CRITICAL ANALYSIS - SIR WALTER RALEIGH POEMS

Critical Analysis - Sir Walter Raleigh Poems

Critical Analysis - Sir Walter Raleigh

Introduction - About Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh was born in 1552 in Hayes Barton, a community in Devon near Sid mouth. He eventually matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford. He was passionately devoted student; however, to the cause of the Protestant Huguenots, he withdrew from university and enlisted as a Huguenot soldier in France. There he fought in two pitched battles at Moncontour and Jarnac. While in the service of Protestant ideals, in 1578 he became a de facto pirate - a privateer who fought alongside his half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in a sea raid against the Spanish. Still ruthlessly opposing the Roman Church and its supporters, in 1580 he participated in a punitive expedition against the rebellion in Ireland of the Ulsterite Desmonds. Back in England, Raleigh became a courtier who for a time enjoyed the special favor of Queen Elizabeth I. During the period between 1581 and 1587, his status in the queen's affections brought him profitable offices, land holdings, and privileges that among others included the vice - admiralty of Devon and Cornwall, a seat in Parliament as the representative for Devon, and appointment as Lord Warden of the Stanneries.

Between 1584 and 1589, Raleigh financed efforts to settle Roanoke Island in North Carolina and to establish colonies in Virginia. Though both these efforts failed, Raleigh is credited for the introduction into England of two New World crops, potatoes and tobacco. The latter product, of course, has borrowed his name as a brand. In 1587 the earl of Essex supplanted Raleigh in the queen's affections. Raleigh moved to Ireland, where, with the help of English Protestant immigrants who came at his invitation, he became a planter of potatoes.

The great Sir Raleigh was bestowed a multi - talented persona by God; being an English noble, playwright, bard, combatant, detective, and voyager. Apart from this, he is also famous for the promotion of tobacco in the United Kingdom. A majority of the poems by this poet are reflective of comparatively cushy and Spartan approach, commonly recognized as the plain technique. C. S. Lewis has regarded him to be one of the most influential poets of the century.

During his lifetime, Raleigh himself enjoyed a reputation as a witty and satirical poet in the manner of George Chapman and Sir John Davies. Much of Raleigh's poetry, however, has been lost, and some is insecurely attributed to him. Most secure, perhaps, is the attribution of “The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd” - a poem that humorously responds to one by Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. A minor poem of Raleigh's captures the atmosphere of the court at the time of Queen Elizabeth I. His response to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" was "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd". "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" was written in 1592, while Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to The Shepherd" was written four years ...