Madison Hataway
Professor Schuder
English 102
23 September 2016
“My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)”
When you think of a love poem, you usually think of something sappy like you would find in an anniversary card or even a Valentine’s Day card. The kind of poems that make you squirm when you read it if you’re single, like me. What about if I asked you about poems written hundreds of years ago? You would think they would be even sappier than today’s poems. Well, the speaker of “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)” had a different idea. The speaker uses this sonnet to joke around with a variety of exaggerated comparisons some poets back then wrote about when talking about their beloved. In the poem “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)”, William Shakespeare develops a parody of conventional love through tone, imagery, and symbolism. In Sonnet 130, the Shakespeare uses a mocking and verbal irony tone. The title and
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The speaker says that perfume has a more pleasurable smell than the breath she “reeks” (8) to give us a strong sense of imagery and let us know how far from an ideal woman she is. The first part of the poem is full of imagery like “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” (2), giving us the image of her lips not being in any comparison to red coral lips like most “goddesses” had back then. In the following lines, he goes on with more examples of her imperfect features like her hair being “black wires” (4) and her “breasts are dun” (3). These two imagery examples are the worst, comparing her hair to be frizzy and her breasts to be dun just like the speaker comparing her skin to a grayish color. The speaker continues to let the readers know that she is no comparison to beautiful things like the delightful perfume, the redness of coral, luxurious hair, or snow white skin and
It’s detailed like a memory and provides the audience of just one incidence the narrator was able to recollect. The poem’s main focus is to take a little look into the disparity between traditional feminine
In the poem, “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” the poet, George Gascoigne, communicates his fickle attitude towards his lover. With the use of standard Shakespearean sonnet form, exaggerated diction and vivid imagery he explains why the speaker is bound to avoid his ex-lovers eyes, since they can spell him to live a life with further deception and heartache. Gascoigne’s practice of sonnet form consists of the “ABAB” rhyme scheme, couplet, and four stanzas adding emphasis on the protagonists reluctance to see his lover’s face. As the poem progresses it becomes clear on why the speaker is warry. The poem includes paradoxing examples that elaborate his complex situation.
It has been said that “beauty is pain” and in the case of this poem, it is quite literal. “For That He Looked Not Upon Her” written by George Gascoigne, a sixteenth century poet, is a poem in which the speaker cannot look upon the one he loves so that he will not be trapped by her enhanced beauty and looks. In the form of an English sonnet, the speaker uses miserable diction and visual imagery to tell the readers and his love why he cannot look upon her face. Containing three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end, this poem displays a perfect English sonnet using iambic pentameter to make it sound serious and conversational. This is significant because most sonnets are about love and each quatrain, in English sonnets, further the speaker’s
In A Ritual to Read to Each Other, William Stafford speaks about a different kind of love than in Shakespeare’s sonnet. The love Stafford describes isn’t romantic, rather it is built on the fragile communication we have with the people around us. Stafford emphasizes the love of humanity, and begins his poem by pointing out how desperately bereft we are of this kind of empathy today. In the second stanza Stafford talks about the emptiness that exists between us. According to the poem we’ve become
Born in 1941 in New York, Billy Collins has grown to become an excellent writer. He currently appointed as the Poet Laureate of the United States. Billy Collins poems discuss human experiences with in life to relate to the reader. The experiences discussed or remembrance, questioning, and love.
Structurally “Dim Lady” has little to do with the firm guidelines of true sonnets, however this choice gives Mullens a greater degree of creative liberty when it comes to the rescripted Sonnet 130. The more contemporary style of free verse rather than structurally rigid helps to create the more modern feeling of the overall work and in turn allows Mullens to shape Shakespeare's work in a new
Helena, one of the main characters of this Shakespearean comedy, expresses her thoughts on love through a soliloquy. This soliloquy is written in verse and in “iambic pentameter” - five unaccented syllables, each followed by an accented one - as the rest of the play is, but with the characteristic that it rhymes. The soliloquy is composed of “heroic couplets” - rhyming verse in iambic pentameter- in opposition to “blank verse” - unrhymed iambic pentameter- which is the predominant type of verse in the play. Helena’s soliloquy, formed, as mentioned before, by heroic couplets, follows the rhyme scheme AABBCC as can be seen in this extract: “Things base and vile, folding no quantity, (A) Love can transpose to form and dignity: (A) Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; (B) And therefore is wing 'd Cupid painted blind: (B)
Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun (1609) by William Shakespeare is nothing like the average romantic poem. Instead of boasting about his mistress’s beauty and making unrealistic comparisons he Comically appreciates her natural beauty and appearance, without the use of flattering clichés. Some Argue that Shakespeare might have been misogynistic and insulting to women by body shaming is mistress. Is it thus apparent that people may have different interpretations and understanding of sonnets or poems regardless of the environment or period of the reading? Though I believe that this is truly a love poem, in this analysis both interpretations will be represented.
The two poems I will be comparing and contrasting in this essay are two of William Shakespeare 's most popular sonnets. Sonnets in chapter 19, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? ', and in chapter 23, 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds, ' of our Literature book. Both of these poems deal with the subject of love but each poem deals with its subject matter in a slightly different way. Each also has a different purpose and audience. In the case of 'Shall I compare thee ' the audience is meant to be the person Shakespeare is writing the sonnet about.
He idealizes the woman he loves and sees her to be far better than she actually is. This is also demonstrated in the line,“Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s” (8). This further proves the difference between sight with love and without. Sight with love ignores flaws, while sight without gives a clear view of imperfections.
In these short poems, the authors utilize particular rhetorical techniques and methods to reflect the speakers’ personality and motivation. Therefore, presenting the speaker becomes the main focus of the authors. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” both poems reflect the speakers’ traits through monologue, figurative language, and symbolism. However, these two speakers’ personalities are different due to their attitude toward their beloved. The speaker in Sonnet 18 is gentle and delighted but frustrated because the ideal metaphor comparison of summer is not perfect for describing his beloved; the poem thus suggests that the way you love others reflects how you feel about yourself.
As a result, this theme further contributes to the theme of undying love and everlasting beauty. “Sonnet 71” possesses a tone of a morbid nature while “Sonnet 73” replays one which is more bittersweet. Indeed, the dissimilarity in tones between these two sonnets and their contribution to undying love and everlasting beauty is largely connected to Shakespeare’s diction, use of figurative language, and imagery. Firstly, word choice primarily distinguishes whether the sonnets will have a positive or negative tone. The
Though both poems are exquisite expositions of love the question remains as to which one demonstrates the most superb love. Shakespeare 's “Sonnet 116” begins by depicting his version if the perfect love. According to Shakespeare, love must be a “marriage of two minds”. This ideology in itself exhibits a higher level love than common man could ever experience. For love to truly be Neoplatonic, it must merge every aspect of a relationship beyond the physical.
“A Memory of Youth”: Yeats and Erotic Experience A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid Love’s moon away. The “cloud”—amorphous and obstructing—cuts into the scene, as well as the poem, with a sudden violence, in order to block the image of “Love’s moon”. The cloud itself cannot have definite dimensions, as it exists to only hide the moon, casting the speaker of the poem, his love and the cloud itself in a continuous darkness. It is in this darkness that the speaker of the poem finds his own perception and experiences clouded, indicating his blind submission to erotic love in lieu of a more illuminating, comprehensive “Love”.
This theme is basic spirit of all sonnets of him. His treatment of love has something divine quality. “His love is ideal love and surpasses the love of Dante for his Beatrice and the love of Petrarch for his Laura. Nor could Mrs. Browning, in her sonnets, written much later and addressed to her husband, equal Shakespeare’s ardor and fervor.” 5 It is classical