Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Theme of love analysis in poems
Theme of love analysis in poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning How Do I Love Thee? poetic terms
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Theme of love analysis in poems
Perhaps no other sentiment is so prevalent in poetry, as that of love. The mere word brings to mind images of romantic affection, lovers entangled in each other’s arms, stolen sidelong glances, whispered words of endearment, and an all-encompassing emotion that transcends the physical, an emotion that is experienced within all realms of being. However, in both life and poetry, the more joyous sentiments of love are often accompanied by images of loss and heartache, a contrast which heightens the imagery experience. The fact that love exists more on a spiritual level than a physical one serves only to heighten the difficult task of describing it adequately, for how can one articulate each facet of such a wonderfully vague human emotion? Further complicating the development of this imagery is that for each reader, the experience of love, and the images that the lines create, are based in personal interpretation, and are likely at least partially rooted in one’s own subjective experience of that sentiment. That this one emotion can encompass such broad ranges of feelings ranging from pleasure, to physical attraction, to romantic intimacy, to the emotional bonds of platonic and familial love, only add to the complexity of consistently defining love as compared to other emotional states. In this essay, I will contrast the images of love as created, and thus defined, by Alfred lord Tennyson in “The Lady of Shalott” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in “How do I Love Thee.”
In Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”, her very existence seems to be defined by her love for the unnamed “thee”. The image of love as a joyous transcendental metaphysical experience is created as she attempts to give words to this feeling. She begins with a rhet...
... middle of paper ...
...s rooted in joy and beauty. In regards to an emotion that is thought to be enduring, powerful, and joyous, Browning appears to articulate the image far more effectively than Tennyson.
Works Cited
Browning, Elizabeth. “Sonnets from Portuguese 43: How do I Love Thee?” Poems: Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. 4th ed. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1856. Representative
Poetry Online. Ed. Ian Lancashire. U of Toronto Libraries. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
Nelson, Elizabeth. “The Embowered Woman: Pictorial Interpretations of The Lady of Shallot.”
Victorian Web: Literature, History and Culture in the Age of Victoria. VictorianWeb.org. n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “The Lady of Shalott.” Alfred lord Tennyson, In Memoriam. London: E.
Moxon, 1850. Representative Poetry Online. Ed. Ian Lancashire. U of Toronto Libraries.
Web. 21 Mar. 2012
Love. Love is generous, boundless and is one of the greatest gifts one can obtain from God, however when in love anything can transpire. And that is exactly how the poets Mariam Waddington’s, “Thou Didst Say Me” and Alfred Tennyson’s, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” navigate their poems. Both offering conflicting sentiments toward love relations to the table and ultimately delivering a unique testimony about the subject of, love.
"Robert Browning." Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol. 1. Englewood Cliffs: Salem, 1982. 338, 341.
Most people have fallen in love at least once in their lives. I too fall in this category. Just like any Disney movie that you watch, people fall in love with each other, and they get married and live happily ever after right? Wrong! In real life, there are some strange things that can happen, including death, divorce, or other weird things that you never see in Disney movies. Robert Browning’s literary works are great examples of “Non-Fairytale Endings.” Not only does Browning have endings in his stories that aren’t the norm in children movies, but he also has some twisted and interesting things happen in the story of lovers. In Robert Browning’s works, Porphyria’s Lover, and My Last Duchess, the speakers can be both compared and contrasted.
Both poets want to be loved in the poems in their own way. While both poem’s present a theme of love, it is obvious that the poet’s view on love changes from how they view love at the beginning of the poem from how they see it at the end.
Today some people say that love is blind, but in William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” and Pablo Neruda’s “My Ugly Love,” they understand and see its honesty. Inside their poems they tell love like it is: imperfect and full of flaws. Needless to say, Shakespeare and Neruda had no apparent trouble conveying the true meaning behind beauty and love through their usage of reflection against positive and negative imagery, the usage of an orderly structure, and usage of sensory devices. If there is one thing that someone could learn through the work of these poets, it’s that beauty lies further than just the appearance on the outside; once someone else can realize this, only then will they discover the true significance that beauty brings to love.
...Browning’s sonnets depict the power of love as an omnipresent force that allows all people to share a connection through the desire of this emotion.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's "Sonnet XLIII" speaks of her love for her husband, Richard Browning, with rich and deeply insightful comparisons to many different intangible forms. These forms—from the soul to the afterlife—intensify the extent of her love, and because of this, upon first reading the sonnet, it is easy to be impressed and utterly overwhelmed by the descriptors of her love. However, when looking past this first reading, the sonnet is in fact quite ungraspable for readers, such as myself, who have not experienced what Browning has for her husband. As a result, the visual imagery, although descriptive, is difficult to visualize, because
Relationships between two people can have a strong bond and through poetry can have an everlasting life. The relationship can be between a mother and a child, a man and a woman, or of one person reaching out to their love. No matter what kind of relationship there is, the bond between the two people is shown through literary devices to enhance the romantic impression upon the reader. Through Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham,” Ben Jonson’s “To Celia,” and William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” relationships are viewed as a powerful bond, an everlasting love, and even a romantic hymn.
...time. The undying devotion from a woman to a man, still existed in Ellis, but with the feeling that it was to the religious salvation end. For Browning, these ends were simply obstacles that were lost to her as the wear of sickness ground on her. Within her deep relationship with Robert, was still a meaningful relationship that Ellis may argue with. But such arguments were frequently held over these ideas in the Victorian Era.
Will's beloved is "more lovely and more temperate (18.2)" than a summer's day; "the tenth Muse (38.9);" "'Fair,' 'kind,' and 'true' (105.9);" the sun that shines "with all triumphant splendor (33.10)." We've heard all this before. This idealization of the loved one is perhaps the most common, traditional feature of love poetry. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, idealized love has some surprising implications.
from the rest in that they describe a love that has ended or will end
Love is one of the main sources that move the world, and poetry is not an exception, this shows completely the feelings of someone. In “Litany” written by Billy Collins, “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims, “Song” by John Donne, “Love” by Matthew Dickman and “Last Night” by Sharon Olds navigate around the same theme. Nevertheless, they differ in formats and figurative language that would be compared. For this reason, the rhetoric figures used in the poems will conduct us to understand the insights thought of the authors and the arguments they want to support.
The types of love in a poem can be reflected in many ways. One of
She says “writing can be an expression of one 's innermost feelings. It can allow the reader to tap into the deepest recesses of one 's heart and soul. It is indeed the gifted author that can cause the reader to cry at her words and feel hope within the same poem. Many authors as well, as ordinary people use writing as a way to release emotions.” She makes plenty points in her review that I completely agree with. After reading the poem I think that Elizabeth Barret Browning is not only the author of her famous poem, but also the speaker as well. She is a woman simply expressing her love for her husband in a passionate way through poetry. In the 1st Line it reads “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” A woman drunk in love she is, and next she begins to count the numerous ways she can love her significant
"The Victorian Period." Holt Elements of Literature British and World Literature Sixth Edition. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2008.