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The similarities of petrarchan and shakespearean sonnets
William Shakespeare analysis
The similarities of petrarchan and shakespearean sonnets
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Critical Research Essay #2 The poem that I chose to analyze is "My mistress ' eyes are nothing like the sun". It is the one hundred and thirtieth in a series of sonnets written by William Shakespeare and it’s one of his most famous as well. In this work, the narrator describes his lover in a way that parodies the other love poems that were common in Shakespeare’s day. In this essay, I’ll explore what exactly the poem is saying, how it says it, and what the poet wanted us, the readers, to take from it. I will then discuss my feelings regarding this piece of literature. In Elizabethan England, usually sonnets were written in a similar style to that of Francesco Petrarch. Petrarch wrote a series of sonnets in which he compliments his mistress’ using a considerably large number of metaphors like those that Shakespeare parodies in this piece of literature. When this poem was written, most of these metaphors and comparisons were considered as cliché as they are today. However, the techniques were still used to write sonnets that compared nature with the beauty of women. There are many ways in which Shakespeare’s poems completely flip the common techniques used in that day. This love poem, for …show more content…
If an individual’s eyes really did shine like the son I don’t think it would be considered beautiful. If anything I’d call it terrifying. “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun”; Poems that used these types of metaphors would often compare women’s skin and breasts to ivory or pearls and sometimes describe them as perfectly white. Skin is never as white as snow, therefore to countermand the extravagant claims of other poets by a simple declaration of something closer to reality might jolt everyone to a truer appraisal of love and the experience of
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.
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...
Shakespeare's My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun Many authors compose sonnets about women whom they loved. Most of these authors embellish their women's physical characteristics by comparing them to natural wonders that we, as humans, find beautiful. Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" contradicts this idea, by stating that his mistress lacks most of the qualities other men wrongly praise their women for possessing. Shakespeare presents to one that true love recognizes imperfections and feels devotion regardless of flaws, while satirically expressing his personal thoughts on Petrarchan sonnets. Through the use of comparisons, the English sonnet and an anti-Petrarchan approach, he creatively gets his point across.
The first quatrain of the sonnet introduces the mistress' eyes "which are nothing like the sun" (line 1). It is very straightforward and may be viewed as harsh, but one can feel an initial powerful energy supported by the rest of the lines of the quatrain. The readers will see that the contrast of the beautiful images in nature is readily established in the first quatrain. The line "If snow be white, why then her breast are dun" (line 3) signifies that her mistress' breast are not as white as that of a snow. On the same note, the speaker contrasts the redness of her lips as nothing as that of a coral (line 2) and that his mistress has "wires" for hair - all of these may be viewed as a form of a mockery.
In “Sonnet XVII,” the text begins by expressing the ways in which the narrator does not love, superficially. The narrator is captivated by his object of affection, and her inner beauty is of the upmost significance. The poem shows the narrator’s utter helplessness and vulnerability because it is characterized by raw emotions rather than logic. It then sculpts the image that the love created is so personal that the narrator is alone in his enchantment. Therefore, he is ultimately isolated because no one can fathom the love he is encountering. The narrator unveils his private thoughts, leaving him exposed and susceptible to ridicule and speculation. However, as the sonnet advances toward an end, it displays the true heartfelt description of love and finally shows how two people unite as one in an overwhelming intimacy.
This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.
During the course of Edmund Spencer’s Amoretti, the “Petrarchan beloved certainly underwent a transformation” (Lever 98); the speaker depicts the beloved as merciless and is not content with being an “unrequited lover” (Roche 1) as present in a Petrarchan sonnet. Throughout Sonnet 37 and Sonnet 54, the speaker provides insight into the beloved not seen within the Petrarchan sonnets; though the speaker does present his uncontrollable love for the beloved, he does so through his dissatisfaction with his position and lack of control. In Sonnet 37, the speaker describes the beloved as an enchantress who artfully captures the lover in her “golden snare” (Spencer, 6) and attempts to warn men of the beloved’s nature. Sonnet 54, the speaker is anguished by the beloved’s ignorance towards his pain and finally denies her humanity. Spencer allows the speaker to display the adversarial nature of his relationship with the beloved through the speaker’s negative description of the beloved, the presentation of hope of escaping from this love, and his discontent with his powerlessness. Spencer presents a power struggle and inverted gender roles between the lover and the beloved causing ultimate frustration for the speaker during his fight for control.
Through the form of sonnet, Shakespeare and Petrarch both address the subject of love, yet there are key contrasts in their style, structure, and in the manner, each approaches their subjects. Moreover, 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). Through his English poem, Shakespeare seems to mock the exaggerated descriptions expanded throughout Petrarch’s work by portraying the speaker’s love in terms that are characteristic of a flawed woman not a goddess. On the other hand, upon a review of "Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere, through “Introduction to Literature and Arts,” one quickly perceives that Petrarch's work is full of symbolism. However, Petrarch’s utilization of resemblance and the romanticizing of Petrarch's female subject are normal for the Petrarchan style.
Lackluster love is the subject postulated in both sonnets, Petrarch 90 and Shakespeare 130. This is a love that endures even after beauteous love has worn off, or in Petrarch, a love that never was. The Petrarchan sonnet utilizes fantasy to describe love. It depicts love that is exaggerated and unrealistic. Shakespeare’s sonnet, on the other hand, is very sarcastic but it is more realistic as compared to the Petrarch 90. Petrarchan sonnets, also called Italian sonnets were the first sonnets to be written, and they have remained the most common sonnets (Hollander 28). They were named after the Italian poet Petrarch. Its structure takes the form of two stanzas, the first one an octave, in that, it has eight lines, and the next stanza is a sestet, meaning that it has six lines. The rhyme scheme suits the Italian language, which has the feature of being rhyme rich, and it, can take the forms of abbaabba, cdcdcd, or cdecde. These sonnets present an answerable charge in the first stanza, and a turn in the sestet. The sestet is the counter argument of the octave.
Petrarch’s love poems are now referred to as the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet and notable poets from Shakespeare, to Chaucer, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Percy Bysshe Shelly, to name a few, have adopted this form of poetry. Not only does it contain set poetic functions, such as it must contain fourteen lines in iambic pentameter or have three stanzas and a specific rhyme scheme, it also includes some of the more emotional aspects of Petrarch’s poems. For example, many Petrarchan sonnets have the characteristic of personification and blazon, which is a device that describes the physical attributes of a person, usually female, using similes and metaphors. Although this is a technical term that Petrarch most likely did not strive to utilize, he uses it to express his devotion and adoration of Laura. For example, Shakespeare uses blazon in Romeo and Juliet when Mercutio proclaims, “I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, /
Though ballads and Sonnets are poems that can depict a picture of someone’s beloved, they can have many differences. For instance, a Ballad is a story in short stanzas such as a song would have, where as a sonnet typical, has a traditional structure of 14 lines employing several rhyme schemes and adheres to a tight thematic organization. Both Robert Burn’s ballad “The Red, Red, Rose, and William Shakespeare’s “of the Sonnet 130 “they express their significant other differently. However, “The Red, Red, Rose depicts the Falling in new love through that of a young man’s eyes, and Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 depicts a more realistic picture of the mistress he writes about; which leaves the reader to wonder if beauty is really in the eyes of the beholder.
The ritual of courtly love had rigid codes of conduct associated with it. Shakespeare took his writing to new levels by subtly defying the codes of conduct and relating courtly love to relationships between both two men and a man and a woman. Shakespeare addresses his first 126 sonnets to the same fair man. Sonnet 18, by far one of the most famous of Shakespeare's sonnets, was written to illustrate his love and adoration for the man. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Shakespeare’s sonnets include love, the danger of lust and love, difference between real beauty and clichéd beauty, the significance of time, life and death and other natural symbols such as, star, weather and so on. Among the sonnets, I found two sonnets are more interesting that show Shakespeare’s love for his addressee. The first sonnet is about the handsome young man, where William Shakespeare elucidated about his boundless love for him and that is sonnet 116. The poem explains about the lovers who have come to each other freely and entered into a relationship based on trust and understanding. The first four lines reveal the poet’s love towards his lover that is constant and strong and will not change if there any alternation comes. Next four lines explain about his love which is not breakable or shaken by the storm and that love can guide others as an example of true love but that extent of love cannot be measured or calculated. The remaining lines of the third quatrain refer the natural love which can’t be affected by anything throughout the time (it can also mean to death). In the last couplet, if
During the Elizabethan age, love was considered to be an attraction between males and females which ultimately led toward the union of families and a rise in social status. Although societal expectations of love were primarily monochrome, educated individuals like Shakespeare found ways to express their suppressed desires safely. In addition, these two lines suggest that he chose not to believe in what others told him about love and that two people together was something unconventional. Even though this poem speaks to the nature of what love is and what it should be, it strays from that dynamic and gives the reader a glimpse into Shakespeare’s heart.
The sixteenth century was a time of scientific, historical, archaeological, religious and artistic exploration. More attention was being allotted to probing into the depths of the human psyche and it was up to the artists and poets rather than the priests and scholars to examine and mirror these internal landscapes. The 'little world of man' [1] was reflected through various artistic forms, one of which was the sonnet, which was conventionally used for dedications, moral epigrams and the like. Traditionally most sonnets dealt with the theme of romantic love and in general the sonneteer dealt with the over-riding concern of the self and the other, the latter of which normally referred to a mistress, friend, or a familial relation. One of the first important artistic creations witnessed by the Elizabethans was Sidney's sonnet sequence called Astrophil and Stella, a variation on Petrarch's Canzoniere. Sidney who was indeed acclaimed the 'English Petrarch', nevertheless wrote with his Elizabethan readers in mind as his characters spoke in English accents, voiced English concerns and evoked the spirit of the time.