The Charge of the Light Brigade — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The poems
What you need to know
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson: what it is about, its context, and how Tennyson uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Half a league, half a league', 'Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred', 'Some one had blunder'd', 'Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die', 'Cannon to right of them', 'Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell', 'Honour the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred!'.
Form: a rhythm of galloping dactyls, refrains, and the narrowing number of the six hundred.
Context: the Crimean War, the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, The Times's report, and Tennyson as Poet Laureate.
Comparisons with Bayonet Charge, Exposure and Remains.
