Autumn (John Clare poem) Essay Questions

What is the sublime? To what extent does Clare adhere to the conventions of sublime poetry in “Autumn”?

The sublime is a feeling of intense awe that overwhelms one’s sense of self and goes beyond the limits of ordinary human experience. Sublime poetry often attempted to both recount this experience and elicit it in the reader, often through descriptions of vast natural vistas like mountains, oceans, or storms. In “Autumn,” Clare adheres to this convention by recounting a sublime experience—marked by a world turned strangely gold and the capacity to see an Eternity beyond the bounds of ordinary mortal life—in response to the natural world. However, unlike his contemporaries, for Clare that natural world is not a place he is visiting, but rather the countryside where he grew up.

Identify one literary device Clare employs in “Autumn.” How does it relate to the poem’s broader themes?

In lines three and five, Clare uses simile to describe the landscape by comparing it to the familiar objects of domestic country life. These comparisons balance out the harshness and strangeness of the autumnal landscape by contextualizing it in familiar terms. They also prevent the landscape from becoming a fantasy by grounding it in everyday, unromantic objects like pots and bread. The choice reinforces the idea that the sublime and the ordinary are not mutually exclusive.