“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”- Kahlil Gibran. I am going to compare and contrast between “Sonnet 130”, by William Shakespeare and “The Harlem Dancer”, by Claude McKay. Both poems and sonnets are English and have fourteen lines or stanzas, and the rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, which points out beauty in women. A sonnet is a fixed patterned poem that expresses a single, complete thought or idea. Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto”, which means “little song”. Poem, on the other hand, is English writing that has figurative language, and written in separate lines that usually have a repeated rhyme, but don’t all the time. The main and interesting thing is that these two poems or sonnets admire and compare the beauty of a specific woman, with tone, repetition, imagery, and sense of sound. William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130”, was published in the mid-1590, and published with the rest of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609. The sonnet has fourteen lines, and divided into three quatrains and one couplet at the end. The rhyme scheme is cross rhyme, with the last two lines being couplets that rhyme. The sonnet compares between nature and the poets’ lover or mistress. He shows a more realistic view of his lover. Needless to say his significant other wasn’t physically attractive, yet he loved her inside beauty. Today we may use the term, “It’s not all about looks, but what’s inside”. The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give... ... middle of paper ... ...laws and all. The Harlem Dancer, McKay illustrates the scenery and admires the beauty of a prostitute as she puts on a show for the crowd, though he knows she is hiding her true feelings with smiles. Both views on the women are rare thoughts, being that other people don’t usually see the way these two poets illustrate. Beauty isn’t about having a pretty face. It’s about having a pretty mind, pretty heart, and most importantly, a beautiful soul. Works Cited Collier, Eugenia, Cary Nelson, and et al. N.p.. Web. 21 Feb 2014. . Mabillard, A.. N.p.. Web. 21 Feb 2014. . Verlinken, . N.p.. Web. 21 Feb 2014. .
McKay’s poem, “Harlem Dancer” is a sonnet, as well as Rossetti’s poem, “In an Artist’s Studio”. Both McKay and Rossetti’s sonnets follow an identical structure, containing fourteen lines, and a rhyming couplet. “Harlem Dancer” and “In an Artist’s Studio” are both sonnets and contain rhyme schemes; however,
When a comparison is made between There is a Garden in Her Face by Thomas Campion and Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare, the difference between lustful adoration and true love becomes evident. Both poems involve descriptions of a beloved lady seen through the eyes of the speaker, but the speaker in Campion's poem discusses the woman's beautiful perfections, while the speaker in Shakespeare's poem shows that it is the woman's faults which make her beautiful.
I selected the Shakespearean sonnet 130 to base my own creative work off of because it has always been one of my favorite poems written by Shakespeare. Sonnet 130 is very witty, but very sincere. I love this poem because it reminds me that no one and no love is perfect. This
The author talked about the poem, forms and devices, and themes and meanings. The author talks about the poem as a whole when he breaks down each line for better understanding. Furthermore he explains what the poet is saying so that it seems less offensive than what is shown. The second main idea the author use is forms and devices he uses line from the poem to tell how the poet felt his mistress was still beautiful even though she didn’t have traditional standards of beauty. Also the author tells how the poet feels the woman would be so caught up in her appearance that she wouldn’t see the beauty her beloved one sees. “Sonnet 130 provides logic instead of metaphor, objectivity instead of hyperbole” is what the author believed (Hale 3).
William Shakespeare’s sonnets are renowned as some of the greatest poetry ever written. He wrote a total of 154 sonnets that were published in 1609. Shakespearean sonnets consider similar themes including love, beauty, and the passing of time. In particular, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75 and Sonnet 116 portray the theme of love through aspects of their form and their display of metaphors and similes. While both of these sonnets depict the theme of love, they have significantly contrasting ideas about the same theme.
Sonnet 130 is Shakespeare’s harsh yet realistic tribute to his quite ordinary mistress. Conventional love poetry of his time would employ Petrarchan imagery and entertain notions of courtly love. Francis Petrarch, often noted for his perfection of the sonnet form, developed a number of techniques for describing love’s pleasures and torments as well as the beauty of the beloved. While Shakespeare adheres to this form, he undermines it as well. Through the use of deliberately subversive wordplay and exaggerated similes, ambiguous concepts, and adherence to the sonnet form, Shakespeare creates a parody of the traditional love sonnet. Although, in the end, Shakespeare embraces the overall Petrarchan theme of total and consuming love.
Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 is a sonnet much different than the normal love sonnets of that time. A well-known re-occurring them in Shakespeare’s sonnets is love. Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 can be interpreted many different ways. Sonnet 130 describes what love is to Shakespeare by making the poem a joke in order to mock other poets. In sonnet 130, Shakespeare spoke of a courtly love. Shakespeare goes against the usual style of courtly love writing in this sonnet. “In comparison to Petrarch’s Sonnet 90 and Shakespeare’s own Sonnets 18 and 20, Sonnet 130 is a parody of courtly love, favoring a pastoral love that is austere in its declaration, yet deep-rooted in sincerity” (Dr. Tilla Slabbert 1). Sonnet 130 mocks the men who use the traditional
Shakespeare and Petrarch, two poets popular for their contributions on the issue of love, both tackle the subject of their work through sonnet, yet there are key contrasts in their style, structure, and in the way, each approaches their subjects. Moreover, it is clear that in "Sonnet 130," Shakespeare in fact parodies Petrarch's style and thoughts as his storyteller describes his mistress, whose "eyes are in no way as the sun" (Shakespeare 1918). Shakespeare seems, by all accounts, to mock the exaggerated descriptions expanded throughout Petrarch’s piece by giving an English poem portraying the speaker’s love in terms that are characteristic of a flawed woman not a goddess. On the other hand, Petrarch's work is full of symbolism. In reviewing "Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere, through “Introduction to Literature and Arts,” Petrarch’s utilization of resemblance and the romanticizing of Petrarch's female subject are normal for the Petrarchan work. The leading major contrast between the two poems is the piece structure utilized (McLaughlin).
Both Sonnets have different styles. Sonnet 18 is a much more traditional poem, showing the reader a picture of his muse in the most divine way. Shakespeare uses a complex metaphor of comparing his subject to the summer, but at the same time making it easy to understand. The poet goes as traditional as possible; his friend surpasses the beauty of summer, as summer will fade and turn to winter. Sonnet 130 is just as easy to understand as the former. The use of straightforward comparisons that go from line to line, instead of one metaphor elaborated through the entire poem, makes this sonnet quite different in style. Sonnet 130, in contradiction to Sonnet 18, purposefully branches off from the traditional romantic love poem for he does not describe the subject as a true beauty but as his true love.
The love that a person has for someone is not the same for other people. They can look at their love through nature or just by their beauty. Shakespeare has the ability to explain his love for someone by using nature as a reference. Looking at two of Shakespeare’s sonnets 18 and 130 explore the differences and similarities between one another. In Sonnet 18 and 130, both show Shakespeare’s knowledge in developing his love and respect.
In his "Sonnet 130," William Shakespeare presents an uncommon variation on the staple Elizabethan era love poem. While sonnets on the subject of love typically presented a problem which would be solved through the poet 's skills of rhetoric, in "Sonnet 130" Shakespeare creates a unique satirical love poem which eschews the common idealistic comparisons on a woman 's beauty in favor of a photographic accuracy. The poem 's final rhyming couplet makes it clear that the author 's intentions are to depict realistic and not idealistic beauty. While it would be a basic interpretation to read the "mistress" in the sonnet as the author 's lover, a closer analysis reveals a more unorthodox possibility. Instead of interpreting the sonnet as a standard
At the time of its writing, Shakespeare's one hundred thirtieth sonnet, a highly candid, simple work, introduced a new era of poems. Shakespeare's expression of love was far different from traditional sonnets in the early 1600s, in which poets highly praised their loved ones with sweet words. Instead, Shakespeare satirizes the tradition of comparing one's beloved to the beauties of the sun. From its opening phrase "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", shocks the audience because it does not portray a soft, beautiful woman. Despite the negative connotations of his mistress, Shakespeare speaks a true woman and true love. The sonnet is a "how-to" guide to love.
Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved girl; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat but the beloved woman is more lovely and temperate. Shakespeare deliberately chose nature to compare with love because nature is a lovely creation by God. Shakespeare uses a wide range of literary devices, such as personification, metaphysical conceits, anaphora, tone, imagery, and has recurring themes as well as motifs, to illustrate his darling’s comparison to a summer’s day.
In “Sonnet 18,” the theme is that what is written in poetry is everlasting; Shakespeare is talking about the beauty of a woman and saying that her beauty will never go away because he is putting it into a poem. He begins the poem by comparing her to a summer day, but then starts talking about how she is much more beautiful. He continues comparing a summer day to his true love and shows how she is much fairer throughout the whole poem. He says, for instance, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st.” Shakespeare is saying that his true loves beauty will never go away and that she will remain beautiful forever. However, in “Sonnet 130” the theme is more about appearances and how you can love someone, who might not be as beautiful. Throughout the poem, Shakespeare is trying to say the looks are not everything. The only thing he talks about is the way his lady looks; he does not mention her personality. For example, he says “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound;
In Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, the speaker ponders the beauty, or the lack thereof, of his lover. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker presents his lover as an unattractive mistress with displeasing features, but in fact, the speaker is ridiculing, through the use of vivid imagery, the conventions of love poems and the way woman are portrayed through the use of false comparisons. In the end, the speaker argues that his mistress may not be perfect, but in his eyes, her beauty is equal to any woman who is abundantly admired and put through the untrue comparison.