Goldsmith’s Village
The Deserted Village is a 430 line poem written by Oliver Goldsmith (Greenblatt, 3062). The meaning of this poem has had some controversy. There are some critics, such as Cai Zong-Qi and Stephen Greenblatt, who believe that the poem has some relation to Goldsmith’s youth home of Lissoy, Ireland (Greenblatt, 3062; Zong-Qi, 327-28). This interpretation was not only suggested because of the poem’s title but also by some of the contrasting that Goldsmith does in the poem. Nigel Wood also supported this idea by stating that Goldsmith was “[reporting back home in the early years might by directly confessional” (63). Therefore, these critics suggested that the poem related to the poet’s native home and the changing of the country as the poet aged. However, along with the description of the hometown of the poet, there has been some discussion as to what else the poet could potentially be getting at. Zong-Qi believed that Goldsmith’s poem dealt with some antitheses. Zong-Qi’s “Structure Antitheses in Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village” focused on explaining the antitheses of past versus present, luxury versus virtue, and the conflicts that arose because of those two antitheses. On the other hand, Edward D. Seeber’s “Goldsmith’s American Tiger” suggested that Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village illustrated some inaccurate and irrational descriptions of the United States (417-18). What caused these critics to lead to those conclusion, and what led to Goldsmith’s uneducated portrayal of the United States? In order to analyze and interpret what possible meanings are in the poem, the poem has been separated into seven sections: section (1 lines 1-56), section 2 (lines 57-74), section 3 (lines 75-136), section 4 (lines 137-250), section 5 (lines 251-264), section 6 (265-384), and section 7 (lines 385-430). These sections were obtained from Zong-Qi’s “Structural Antitheses in Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village” (327). The structure of this paper was formatted to analyze each individual section and comment on what interpretation could be obtained from each section. What interpretations, other than Zong-Qi and Seeber’s interpretations of these sections, could be obtained? Likewise, do these two critics’ interpretation of the poem hold true and do other critics agree with them?
H. J. Ortiz 