Introduction to Robert Frost
SYLLABUS: OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHALLENGING TEACHING AND LEARNING
Students will have the opportunity to examine how Frost draws on everyday life using the rhythms of spoken language to explore complex social and philosophical ideas.
Through close examination and analysis of Frost’s work, students will appreciate its great technical proficiency and control of language and structure.
The use of characterisation, imagery and description, naturalistic speech and dramatic monologue in the poetry all afford opportunities for intensive language study
Context
As a poet, Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the emotions and events of everyday life.
Frost is perhaps most famous for being a poet focusing on nature in terms of the subject of everyday life. Many of his most famous poems (such as “Mending Wall” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”) are inspired by the natural world. Ironically, until his adulthood in New England, Frost was primarily a “city boy” who spent nearly all of his time in an urban environment. It is possibly because of his late introduction to the rural side of New England that Frost became so intrigued by the natural world.
Frost does not limit himself to expressing nature only in terms of beauty and peace, as in a traditional sense. Instead, he also chooses to emphasize the harsh conflicts of the natural world: the clash between urban and rural lifestyles, the unbound emotions and struggles inherent in rural life, even the sense of loss and simultaneous growth that accompanies the changing of the seasons.
Frost’s poetry is also significant because of the amount of autobiographical material that it contains. Frost was not a happy man; he suffered from serious bouts of depression and anxiety throughout his life and was never convinced that his poetry was truly worthwhile. He suffered through the untimely deaths of his father, mother, and sister, as well as four of his six children and his beloved wife,...