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Essays analysing the use of metaphors
Essays analysing the use of metaphors
Essays analysing the use of metaphors
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This poem is all about Shakespeare writing about his beloved. There is controversy as to whether Shakespeare is addressing this poem to a man or woman - male romances were quite common during the Elizabethan Era. This sonnet starts off with what I would think is a rhetorical question: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It is also a simile, because if you think, you are comparing the beauty with the summer's day, literally saying: "Are you as beautiful as the summer's day". The poet then goes on to say that his beloved is 'more lovely and more temperate (moderate and self-restrained)' than a summer's day. Negative things are said about summer, to contrast it with his beloved. All this relates to the beauty of his beloved male friend. For instance, "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" means winds destroy the beautiful buds of May; "And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date" means summer is too short; "Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines" means the sun is too hot at times; "And often is his gold complexion dimmed" means and often goes behind the clouds - like you are hiding your beauty. In the Elizabethan Era, fair skin was admired. This line talks about how you could lose this attribute due to ageing. "And every fair from fair sometime declines" means everything beautiful will eventually lose its beauty and "By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d" means by old age or nature's planned course. Then on the other hand, the poet says that his beloved is not like the extreme summer days, that his youth will not fade, he will not lose the beauty he currently possesses and beauty will not die, but live forever (and that he will be immortal), at least in this poem. As long as people exist on earth, this ... ... middle of paper ... ... metaphor is in line 9: "But thy eternal summer shall not fade". First of all, we are comparing the 'eternal-ness' and the summer and second of all, the lover doesn't really own an 'immortal summer'. This sonnet uses a lot of personification. This is when you give an non-living object human traits and qualities. For example in line 5: "Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines", we say that the heaven's eye shines, but does heaven really have an eye and does it shine? No. Next example is in line 6: "And often is his gold complexion dimmed". The sun is that 'gold' thing, but does it really have a complexion? Again, no. One last example is in line 9, which maybe is not an example of personification in our sense, but it could be in the poet's sense! "But thy eternal summer shall not fade"; to the poet, summer is not eternal, but the beauty and life of his beloved is.
Throughout this poem, Shakespeare uses romantic language to make the reader feel as if this poem was meant for them. To support his romantic language, he uses a rhetorical question and personification. His rhetorical question is in line 1; “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. (Shakespeare). What he means by this quote is, he thinks his lover is as gorgeous as a summer’s day.
This is Millay’s most famous poem and is quite similar to Shakespeare’s but has some differences behind the meaning. The meaning within this sonnet is also love and summer imagery but has a different central subject matter. The beauty and grace of summer only sang in her for a little while, “that in me sings no more” (110) meaning that countless loves have come and gone but she still lays alone. She is still alone and unremembered as she states, “Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one” (110). This creates imagery in that she is the lonely tree and all the lips that she has kissed have vanished one by one throughout her life. Millay has several loves that summer sang in her and Shakespeare only has one love and wants everything to conserve her
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...
In this sonnet, Shakespeare is creating a mental picture of spring and summer to compare against his loved one. He uses the fact that fine and beautiful days are the creation of nature, and nature is constantly changing all the time. Fine days never stay the same: 'rough winds' or the sun obscured by clouds, 'and often is his gold complexion dim'd', can easily mar a fine day. He talks about these negative factors of change in the first eight lines, and Shakespeare then uses these ideas to claim that his loved one will always remain untarnished, speaking of how 'thy eternal summer shall not fade' and how his loved one has lasting qualities that will outshine death: 'Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade' These thoughts come to a confident, final... ... middle of paper ... ...
This is an enjoyable sonnet that uses nature imagery, found extensively in Petrarca, that Shakespeare uses to get his point across. Not much explication is needed, aside the sustained images of nature, to fully understand its intent, but I would like to point out a peculiar allusion. When reading line 3, "the violet past prime" has made me think of Venus and Adonis. In the end, Adonis melts into the earth and a violet sprouts where his body was, which Venus then places in her heart, signifying the love she has for him. Reading this into the poem makes the few following lines more significant. Having Adonis portrayed as the handsome youth, Shakespeare is alluding to the death of youth (in general and to the young man) through the sonnet. In the next line, it is not certain if "sable" is an adjective or a noun and if "curls" is a noun, referring to hair (which is plausible) or a verb modifying "sable." Invoking the allusion to Adonis here, Shakespeare portends that if Adonis did live longer, he too would have greying hair; thus, Shakespeare sees ["behold"] an Adonis figure, the young man, past his youth.
These three metaphors exemplify beauty, but also an end to nature and life. Death is slowly creeping up to him and taking over his life as realized in this comparison of him to nature. The poem shows the need to seize the moment in life before death. The last couplet talks about the topic of love and the power of it. Love lasts through the struggles in life, and the changes of seasons. Love of life keeps us from realizing that an end will eventually come. “This thou perciev’st, which makes thy love more strong.” Encompasses the idea that although everything comes to an end, love still fuels everything within a person. He realizes everything will come to an end and death is inevitable but the passion is still
Also, throughout the poem the author is fair and young but she never described what happened after she was no longer beautiful. I believe this was to done to preserve the original mood and purpose of the poem.
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.
Shakespeare’s themes are mostly conventional topics, such as love and beauty. Nevertheless, Shakespeare presents these themes in his own unique fashion, most notably by addressing the poems of beauty not to a fair maiden, but instead to a young man: ‘‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (book). Shakespeare points out that the youth’s beauty is more perfect then the beauty of a summer day. It is also “more temperate”, in other words more gentle, more restrained whereas the summer’s day might have violent excesses in store. At first glance of sonnet 18, it’s pretty much certain that one would think Shakespeare is referring to a woman, not a man. The idea of a man describing another man with such choice of words is always seen with a different eye. Several even stated that Shakespeare is homosexual. Whichever the case may be, Shakespeare painted beauty in the most original matter. He dared to do what everybody else didn’t, or maybe feared to, and accomplished his goal with flying colors. Besides, in his sonnets, Shakespeare states that the young man was made for a woman and urges the man to marry so he can pass on h...
In William Shakespeare’s sonnet “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” the audience is introduced to a poem in which he himself goes into depth about the person he is infatuated with. The author does not give any type of hints telling the audience who the poem is towards because it can be for both male and female. That’s the interesting part about William Shakespeare’s work which is to second hand guess yourself and thinking otherwise. Making you think and think rational when you read his work. The sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summers day” is one of his most famous and published poem. Shakespeare’s tone of voice at the commence of the poem is somewhat relaxed and joyful because he is going on talking about the person he is intrigued by. Throughout the passage Metaphors, similes and imagery can all be found in the poem itself
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?
Due to the speaker’s preoccupation with death, he questions the beauty of his lover, as corporeal beauty is impermanent, unless
Regarding lines 17-18, the poet correlates the flower wilting near its demise to the beauty of man fading over a lifetime. In regards to the character Everyman, his beauty will deteriorate over his life to eventually nothing –non-existent. Beauty is symbolized as a delicate treasure, and life is the progression of seasons, and the change that occurs between the relationship of beauty and life is
The speaker paints a picture of his lovers’ uninspiring beauty. In the first quatrain by describing his, “mistress’ eyes” (Shakespeare 1) as they, “are nothing like the sun” (Shakespeare