Analysis of Holy Sonnet XIV
Throughout history, many people have endeavoured to convey their
interpretations, or experiences, of the relationship between God and
mankind. Many interpretations are positive - Psalm 139 of the Bible,
for example, portrays the relationship between man and God as a
personal and intimate one - yet just as many are decidedly negative.
One such interpretation is Holy Sonnet XIV, an intensely personal poem
by John Donne which explores the feelings of a man torn between
physical desire and spiritual longing. In this essay I aim to study
the poem in more depth, analysing what Donne says and how he says it.
Holy Sonnet XIV was written at a time of crisis and confusion in
Donne's life; a time when he was torn between spiritual longing for
religion and holiness, and physical passion. The poem conveys a
feeling of utmost ambivalence - at one point, Donne expresses his
feelings toward God in the line "Yet dearly I love you", yet this
profession comes just one line after his description of Jesus as
"weak" and "untrue". In fact, the poem is addressed to God Himself,
with Donne commanding Him to "batter" his heart, take control of every
aspect of his life and reform him from deep within.
The poem begins with Donne commanding God to "Batter my heart".
Instantly, Donne is telling God (described as "three person'd" an
allusion to the Trinity) to break into his life. The word "batter" is
very harsh, emphasising the brutality of the action which Donne is
commanding God to perform. This brutality is further emphasised by the
fact that Donne asks God to batter his heart, something which is seen
as very fragile and tend...
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...17th Century Persephone. The two stories do seem to run almost
parallel - his initial bond with Satan akin to her fateful eating of
the pomegranate; his imprisonment under Satan similar to her
relationship with Hades; them both becoming shadows of their former
selves (until Donne asks for God's help and until Persephone's yearly
reuniting with her parents); their not dissimilar desires and longings
(Donne's longing for spiritual fulfilment and a life with God;
Persephone's longing for life with her parents - both longings for
tranquillity and goodness). This comparison - between an ancient Greek
myth and a poem written in the 17th Century - goes to show that Holy
Sonnet XIV is a remarkable achievement: a poem that manages to be both
intensely personal yet has the ability to be read and interpreted on a
universal level.
John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Holy Sonnet 10, and Meditation 17 all share a common topic: The human soul transcending. Through this shared thread, the three pieces manage to each convey a distinct message about the human condition that ultimately converges into a collectivist identity of humanity. Everyone is linked to everyone else not merely through this phyisical life's friendships, enmities, and love, but is also connected through his or her very soul. This emphasis on the collectivist nature of the soul itself is particularly important because it then allows these connections to persist through and eventually reunite following death itself. Only this time, they will have transcended into their spiritual world.
The Renaissance era of England began after the War of the Roses and the country experienced a time of relative peace. The literature of this time is predominantly written by nobility for nobility to read; however, by the middle of the era there is a broader audience that includes any educated citizen and, eventually, the common people. The growing availability of printed books expanded the market for these sonnets and literature creating the current market of literature. With this market growing, the general populace was given access to works of nobility that had otherwise been barred to them. Many of these works were published post humorously because of a lack of regard for what many of the nobility considered only a past time or an amusement
William Penn, an English philosopher and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, once said that, “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” He is saying that death is not the end of our lives, but just another stage. In the poem “Holy Sonnet 10” by John Donne, the poet talks to death itself and gives his opinion on his view of death and others’ views: it is something that cannot control anything, can be replaced by others things, and is not the end of a person’s life. Through the use of his figurative language, Petrachan form, and tone and language, Mr. Donne expresses the message that death is not to be feared because one lives on in heaven.
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.
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.
William Shakespeare was an excellent writer, who throughout his life created well written pieces of literatures which are valued and learned about in modern times. One of his many works are 154 Sonnets, within these Sonnets there are several people Shakespeare “writes to”, such as fair youth, dark lady and rival poet. Sonnet 20 is written to fair youth, or in other words a young man. The idea of homosexuality appears in Sonnet 20 after the speaker admits his love towards the young man.
Deforming John Milton’s ‘Sonnet 7: How Soon Hath Time’ was a similar experience as trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. Just like the Rubik’s cube, Milton’s anatomically constructed Sonnet proved to be somehow immune to any form of dematerialization and re-formation. In that sense, Prof. Jeffrey Robinson correctly referred to “the playful aggressiveness deformation usually requires.” The main constraint I had was taking a “great” poem, as Stephen Booth stated , and disfiguring it without impairing its brilliance or its artistry. My objective for this essay is an ambitious one: I will examine Milton’s Sonnet microscopically, I will analyze the procedure of how a poem with a rigid form was deformed into an abstract of words orbiting in cyclical
The sonnet opens with a seemingly joyous and innocent tribute to the young friend who is vital to the poet's emotional well being. However, the poet quickly establishes the negative aspect of his dependence on his beloved, and the complimentary metaphor that the friend is food for his soul decays into ugly imagery of the poet alternating between starving and gorging himself on that food. The poet is disgusted and frightened by his dependence on the young friend. He is consumed by guilt over his passion. Words with implicit sexual meanings permeate the sonnet -- "enjoyer", "treasure", "pursuing", "possessing", "had" -- as do allusions to five of the seven "deadly" sins -- avarice (4), gluttony (9, 14), pride (5), lust (12), and envy (6).
In the second quatrain, the lover grants to Time its own will: "And do whate'er
has the gentle heart of a woman but is not inconsistent as is the way
Milton returned to England about 1641 when the political and religious affairs were very disturbing to many. He started to apply his work in practice for that one great work like Paradise Lost when penning the Sonnets. Not every sonnet is identical but they can be difficult in interpretation, styles, word use, and so forth. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Milton’s Sonnet 8 (ca 1642), “Captain or Colonel.” This will be done by explaining the type of theme and then separating the sonnet into three sections: lines 1-4, 5-8, and 9-14 for a better understanding of how Milton used the development of ongoing events to present problems with a mystical resolution.
Poetry is continously seen as a way of leaving a mark in various poems, especially those of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, as well as Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser. Spenser states to his love, that his “verse your virtues rare shall eternize,” basically declaring that through his poetry she will live forever (Spenser 11). It seems vain of the speaker to say that his poems will live forever, since he seems to regard himself in such a high standard. Shakespeare was also confident of his skills, as proven when he writes; “When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st” (Shakespeare 12). He seems to also be giving the ultimate proclamation of love to his special one by implying that he will have her in the history books with amazing poems about her.
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is widely read and studied. But what is Shakespeare trying to say? Though it seems there will not be a simple answer, for a better understanding of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, this essay offers an explication of the sonnet from The Norton Anthology of English Literature:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) lived in a time of religious turbulence. During the Renaissance people began to move away from the Church. Authors began to focus on the morals of the individual and on less lofty ideals than those of the Middle Ages. Shakespeare wrote one-hundred fifty-four sonnets during his lifetime. Within these sonnets he largely explored romantic love, not the love of God. In Sonnet 29 Shakespeare uses specific word choice and rhyme to show the reader that it is easy to be hopeful when life is going well, but love is always there, for rich and poor alike, even when religion fails.
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.