What’s the first thought that pops
in to your mind when you think of love,
is it flowers, chocolates and teddy bears
or maybe a romantic sonnet?
The cliché of these superficial
representations have been around for
years and continue to plague our society
today. But are the traditional roses on
Valentine’s Day and anniversaries really
a good signification of true love or
would you prefer a unique and realistic
approach?
Good morning/ good afternoon Mr. Day
and classmates, today I will be comparing
two sonnets. These sonnets deal with the
issue of ideal and unconventional love
, however they do so in exceedingly
different ways.
Sonnet 90 by Francesco
Petrarca is a representation of a
traditional love sonnet and Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare is a unique
and realistic portrayal of true love.
The Renaissance rose from the Middle
Ages in the Sixteenth Century. A golden age
of music, philosophy, architecture, art and
most importantly literature. Many topics
were written about and reflected on.
Among these topics, the most popular
were romance and chivalry. Francesco
Petrarca testifies to the popular use of
courtship and love in his sonnets.
Sonnet 90 is a perfect example of this.
Petrarca author of Sonnet 90 was an
Italian scholar, poet, and humanist. He
wrote a series of love poems,
popularizing a technique called blazon
this was a feature by feature description
of a woman using extravagant hyperbole.
This technique is used throughout
Sonnet 90 (read sonnet.)
Petrarca exaggerates his mistress’s body
features by comparing them to the sun,
coral, snow and roses, depicting his lover
as beautiful and angelic.
He uses many...
... middle of paper ...
...e are inundated by all these
false representations of love its become
a mockery, in the Sonnet 130
Shakespeare successfully challenges
these traditions.
He does so in a blunt
but memorable way and the reader is
left to wander what their own
true definition of love is. Instead
of celebrating the superficial on
Valentine’s Day Shakespeare gives
the reader a real reason for celebration,
true love.
Works Cited
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author unknown, (2004), “The Sonnets, Triumphs, and other Poems of Petrarch, Petrarch, http://www.humanistictexts.org/petrarch.htm by The literature network, United States of America, accessed on February 28, 2010.
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Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare, and although it may rank fairly low on the popularity scale, it clearly demonstrates a pessimistic and morbid tone. With the use of metaphors, personification, and imagery this sonnet focuses on the poet’s feelings about his death and how the young should mourn him after he has died. Throughout the sonnet, there appears to be a continual movement of mourning, and with a profound beauty that can only come from Shakespeare. Shakespeare appeals to our emotional sense of “feeling” with imagery words like vile, dead, be forgot, and decay, and we gain a better understanding of the message and feelings dictated by the speaker.
James, D.G. (Excerpt from a series of lectures delivered in 1965 at University College, London.) The Shakespeare Criticism Volume 8. Gale Research Inc., Detroit. 1989: 429-434.
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Shakespeare Studies 11 (1978): 53-76. MLA International Bibliography. Web. The Web. The Web.