Night, Sound, Nature, And Psychological Intensity In English Poetry: A Transhistorical Study Of Symbolic Expression And Affective Meaning

Abstract

English poetry across centuries has persistently engaged with elemental experiences such as night, sound, nature, solitude, and emotional extremity to articulate inner psychological realities. This study undertakes a transhistorical literary analysis of selected poetic works ranging from the early modern period to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and The Bells, Robert Browning’s Meeting at Night, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, selected works of Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy’s Moments of Vision, Edward Lear’s verse, William Butler Yeats’s Lines Written in Dejection, and the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier, supplemented by pedagogical and illustrative poetic resources. The research examines how poets employ sensory imagery—particularly auditory and nocturnal imagery—alongside natural symbolism to externalize internal states such as longing, despair, hope, alienation, and transcendence. Using close textual analysis as the primary methodology, the article explores how sound, rhythm, landscape, and symbolic motifs operate as psychological instruments rather than decorative devices. The findings reveal that despite vast differences in historical context and poetic form, these poets converge in treating nature and sound as mediators between the self and metaphysical meaning. The study contributes to literary scholarship by demonstrating the continuity of affective symbolism across periods while also highlighting each poet’s distinctive response to existential uncertainty, emotional turbulence, and the limits of language. By emphasizing interpretive depth over summary, this research foregrounds poetry as a sustained intellectual engagement with human consciousness, thereby reaffirming its relevance within both literary theory and cultural history.