English Literature A-Level
Mortality and Death
What Mortality and Death means in English Literature A-Level, as defined for Pearson Edexcel.
Definitions of Mortality and Death
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Reference: Pearson Edexcel
Death is approached through the argument that the speaker's departure is merely a rehearsal for death, rather than a literal deathbed farewell.
The painful reality of the human condition, in which youth grows pale, spectre-thin and dies, contrasted with the eternal nightingale's song.
The stark, inevitable reality of death is symbolised by the single black-sailed ship, which the poem treats as a mythological allusion.
The poem transforms a symbol of death into a vessel for hedonistic celebration, subverting traditional memento mori conventions.
The precariousness of 17th-century life, conveyed through the catalogue of mortal ends such as war, dearth, age and agues.
The universal inevitability of death that the poem explores, and the different ways people respond to that knowledge.
Topics that use Mortality and Death
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The Movement – Philip Larkin: The Less Deceived (Faber, 2011) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The Movement – The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, editor Philip Larkin with foreword by Andrew Motion (OUP, 1973) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Pre-1900 – Metaphysical Poetry – John Donne Selected Poems (Penguin Classics, 2006) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Pre-1900 – Metaphysical Poetry – Metaphysical Poetry, editor Colin Burrow (Penguin, 2006) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Pre-1900 – The Romantic Period – English Romantic Verse, editor David Wright (Penguin Classics, 1973) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
Related terms
- Death and mortality
- Metaphysical conceit
- Microcosm and Macrocosm
- Mortality and the afterlife
- Subversion of courtly love
- The passage of time
- The Power of Nature
- Time and Mortality
Using Mortality and Death in the exam
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