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A Voyage To Tintern Abbey Analysis

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As Watson says, “Among the most popular picturesque attractions were landscapes with ruined abbeys, like Tintern Abbey. . . . The pleasure in ruins was largely visual . . . But the ruin also satisfied an emotional demand for historical colour and excitement, connected with the growing cult of the Gothic” (Watson 1970: 14). Some examples of the notable recurrence of this place appear in the following poems: “A voyage to Tintern Abbey” by Sneyd Davies, “Sonnet written in Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire” by Edmund Gardner, and the well-known “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” by William …show more content…

The destiny of the people who live in the country is to endure “those endless toils” by working on the agricultural or stockbreeding jobs (7-10). As Goodridge claims, “The poem transforms the conventional seasonal cycle theme into that of an endless repetition of work, modulated only by brief pleasures.” (Goodridge 1989: 8). Moreover, it also exemplifies the rigid hierarchy between social classes in the countryside. The landlords are on the top and they order their subordinates (the farmers who are “waiting his command”) the tasks they have to carry out (19-21, 73, 90-93). Thompson defences that “the labourers are clearly tied by bonds of obligation as well as need to the farmer. . . . discipline is maintained by the direct surveillance of the employer.” (Thompson 1989: viii). In addition, in line 52, Duck questions the picturesque image that is associated with the countryside and which is not true at all. Shepherds can be identified with it but they, the threshers, cannot, because they are in the land to work, not to enjoy it as shepherds (work vs. the bucolic

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