How Poets of the Eighteenth Century Handled Love
Love is one of the strongest emotions a person can feel and although it is by far the most beautiful and rewarding sensation a human can experience. It by far is the most difficult emotion to deal with and understand. Poets through their writing help us reconcile our own experiences with love. Poets are infamous for expressing emotions such as pain, love and passions associated with this emotion we call ‘love.’ They allow us an outlet to experience and express love. Eighteenth century poets: Robert Frost, Emily Dickerson, John Keats and Edgar Allen Poe were infamous for their poetic contributions to the literary world; because of their extraordinary gifts of expression we are able to understand different aspects of what it was like to experience love in the eighteenth century.
The aforementioned poets through their works give insight and words to an emotion many spend lifetimes trying to grasp, while many never understand love in all its complexities. Readers are truly privileged for the enormous contributions poets have made to American literature. This is why we as readers are grateful for their courage; tenacity and public display of vulnerability in sharing with the world their thoughts. Each ensuing year generations of people around the world have the opportunity to experience through literature what it was like to encounter ‘love’ during the eighteenth century, consequently many of us have grown to love, appreciate and ultimately discern what life was like, not only for poets; Keats, Frost, Dickerson and Poe, but what and love was like for many people during that time.
The eighteenth century poets allow us a means to grasp love in a very tangible manner. Love is defined diff...
... middle of paper ...
...heir tenacity and are intrigued by their courage. For literature would not be the same without some of their pieces of work. They helped make a difference in the way we understand love in the eighteenth century and today.
Work Cited
Connell, Phillip. Romanticism, Economics and the Question of; Culture’. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001.
Foakes. R.A. Romantic Criticism 1800-1850. London: Edward Arnold LTD.1968.
Garrigue, Jean. Love’s Aspects The Worlds Great Love Poems. New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1975.
Jauhari, Nurdin. The Gold-Bug-Edgar Allen Poe. 2007. http://jtrezza.qwriting.qccuny.edu/biography-o-poe/. Postman, Neil. Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve our Future. Random House Inc., 1999.
Symons, Arthur. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1909.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a Renaissance poet and playwright who wrote and published the original versions of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and often called England’s national poet. Several of his works became extremely well known, thoroughly studied, and enjoyed all over the world. One of Shakespeare’s most prominent plays is titled The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this tragedy, the concept that is discussed and portrayed through the characters is love, as they are recognized as being “in love”.
If I were asked who the most precious people in my life are, I would undoubtedly answer: my family. They were the people whom I could lean on to matter what happens. Nonetheless, after overhearing my mother demanded a divorce, I could not love her as much as how I loved her once because she had crushed my belief on how perfect life was when I had a family. I felt as if she did not love me anymore. Poets like Philip Levine and Robert Hayden understand this feeling and depict it in their poems “What Work Is” and “Those Winter Sundays.” These poems convey how it feels like to not feel love from the family that should have loved us more than anything in the world. Yet, they also convey the reconciliation that these family members finally reach because the speakers can eventually see love, the fundamental component of every family in the world, which is always presence, indeed. Just like I finally comprehended the reason behind my mother’s decision was to protect me from living in poverty after my father lost his job.
A common practice when faced with a difficult choice, self-examination, is the centerpiece of two popular poems: Gregory Corso’s Marriage and T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Both poems are dramatic monologues in which the speakers address the similar situations that they find themselves in. While the speaker of Eliot’s poem has a nervous and bashful approach in his attempts at romance, the hesitant postmodern speaker in Corso’s poem makes use of sarcasm to attack the institution of marriage. When these two monologues given by similar personas are analyzed together the result is a dialogue which discusses two distinguishing views on the ideas of romance and love.
Between both William Shakespeare’s 1610 play, “The Tempest” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short novel “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the portrayal of love is a present theme in both genre’s that through the distinctive forms, is expressed in differing ways. Between the relationship of Miranda and Ferdinand in “The Tempest” and the narrator and husband John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” love is presented uniquely and exposes the creative development of literature within differing genres throughout history. Throughout this paper I will be looking at the both of the mentioned literary genre’s, combined with the presentation of character, language and form, in an effort to evaluate ways all of these attributes contribute to the writer’s distinctive depictions of love and relationships.
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.
Love plays an important role in most physical and emotional relationships. Love is a word that can prove difficult to define or even compare to other emotions. This is due to the diversity of meaning and the complexity of the emotion itself. Everyone has been in love at least once before and has gotten a taste of all the good and bad things that come with it. Christina Rossetti’s “Song” presents some of the good parts of love while Philip Larkin’s “Talking in Bed” shows us some of the bad parts of love. Larkin’s poem presents a failing relationship where communication has failed between a couple and things are getting more and more difficult. Rossetti’s poem presents a wholly different view on love; it is told from the viewpoint of someone talking to his or her lover about what said lover should do after the speaker dies. The love between them seems better, more powerful and good. The two poems also present wholly different attitudes towards “The End,” whether that is the end of life or the end of the relationship. Larkin presents the end as something dark and sad, difficult to cope with. Rossetti, on the other hand, talks about the end as just another beginning, a chance to start over in a new world. Finally, the two poems represent remembrance in different ways. Larkin’s presents memory as something extremely important while Rossetti implies that it does not matter whether we remember or not.
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
The concept of love has long been the preferred topic of conversation among prominent male poets. Towards the closing of the sixteenth century, however, the emerging of the female poet took place. With the introduction of Queen Elizabeth, an initial path was now cleared for future women poets to share their views on the acclaimed topic of love. Due to this clashing of ideas, the conflicting views of two exceedingly different sexes could manifest itself. Who better to discuss the topic of love then Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expresses her ideas with intelligence comparable to the best male poets, and Emerson, world renowned for his poignant opinions? In accordance with the long history of conflict between males and females, both Emerson’s "Give All to Love" and Browning’s "Sonnet 43" convey the pleasure love brings, but while Emerson’s poem urges the retention of individualism in a relationship, Browning pleads for a complete surrender to love.
Love is the greatest gift that God has bestowed upon mankind. Defining love is different for every culture, race, and religion. Walt Whitman’s love is ever changing for anyone who tries to love him or understand his work. Love can be broken down into a multitude of emotions, and feelings towards someone or some object. In order to find love that is searched for, preparations must be made to allow the full experience of Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand by Walt Whitman to be pious. Walt Whitman’s poem is devoted to the fullness of love, and a description of fantasy and reality. A journey to find love starts with knowledge that both participants are willing, and able to consummate their love in judgment under God. Time is the greatest accomplice to justify the energy and sacrifice needed to start developing the ingredients needed for love to grow. Each stanza is a new ingredient to add to the next stanza. Over time, this addition of each stanza will eventually lead to a conclusion. A conclusion that love is ever changing, and people must either change along with love or never know the miracle of love.
Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.
TS Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is anything but a love song. He uses a few examples of zeitgeist modernism and makes it seem as if there is no hope for love. The second stanza of the poem symbolizes a lonely state, something far from romance. The disturbing walk he suggests, expresses his possible opinion of love.
The types of love in a poem can be reflected in many ways. One of
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
shows that the poet is so fixated in one woman that he is blinded by