The majority of love stories and romantic tales portray love in an optimistic light. Christina Rossetti, however, chooses to present her love poem, “Promises Like Pie-Crust” in a very different way. The views of the poem’s speaker are that of a cynic or realist, and she treats romantic relationships very negatively. Her view of the world is that unless she knows that something is true, and will be true for eternity, she will not put those boundaries into her life. The use of the pie metaphor within the title, “Promises Like Pie-Crust”, further strengthens her argument because it links the concept of a promise to a structure that is intrinsically fragile. She believes that like pie crusts, a promise seems doomed to eventually breakdown. Lastly, she insinuates thatpast relationships have helped to form the limiting view she has on life and love. Rossetti’s speaker is unable to pursue a romantic relationship because her world views limit her actions to what she knows for certain to be a truth.
The use of the pie metaphor introduces the speaker’s belief that promises and relationships are built on a foundation that can easily fall apart and prove to be untrue. The title, “Promises Like Pie-Crust” comes from the English proverb, “Promises are like pie-crust, made to be broken” (Damrosch 1745). The title hints not only at the overall tone of negativity toward romantic relationships in the poem, but also at the speaker’s world views. She believes that you cannot enter into a verbal agreement, or make a promise, unless you know that those words will be true forever. She clearly believes that at the center of a relationship is a set of promises that the lovers make to one another, and that this is a foundation that is bound to break....
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... another failed relationship, and would rather settle on simple friendship, without any risks or boundaries.
Typical love stories support the rash actions and professions of un-dying love from lovers; however, the speaker takes a very real world view and criticizes the fragile nature of promises and it is this negative outlook that cripples her ability to enter into a romantic relationship. The speaker governs her actions by what she feels proves as true or false, and she does not act unless she knows this for sure. She finds comfort in the freedom of friendship rather than love. This may have stemmed from a broken heart or a series of failed efforts. Whatever the reason, it is clear that she treats love in a very different way than most people. Rossetti, however, presents love in a rational but negative way in which she craves for a simple and stable existence.
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.
While Anna Williams views escaping the confines of marriage as a desirable thing, Charlotte Lennox’s greatest lament, as expressed by her poem “A Song,” is merely to have the freedom to love who she pleases. Although Charlotte Lennox has a more romantic view of men and love than Anna Williams, neither woman denies the need for companionship. Charlotte Lennox’s opinion towards love is expressed clearly in her piece “A Song.” The poem’s female speaker is experiencing unrequited love.
“Love Poem With Toast” by Miller Williams introduces the effect our desires have in our daily lives in order to “move, as we call it, forward” (11). Miller Williams also conveys this message accompanied with a darker meaning; though these desires make up a large part of our lives, in the end none of it will matter because we leave the world the same way we enter it, with nothing. Despite this message being carried out, it is still a love poem at the surface, but it is not about a person confessing their love, rather pretending to love, and continuing to live with this self-conflict about choosing to be in a frigid relationship over not being in one at all. It is interesting how Miller rhythmically categorizes his message throughout the poem;
...ve for these characters was fated to be unattainable and deceiving. The attempt to seek out such represents a temptation that is pointless to pursue because the simple variable of change is unavoidable. This patriarchal society's denial to this truth is a cruel deception that, in both poems, victimizes women. The deception is maintained in the fairy-tale folklores of romantic poetry that Goblin Market and The Prince's Progress imitate, both literally and suggestively. Rossetti’s narratives illustrate a complex of immediate gratification, especially with the incorporation of romantic ideas, and they highlight that the fulfillment of these delights, however brief, leads to certain betrayal and disappointment. In this way, Rossetti oddly criticizes the romantic ideas in traditional literature while presenting a review of the beliefs fundamental to those ideas.
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
Beneath Christina Rossetti’s poetry a subtext of conflict between the world of temptation and the divine kingdom exists. Hugely aware of her own and others desires and downfalls her poetry is riddled with fear, guilt and condemnation however her works are not two dimensional and encompass a myriad of human concerns expanding beyond the melancholy to explore love and fulfilment.
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.
Love caused his logic and sensibility to fail him, and provoked him to commit monstrous acts that destroyed many lives. Through analysis of “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood, it can be concluded that one of her many intended lessons was to show the value and the powerful effects of love. Atwood successfully proved this lesson by using powerful examples of both successful and disastrous relationships to illustrate the positive and negative effects of love. Atwood truly demonstrated what it is like to follow your heart.
Christina Rossetti and John Keats were both poets in their own prime. Rossetti wrote the somewhat controversial poem, Cousin Kate (1879) and John Keats wrote the French named poem, La Belle Dame sans Merci, (1819) which means “the beautiful woman without mercy”.
The notion of love is nothing but a shadow that covers the truth of ones’ own struggles and the improbable triumph of love over isolation is nearly impossible in his eyes. By complicating his poem through the filter of the maid and the frame of traditional love poetry, Clare’s portrait of isolation and social death becomes even more moving, for it is just as obvious to the reader as it is to Clare that such an “eternity” is unlikely to be
“Don’t waste your love on someone who doesn’t value it.” In the play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare exposes the life of two young lovers in the Renaissance period fighting for something they cannot live without; each other. Although fate takes its toll, the everlasting feud between two families, conditional love by parents, and the irresponsibility’s of father and mother like figure are the main causes in the death of Romeo and Juliet. The idea of love is something that is valued in this play from many different aspects of characters, lines, and scenes. Shakespeare leaves the minds of readers soaring over not why it happened, but who was at fault.
The fairytale depiction of love and romance seems to no longer exist in society. With the growing divorce rate and the increase of loveless marriage, it is rare to find an honest depiction of twenty first century love. Using the relationship of Carol and Howard as a hyperbole to modern day romance, Mavis Gallant explores the theme of algorithmic relationships to develop a commentary on the lack of love in modern day relationships. The characterization of Carol and Howard as an engaged couple lacking love and the use of abstract ideas, analogies, and hyperbole, “The Other Paris” tells the dismal future of relationships.
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 first type of love the audience is introduced to is the interchangeable love of Benvolio. According to Benvolio, a man should love a woman for only the duration of their relationship. If their relationship should end, the man should feel no grief. If the woman rejects the man initially, he should still feel no grief. In either situation, the man should simply start a relationship with another woman. “But in that crystal scales let there be weighed/ Your lady’s love against some other maid/ That I will show you shining at this feast, /And she shall scant show well that now seems best” (I.ii.103-106). Benvolio's definition of love shows the audience two things about Benvolio: he is a womanizer and he has never before experienced true 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.