1. Starter: What words stand out in this wordle
Starter: What words stand out in this wordle? What do you think the poem is about?

2. Les Grands Seigneurs* – Dorothy Molloy
* The Great Lords; it can also, in the plural, mean war lords.
Task 1:
Read the Poem
Objectives:
I Must analyse for key techniques and elements of strcuture
I should evaluate the use of language.
What are you first impressions on meaning?
What language or structural ideas have you found?
What’s the message?
Key Words:
Courtly
Parenthesis
Semantic field
Possessive pronouns
Allusions
Passive voice
Active voice

3. How are men presented in the first three stanzas?
Copy the table and then find images which present men as protective, entertaining or silly in the first three stanzas.
Challenge:
Why do you think the narrator describes the men using metaphors like ‘peacocks’ and ‘dolphins instead of personal details?
Protective/Dependable
Entertaining and Romantic
Silly or Absurd
‘Buttresses’

4. The Voice?
It is written in the first person from the perspective of a married lady.
Find the possessive pronouns in the first two stanzas.
What does the use of these words suggest to the reader about her belief in herself?
Do these feelings change by the third stanza? What has happened?
Why do you think Molloy has used parentheses (brackets) in the final stanza? What does this signify?

5. Courtly imagery Historical Context:
Courtly love developed from the Medieval French troubadour poets.
They were often associated with illicit romantic love.
In the courtly love tradition, men did brave deeds to win their lover’s affection. It was common for a married lady to give gifts to a knight before tournaments.
Marriage on the other hand was not about romance or love
Pick out three courtly love images from the poem.
Why has the poet chosen to use this imagery?

6. Allusions – inter-texuality
She makes allusions to other texts:
‘Little woman’ – like the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
‘the best and worst of times’ – This line has been directly taken from A tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Why do you think that she has done this?

7. MOLSRAP Metaphors Onomatopoeia List of three Similes Repetition
Alliteration
Personification
What examples can you find in the poem?

8. MOLSRAP Metaphors – ‘men were by buttresses’, ‘I was their queen’
Onomatopoeia – ‘hurdy-gurdy’, ‘fluff’, ‘clicked’
List of three – ‘buttresses, castellated towers, the bowers’, ‘troubadour, the damsel and the peach’.
Similes – none in this poem
Repetition – ‘Men…Men’, ‘My… my’, ‘I …I’
Alliteration – ‘prancing down the promenade’ it’s plosive
Personification – (reverse) she becomes unhuman ‘I became a toy, a plaything…’

9. Stanza One
Buttress = support built on the outside of a wall to make them stronger
Were = past tense
Turrets and battlements like a castle
Men were my buttresses, my castellated towers,
the bowers where I took my rest. The best and worst
of times were men: the peacocks and the cockatoos,
the nightingales, the strutting pink flamingos.
bowers = a lady’s private room
Metaphors that compare men to birds are used to show the different types of men the narrator recognises. See what types there are. This shows men to be decorative items.
Here the first line suggests that the woman speaker feels safe and protected by men – this could refer to fatherly protection shown by men when she was younger. The second sentence alludes to A Tale of Two Cities. The poet is using metaphors to tell the reader about her opinions of men.

10. Stanza Two
Again, metaphors are used to show that men are seen as entertainment and a form of pleasure. The personal pronoun ‘my’ in the last line here suggests that the narrator is in control of these men.
A ballast is something used to weigh down a ship so that it doesn’t topple over and capsize.
Men were my dolphins, my performing seals; my sailing-ships,
the ballast in my hold. They were the rocking-horses
prancing down the promenade, the bandstand
where the music played. My hurdy-gurdy monkey-men.
A hurdy-gurdy is a music barrel
The alliteration of the ‘p’ and the catchy rhythm of ‘hurdy-gurdy men’ makes the men seem ridiculous

11. Stanza Three
Courtly love was a medieval tradition were men admired women: they would write love poems and songs in her honour and acted like a slave towards the woman. The whole point was that the man never got the woman.
This stanza sums up the narrator’s position – ‘I was their queen’. She is treated with respect and adored.
I was their queen. I sat enthroned before them,
out of reach. We played at courtly love:
the troubadour, the damsel and the peach.
A damsel is a woman (old fashioned word)
‘Peach’ here means the best of its kind although it has also been used in the past to describe the female genitals!
A troubadour is a poet who wrote about courtly love

12. Stanza Four
The whole tone of the poem changes abruptly here – as soon as she is ‘wedded, bedded’ (internal rhyme) everything changes and she becomes reduced to demeaning roles (roles that show she isn’t respected).
The use of brackets serves to highlight her surprise with the sudden change as though the reader is listening to her complain
But after I was wedded, bedded, I became
(yes, overnight) a toy, a plaything, little woman,
wife, a bit of fluff. My husband clicked
his fingers, called my bluff.
The speaker shows how insignificant a woman becomes when she is a ‘wife’ by mixing the word in with ‘bit of fluff’ and ‘toy’.
Now that we have read the poem the title becomes ironic/sarcastic – men in the narrator’s opinion are not ‘great lords’