London Impressions in Poetry
Abstract
In this article, the author wants to theorise the dialectical images of London as signs, by using an Impressionist way of reading the visual and the verbal representations. Through reading three poems of London: William Wordsworth’s ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802’, Oscar Wilde’s ‘Impression du Matin’, and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Woman Seated in the Underground, 1941’, the author intends to show an awareness of the Impressionist narrative technique in terms of the spatial representations of the city. The impressions – in both visual and verbal terms, come to show the way in which London is a gendered space, synthesising masculine and feminine metaphors into a sequence of unique narrations. Each moment represents a personal, a specific, and a dramatic London, which is depicted in colours, shapes, lines and emotions.
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