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    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus"
    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus"
    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus"
    Ebook30 pages19 minutes

    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 26, 2016
    ISBN9781535835732
    A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus"

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      A Study Guide for Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus" - Gale

      1

      The Chambered Nautilus

      Oliver Wendell Holmes

      1858

      Introduction

      With its rich imagery and ringing verse, The Chambered Nautilus, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is one of the most enduring nature poems of the mid-nineteenth century. Its subject is the nautilus, a sea creature that lives inside a spiral shell. As it grows, the nautilus makes new, larger chambers of its shell in which to live, closing off the old chambers and gradually forming a spiral. Holmes compares the nautilus to a ship of pearl sailing through enchanted but dangerous waters until it is wrecked. The speaker or narrator of the poem uses the nautilus as a metaphor for the human soul, stressing that its example provides a heavenly message of how people should grow and develop through their lives. At the end of the poem, Holmes emphasizes the idea that humans expand their horizons until they achieve the spiritual freedom of heaven or the afterlife.

      Although it may appear abstract or timeless, The Chambered Nautilus is grounded in the world of mid-nineteenth-century Boston, sometimes called the American Renaissance because of its flowering in literature, philosophy, and culture. Holmes—a medical doctor, poet, novelist, travel writer, scientist, essayist, philosopher, lecturer, and conversationalist—was a prominent figure in the literary and philosophical circles of his era. The Chambered Nautilus was originally published in the new magazine Atlantic Monthly as part of a series combining poetry and prose that derived from Holmes's many stimulating conversational groups in Boston's intellectual society. In 1858, this series, called The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, was published in book form, and it was

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