpretations of the poem.

It has been said that "Love's Philosophy" is not simply a love poem or a poem about love, but that it is also a persuasive text.

So the speaker is attempting to woo a potential lover by persuading them that love is natural and meant to be.

So that word woo here means they're trying to lure or to convince somebody else to fall in love with them, by convincing them, by persuading them that love is natural and it's meant to be.

And Shelley does this subtly, building upon initial ideas through repetition of both these ideas and also of certain types of language.

There are three main ways that Shelley uses language persuasively, and they are semantic field of pairs and couples, natural and religious imagery, and sensual verbs.

So let's look at each of these methods in a bit more detail, starting with the semantic field of pairs and couples.

So a semantic field is a term that we use to categorise different words together.

So what is meant here is that throughout the poem, Shelley uses lots of words or phrases that are all linked to or associated with the idea of pairs or couples.

And the effect that this creates is that it subtly symbolises togetherness and unity.

It weaves these ideas throughout the entire poem.

So let's have a look at a key quote there.

"Nothing in this world is single; all things by a law divine in one another's being mingle." So here we've got the words "nothing is single" and "one another's being," which are giving us this impression that the speaker believes that everything in the world is part of a pair.

Nothing in the world is single, there is this idea of natural symmetry.

And another key quote, that, "No sister-flower would be forgiven if it disdain'd its brother." And again, we've got another pairing here, sister and brother, used perhaps to emphasise the importance of commitment here, saying that if the sister flower disdained its brother, showed negative feelings towards its brother, towards the other half of its pair, that would be unforgivable.

And last of all, then, we've got some verbs, kiss, clasp, mix, and mingle.

And all of these verbs are actions that necessarily require two people or two aspects of nature to take place.

A kiss requires two people.

To clasp something, one thing has to clasp something else.

And likewise with mix and mingle, which both relate to this idea of two different things coming together.

So now let's move on to the second method, natural and religious imagery.

And the effect of this method is that it subtly implies an idealistic, moral view of love.

So by combining this natural and religious imagery, Shelley here is showing us almost a perfect, morally good world and attempting to prove that this symmetry is what creates that idealistic world.

So let's start by looking at natural imagery.

So we've got lots of different examples throughout the poem, rivers, ocean, mountains, waves, flower, sunlight, moonbeams, and sea, and all of these words contribute to creating a peaceful, beautiful, natural image.

We've got soothing rivers and oceans, we've got beautiful flowers, beautiful sunlight, moonbeams. It seems very much here that Shelley has cherry-picked the most beautiful parts of nature to include in this poem.

So then if we go over to religious imagery, we've got winds of Heaven, a law divine, high Heaven, and then this sister and brother, because the word sister and brother are quite commonly ways that religion refers to men and women.

For example, in Christianity, nuns often use the title sister and monks often use the title brother.

So all of these examples of religious imagery link to spirituality, and they create this impression that there is a grand design of some sort.

And last of all, then, sensual verbs.

So the use of sensual verbs subtly hints at the speaker's physical and sexual desires.

So rather than coming out and explicitly saying that he wants to be with that person or saying how he feels about them, we've just got these subtle hints peppered throughout.

So we've got mix and mingle, which creates the impression of two bodies intertwined, they're mingling.

And we've also got kiss and clasp, which are romantic behaviours and directly link here to sexual desires.

So let's pause here and check our understanding of Shelley's use of persuasive language.

So true or false? The speaker of the poem is trying to persuade someone else to enter into a romantic relationship with him.

Hit pause while you have a think and then click play when you're ready to continue and I'll reveal the right answer.

Okay, welcome back and well done to those of you who said true.

So now it's time to justify this answer, then.

Let's have a look at these two explanations.

So give each one a good read through and decide which one you most agree with.

And then when you're ready for me to reveal the correct answer, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, well done to those of you who said B.

Throughout the poem, Shelley uses persuasive language to subtly imply that a romantic relationship is natural and morally good.

Okay, so it is time for the first task of today's lesson where we're going to practise our knowledge of how Shelley uses persuasive language.

So what I would like you to do is to complete this single paragraph outline planning a response to the question, how does Shelley present love in "Love's Philosophy"? So if you have a look at this grid, then, you will see there are three stages to a single paragraph outline.

First of all, in a full sentence, you need to write your topic sentence.

So this is where you establish your main argument for the paragraph, you make that initial point.

So how does Shelley present love? Shelley presents love as.

And then in the middle section you find your supporting detail.

So here you copy up to four key quotations from the poem and then you can annotate them.

And you don't need to write in full sentences for this section.

You can just make notes around the quotations that you've copied.

And then in the final bit, you need to have a concluding sentence.

And again, we're back to writing in full sentences here.

And what you do at this part in the paragraph is you sum up everything that you have talked about above.

So you summarise your analysis of Shelley's use of language, and then you make an all-important link back up to your original point there in the topic sentence box.

So pause the video while you give yourself time to give this a really good go, reread the poem again if you need to, and then when you're ready to feedback some responses, click play and we'll continue.

Okay, welcome back.

I'm really impressed with the effort that everybody put in there.

I could see lots of people engaging with their copies of the text and thinking really carefully about those uses of persuasive language.

So here's what you could have written, and don't worry if this answer doesn't exactly match what you've written, because that is the beauty of literary analysis.

There are many different ways to interpret a text, and as long as what you've written there in that middle box for your supporting detail really supports your topic sentence, then it's likely that what you've written is also a valid interpretation.

For your topic sentence, then, you could have said, Shelley presents love as something that is natural, morally good, and an important part of how the world works and is understood by humans.

For your supporting detail, you could have said, "nothing in the world is single," because we've got that idea that coupling up is a natural course of action.

"The mountains kiss high Heaven." We've got some religious imagery there, one of those methods which suggests that love bridges the gap between the natural world and the spiritual world, and also gives us that all-important link to the fact that our speaker thinks that love is associated with a higher power of some sort, it's meant to be.

And thirdly, "sunlight clasps the earth" and "moonbeams kiss the sea." We've got lots of natural imagery, which helps to soften any sexual references in the poem by linking to scenes of majestic natural beauty.

And if we look there at that supporting detail, we can see that it does directly link to what we've said in the topic sentence.

We've got natural imagery that links to the idea that love is natural.

We've got that religious imagery that links to morally good.

And then we've got this idea that coupling up is a natural course of action, happens everywhere, which links to this part about how love is an important part of how the world works.

So let's see in our concluding sentence if we're able to summarise everything that we've covered and link back to that topic sentence.

By subtly creating these impressions of love, Shelley's speaker persuades the listener to fall in love with him by questioning why their love is not occurring as naturally as the beautiful pairings we see in the natural world.

So we've got that distinct link there from the beautiful pairings we see in the natural world, taking us back up to that topic sentence where we said that love is presented as something that is natural.

So now take a moment to think about what you've written and compare it to what you see here.

So looking at that topic sentence, is your topic sentence clearly linked to the question focus of love? Check for that keyword.

Is your supporting evidence precise, accurate, and judiciously chosen? So have you copied all your quotes correctly? Are they directly relevant to the point that you are making? Have you used just enough words and phrases to explain your point without having to copy multiple lines from the poem? Have you identified the writer's methods and started to infer deeper meanings? So do we have any links to Shelley's use of language, for example, and what notes have we made about the meanings that Shelley creates in these key quotations? And then finally, have you summarised your ideas and linked to the writer's intentions? So take a few moments to review your answer and redraft if you need to, and then when you're ready to move on, click play and we'll continue.

Okay, so we've made it to the halfway point in the lesson.

So a massive well done for all your efforts so far and keep up the good work.

So in this part of the lesson, we are going to look at Shelley's use of form and structure.

So in the first part of the lesson, we were discussing this interpretation of "Love's Philosophy" as a persuasive text, and we were thinking about how Shelley uses persuasive language.

But we can actually also read this poem as a persuasive text if we consider how it uses form and structure.

So Shelley continues subtly hinting at the idea of pairs or couplings in the way that he has organised the text.

And again, he uses three key methods, structure and organisation, form and rhyme scheme, and rhetorical questions.

So let's explore these methods in a bit more detail, starting with structure and organisation.

So the effect of Shelley's use of structure in this poem subtly symbolises togetherness or unity.

So how does he do this? Well, he has two stanzas.

Each stanza is of equal length, so we're already getting this idea of symmetry.

We've got two symmetrical stanzas.

And each of the ideas in the poem is mostly split across two lines.

So if you take the first line of the poem, for example, "The fountains mingle with the river and the rivers with the ocean," we've got in those first two lines, we're talking about water, we're talking about different bodies of water.

And then if we look at lines three and four, "The winds of Heaven mix forever with a sweet emotion." So in those next two lines, we've moved on to a different idea and now we're talking about the wind.

And this happens quite a lot.

Each of these ideas, each of these aspects of nature tend to be covered across two lines before the speaker moves on.

And we've also got the connective, and, which is often used to link ideas.

The word and appears quite a lot in the poem, which also brings together this idea of togetherness and unity, because and joins two separate things.

So all of these together implies that a design based around couples is neat, ordered, and effective, because if we look at this poem on the page, it looks neat, it looks tidy, it looks well ordered.

And actually, when we read it aloud, the way that it's been structured is very effective.

So over and above the use of language, we've got this idea that the speaker's belief in the moral goodness and importance and the beauty of togetherness is actually reflected in the way that they've put the poem together.

So onto the second method, then, form and rhyme scheme.

So the beauty of the poem's rhythm and the way that it sounds when it's read aloud is in its pairings and the dreamy, hypnotic mood that this creates.

So the poem is organised into groups of four, so two pairs of rhyming lines.

And these rhyming lines follow the rhyme scheme ABABCDCD.

So each stanza of eight lines rhymes in the following way: lines one and three rhyme, lines two and four rhyme, lines five and seven, and six and eight.

We've constantly got these interleaved pairs, so they're alternating.

So this links to those important themes of symmetry and unity, because certain lines in this poem actually depend on other lines to make sense and for us to realise or appreciate the beauty in those rhyming pairs.

The rhythm is created by the closure of these rhyming pairs.

And then we've also got the use of trochaic metre, which is a type of poetic rhythm where each line in a stanza has a certain number of stressed beats.

And remember, we were using the words footsteps and poetry as an example of trochaic words.

So they're words where the stressed syllable comes first.

So each stanza has four stressed beats in lines one to three and three stressed beats in line four.

And obviously this repeats again for lines five to eight.

And the effect of this is firstly that this rhythm is very similar to an archetypal ballad rhythm.

And a ballad is a type of lyrical, musical sounding rhyming poetry that was often used to tell epic stories.

It's very historical, one of the oldest forms of poetry.

And it's also effective because by having lines four and eight of every stanza stand out in this way, it helps to emphasise the message on those lines.

And we know that those two rhetorical questions where the focus of the poem slightly shifts on the last line of each stanza would fall into being one of these emphasised lines.

So that leads me on to these rhetorical questions, then.

So the hint at the speaker's shallower feelings and frustrations is through these rhetorical questions that this ulterior motive, this persuasive agenda starts to come through.

So the two rhetorical questions we have are at the end of stanza one, "Why not I with thine?" And the end of stanza two, "What are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?" So this first one, then, what's really interesting about this question is it's not a why.

It's a why not, which suggests that the speaker assumes that it should be that way, and in fact, they're questioning why what's happening is not meeting their expectation.

So why is that not happening? There's that assumption that it should be.

And then the second one, "What are all these kissings worth?" which suggests a level of frustration in our speaker here, because he has identified all these different types of kiss that occur in nature.

So the moonbeams kiss the sea and the mountains kiss high Heaven, and now he is frustratedly questioning, "Well, what are all those natural kisses worth if you won't kiss me?" So if we look at these two rhetorical questions together, we're getting a bit of a sense of entitlement.

Almost not necessarily just that the speaker is trying to persuade someone to feel love for him, but also that there's this assumption of, well, how can you not love me? Or why don't you love me? There's a sense of expectation that the speaker's feelings should be requited, and they're quite surprised and they're quite frustrated that they're actually unrequited.

So it's also important to know that these lines are the only ones in the whole poem that use these second-person pronouns, so thine and thou, both words that mean you.

So if the entire poem is framed as this philosophical argument on the nature or the concept of love, this direct address here is that continual reminder of the speaker's other, more persuasive agenda.

So while the rest of the lines in the poem, we might be able to buy into this idea that these overblown descriptions are what our speaker thinks about the concept of love, we always have that timely reminder at the end of the stanza that there is this other ulterior motive or agenda taking place as well.

Let's just pause here for a moment and check our understanding of Shelley's use of form and structure.

So which method does Shelley use at the end of each stanza to hint at the speaker's ulterior motive to persuade this other person? So have a look at the options and make your mind up, and when you're ready for me to reveal the correct answer, click play.

Okay, welcome back, and well done to those of you who said C, rhetorical questions.

The speaker pauses his philosophical reflections on the natural world to directly address this other person.

Okay, one more check for understanding, then.

This method places emphasis on lines four and eight of each stanza and gives the poem a dreamy, hypnotic feel reminiscent of ballads.

What method is being described here? So take a look at the options, make your mind up, and then when you're ready for me to reveal the correct answer, click play.

Okay, so well done to those of you who said C, trochaic metre.

And it's interesting to note here that many romantic poems draw influences from ballads, because it's an archetypal form of narrative poetry.

So one of these really old, original types of poetry that existed.

So now it's time for the final task of today's lesson, then.

So what I would like you to do is to use a single paragraph outline to plan a response to this question, how does Shelley use form and structure to present love in "Love's Philosophy"? And then we've got a little reminder there of what you need to do for each section of your single paragraph outline.

And then when you've done your single paragraph outline, what I would like you to do is to write up your analytical paragraph using the vocabulary bank to add detail to your response.

So again, in this vocabulary bank, we have got lots of great words that we've used in today's lesson.

So try to challenge yourself to use as much of this vocabulary as you can.

So pause the video and take as long as you need to complete this task, and when you think you're finished and you're ready to go through some responses, click play and we'll continue.

Okay, welcome back.

I hope you had a chance to give that a really good go and to think carefully about Shelley's use of form and structure.

So we're going to have a look at an example response, and then afterwards we're going to think really carefully about whether it included everything that it needed to from that single paragraph outline.

Shelley subtly implies that the speaker of this poem has an ulterior motive to persuade the listener to engage in a romantic relationship with him.

The poem focuses heavily on the connectedness of the natural world, something woven into the structure since Shelley organises his text into two stanzas, and separates focal ideas into groups of two lines.

For example, lines one to two focus on water, fountains, river, and ocean, whereas lines three and four shift focus to the winds of heaven.

In this way, it is easy to read the poem as an abstract reflection on the concept of love itself, something supported by the title's focus on philosophy.

Yet Shelley hints at an ulterior motive in his use of rhetorical questions at the end of each stanza.

Each question includes a second-person pronoun, either, thine, or thou, and as such directly addresses the listener and shifts focus onto them and the speaker's unrequited feelings for them.

Shelley's use of trochaic metre emphasises these lines since they have a different rhythm to those preceding them, seemingly prioritising this ulterior motive over the more explicit one, to present a passionate argument about the concept of love.

Arguably, this foregrounds the speaker's desire as the central thread of the poem, woven subtly throughout the abstract descriptions of unity in the natural world.

So let's have a look then and think about where this answer includes everything from the single paragraph outline.

So we've got this topic sentence there at the top, which is telling the reader that we're gonna go straight in with the discussion of that ulterior motive.

It's very clear, but it perhaps could have been improved with a reference to the keyword from that question.

So we could have used the word love here, although we do have romantic.

So then the supporting detail.

Now, I think that this is where this response really did well.

There is lots of supporting detail in this answer.

And in particular, then, if we look for example at the supporting detail in this first half of the paragraph, we can see that the writer is using precise, accurate, and judicious references from the text, because they've chosen to speak about how the poem separates these focal ideas into groups of two lines.

And then they go on to discuss lines one and two and lines three and four.

And they could have fallen into this trap of feeling as though they needed to copy out four lines of poetry, which would've been far too much and would've perhaps distracted from that overall argument.

So what they've cleverly done instead is to summarise what the text does, so lines one to two focus on water, and then just provide the keywords that relate to that argument.

So that's a really great way of avoiding writing a massive chunk of text down if you don't need to.

We've also got reference to the title, and we've also got lots of identification of writer's methods.

So rhetorical questions, second-person pronoun, direct address, and trochaic metre.

So really strong here on supporting detail.

And finally, then, a summary sentence, so this bit at the end.

Arguably this foregrounds the speaker's desire as the central thread of the poem, woven subtly throughout the abstract descriptions of unity.

So we had that discussion of the speaker's desire in the topic sentence, and the summary sentence has linked back up to that original point, which is fantastic.

So now what I would like you to do is to check your own response against the single paragraph outline.

Have you included everything? If you have, well done.

If not, don't worry.

It's your first attempt at a task like this, so just take a moment to redraft your response and include anything in that you've missed.

Pause the video for as long as you need to, and then click play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, so we have made it to the finish line.

Well done for all your efforts today, and I hope you're really proud of yourself, because this poem is not an easy one to analyse, so well done.

So let's just summarise what we've covered in today's session.

Shelley uses natural imagery to create an idyllic and idealised natural landscape.

Shelley uses religious imagery to suggest that natural symmetry is divine.

Shelley uses sensual verbs to convey his desire for physical intimacy with his partner.

And finally, Shelley uses rhetorical questions to suggest his frustration in his failure to woo his lover.

So I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson and you feel a lot more confident when it comes to analysing "Love's Philosophy." I hope you have a great day and I look forward to seeing you again soon.