The ridicule of love is a prominent theme throughout the play, most obvious though Phoebe’s interactions with love. She is the reason for Silvius’ borderline obsession, and frequently reasons why she does not want to be with him. Phoebe ridicules Silvius, an individual who oozes traditional pastoral views on love, which includes passionately longing for the person he believes to be his one true love, for having these very ideals. She ridicules the fact that Silvius stated that her “eyes can wound” because she believed that “there is no force in eyes that can do hurt” (3.5.16, 25-26). Here, Phoebe debunks every stereotypical view on love that was shown in the pastoral age, where lovers loved each other to painful lengths, where the mental pain of not being able to be with one another transformed into physical pain.
Both published poems which unconventionally addressed romantic love and challenged the usual perception of women in romantic relationships. In Whitney’s “To her unconstant Lover,” Whitney addresses unrequited love in a manner that is more mature than that of many contemporary poets, and eventually reconciles herself with the idea of not being able to be her beloved’s loyal lover. In Philips’s “An Answer to Another Persuading a Lady to Marriage,” Philips rejects the role of women as passive, loyal lovers altogether.
Andrew Marvell uses hyperboles, rhyme schemes, and synecdoche to develop a theme of carpe diem in a coquettish manner in "To His Coy Mistress". The speaker uses unequivocal diction to persuade his mistress to lose her virginity to him. Throughout the poem he attempts to impress upon her that she should stray away from her coy mentality with him because life is too short. The narrator shares the consequences of not acting on the lust for her that he expresses. Hyperboles are used throughout this piece frequently.
Andrew Marvel in “His Coy Mistress,” writes a monologue about a man wanting to have sex with a shy woman before marriage. The speaker believed that there is not enough time to go through the flirting and admiration stages with her, so they should fast forward to having sex. While both poets have a character in their poem that portray a controlling attitude, Browning focuses on the fate of the duchess who disobeys him while Marvel
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning The speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is a man in love with a woman. The man must go far away from his love but he will always be with her in spirit. Love can transcend time and space so let it not be bogged down by humanity’s limits. He tells her that they are experiencing an expansion of love not a loss of it (line 4). The author utilizes many poetic devices like romantic diction, for example no matter where any lover goes their counter part is a hairs breath away.
Another sonnet and contemporary pairing is, William Shakespeare’s sonnet 152 and Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. In Shakespeare’s sonnet 152, he is writing about a man who is seemingly not in a committed relationship with anyone, but is having sexual relationships with a married woman. He is both frustrated with the position he is in, but wants to stay is this adulterous affair because he is a selfish man. The first line of the poem he states, “In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn” (1). Then goes on to say, “I am perjured most / For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee” (6-7).
Therefore, Molly’s portrayal as an adulterous wife might have been an attempt on Joyce’s part to try to understand better how a woman can be unfaithful and still love her husband (although Nora herself disagreed with Joyce’s portrayal of the female psyche: “He knows nothing at all about women” [Ellmann 629]). This essay will explore the reasons for Molly’s infidelity and its effects on Bloom. If we compare the three POV characters of Ulysses, we can regard Molly as one extreme. If Stephen, who lives almost exclusively through his mind to the point of near asceticism, is one extreme, and Bloom, who although still intellectual also possesses a hedonistic streak as he enjoys food and sex, as a golden mean, then Molly is the other extreme – she perceives and experiences the world mostly through her body. This is even reflected in their respective thought processes: Stephen who thinks in full sentences with
The speaker is a man that is trying to get this woman to become romantically involved, by reminding her that life is short. Marvell’s speaker tells the woman “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime” (Marvell 1-2).This suggests that it would not be a crime to keep him waiting on her shy love if they had all the time in the world. Therefore this woman has to quit being shy. Marvell’s speaker said in the poem “To walk and pass our long love’s day” (Marvell 4) which says that love can fade away over time and after a while it is hard to come back to because it is gone. Therefore she needs to respond to the things that he is saying to
This was the only way he could make her love him because his looks alone would not be enough, mainly because of his unattractive nose that is hinted at numerous times in the play. The same could go for the poet in ¨I Am Offering This Poem¨. We can infer that he won his love because of how he speaks in the poem. He speaks about how he will be a blanket for her in the cold
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It defies the unattainable and idealistic depiction of love that traditional pastoral ideals celebrate. Typically, the pastoral ideals of love include two passionate lovers whose fortunes deter the possibility of having a happily ever after situation. However, As You Like It ridicules this extreme idea of love. Within every love story embedded in the play, which include the pairings of Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey, Oliver and Celia, and Orlando and Rosalind, there is a happily ever after moment for them with their respective marriages in the final act. Pastoral writing highlights love stories in which lovers cannot be with their beloved as shown in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.