Lecture notes
Patrick Kavanagh- The Hospital
- Institution
- CCEA
This is a comprehensive analysis of Kavanagh's The Hospital. It includes structural and linguistic analysis.
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THE HOSPITALFORM AND STRUCTURE
The poem takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet
Octave: description of setting
Sestet: draws philosophical messages from the mundane details of the hospital
The poem has a regular rhyme scheme (ABBA ABBA CDE CDE)
However, *it does not have a rigidly conventional sonnet
THEMES
Survival
Poetry
Ordinary as fit subject matter for poetry
Immortalising power of poetry to record transitory moments
LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY
Title
Kavanagh alludes to the Rialto Hospital where he spent time being treated for lung cancer
The functional hospital is curious subject matter for poetry however, this suggests the
transformative power of the poetic imagination
The title allows a window into one of the key themes of the poem- justification of the banal
and local as poetic subject matter
Body of Poem
Octave
Line 1: The temporal reference “A year ago” evokes the importance of the illness to the poet
and implies the magnitude and seriousness of the illness. This is a celebratory recognition of
survival.
Line 2: The placing of the “chest hospital” at the start of the line emphasises the bathetic
deflationary quality of the line and introduces the main theme of the poem- the banal as
appropriate poetic subject matter. The caesura signalled by the colon heightens the bathos of
the comically striking line.
Line 3: The list of mundane objects “Plain concrete, wash basins” emphasises the value of
the ordinary. The poet uses amplified language used in the rye reference “an art lovers woe”
evokes the unaesthetic ugliness of the functional hospital
Line 4: The comic detail of this line presents the ultimate of mundality and there is an
implication that the ordinary should be observed. It also evokes the lack of privacy and close
proximity of the hospital. There is a fusion of lofty pretentious language with conversational,
colloquial language
Line 5: There is a shift in tone to a didactic tone as the poem becomes more philosophical.
“Nothing whatever is by love debarred”- in life, anything that the beholder sees as worthy is
important. This can be read as a reference to both love of human relationships and love of
poetic art. The verb “debarred” suggests that nothing should be procured as poetic subject
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