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Typicalities of Shakespearean sonnets
Typicalities of Shakespearean sonnets
Typicalities of Shakespearean sonnets
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The speaker in this poem is addressing a star, as line one starts with, “BRIGHT star! would I were stedfast as thou art.” He starts off by saying how he wishes he was as "stedfast" as the star. With this information, it is likely that Keats is referring to the North Star as it is unmoving. The speaker’s conversation with the star immediately shifts gears because in lines two through eight he starts to reject qualities of the star 's steadfastness and even suggests all the ways in which he doesn 't want to be like the star. For example, “Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.” Now it seems he doesn 't like the idea of spending all eternity “watching” the “moving waters” washing the earth’s shores. The ninth line then shifts gears back …show more content…
The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet because the first eight lines of the poem all share a common theme. Keats takes us away from the wish expressed in line one and then describes the star and what it looks at in lines two through eight. Line eight, “Of snow upon the mountains and the moors," ends the whole idea of wanting to be like a star. Line nine, just a modification of the old idea comes in, “No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable.” This new idea takes what 's good about the star, the idea of being stedfast, and puts it into the context of him sleeping with his head on his girlfriend 's …show more content…
He can 't see any of the flowers or plants around him, but he can smell them. He thinks it wouldn 't be so bad to die at night in the forest, with no one around except the nightingale singing as he has “been half in love with easeful Death.” But the nightingale is eternal, it must be because so many different kinds of people from clowns to emperors have heard it throughout our history, “The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.” The speaker 's vision is interrupted when the nightingale flies away and leaves him alone. He says “Adieu! adieu!” and feels “forlorn” because the bird can create another reality while he cannot. He is left addled, not knowing the difference between reality and his dreams, “Do I wake or
Edgar Allan Poe tells the story of a bereaved man who is grieving for his lost love in the poem, “The Raven.” During a dark and gloomy night, the man hears a knock at his door. Hoping that it is Lenore, his dead lover, coming back to him, he goes to open the door. Unfortunately, he is only met with emptiness and disappointment. Shortly after, a raven flies into the room through the window and lands on the bust of Pallas. The man begins to converse with this dark and mysterious bird. In response to everything the man says, the raven repeats one dreadful word: “Nevermore.” The symbolism of the raven being connected to death, and the man’s interaction with the dark bird reveals to readers that he is going through the stages of dying. Subsequently, the repetition of the bird’s one worded reply makes it known that the man will never see Lenore again because there is no afterlife.
Keats "Bright Star" and Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" although similar in their address to a star differ in form, tone and theme. The latter contains an illusion to the former that brings Keats' themes into the poem. In order to compare these poems it is necessary to look carefully at their themes and constructions. "Bright Star" is a sonnet in traditional iambic pentameter. Its tone is elegiac as it celebrates the woman's beauty and his love for her in his plea for steadfastness. The poem opens with an apostrophe to the star which calls our attention to his plea. The verbs "would" and "were" indicate his wish to be like the star whom he addresses as "thou." The star is "hung" in the night, a pleasant image, and he uses a simile to compare it with Eremite, a hermit, who presumably sat apart from the world watching. The eyelids of this star (the star is given anthropomorphic qualities) are eternally apart -- always watching, "patiently" and "sleeplessly." Keats then enumerates what this star watches. It watches water -- which is also steadfast as indicated by the comparison "priest-like." The waters that surround the land Keats says are performing ablutions or cleansings and blessings on the land. The star also gazes upon the snow. He uses the metaphor of snow as a "mask" (more personification) as it hides the mountains and moors. The "m" alliteration emphasizes the falling of the snow. The repetition of "of" underlines the parallel structure and idea of the two scenes the star regards. The rhythm of this 2nd quatrain is slow and peaceful like the scene. Then Keats puts a "No -- " w...
Keats uses the song of the nightingale as his vehicle to a perfect, nature infused realm. Throughout the poem Keats has given his own personal opinion of the nightingale’s song. He uses a supernatural mythical creature in order to demonstrate that song is transporting him into a different realm. Keats identifies the perfect world when he wrote “That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.” Keats is comparing the nightingale to a Dryad and using personification to put forward this idea that the nightingale song is leading him to a perfect world of summer time. In the background the Drayad and the song are together in order to demonstrate how these put together will further explain Keats idea to a perfect world. Therefore the nightingale’s song has the ability to be this bird that would sing this perfect song but it can also be the symbol of
Like “On the Departure of the Nightingale”, the flight of the bird also symbolizes the removal of the song, and the loss of the creative force for the poet; the nightingale is free to escape from a world of decay and death, while the poet is forced to suffer in it.
In both poems, the authors express praise and admiration for the star. The poem, Bright Star, alludes to the solitude of the star. Keats wishes he, or his life, were as unchanging and as constant as the star and how he can apply its admirable qualities to his relationship
In Bright Star, Keats utilises a mixture of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet forms to vividly portray his thoughts on the conflict between his longing to be immortal like the steadfast star, and his longing to be together with his love. The contrast between the loneliness of forever and the intenseness of the temporary is presented in the rich natural imagery and sensuous descriptions of his true wishes with Fanny Brawne. The structure of Bright Star is unique in that it breaks free of the limitations of the sonnet form, a form that is notorious for its strict and constrained nature. The rhyme scheme falls very close to the Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, in which the last two lines represent the final heroic couplet. However, the rhyme of the ninth line (‘unchangeable’) is never continued, as the eleventh line (‘swell’), which the Shakespearean form dictates should rhyme with the ninth line, doesn’t rhyme fully.
A sonnet is a lyric poem of fourteen lines, following one of several set of rhyme-schemes. Critics of the sonnet have recognized varying classifications, but the two characteristic sonnet types are the Italian type (Petrarchan) and the English type (Shakespearean). Shakespeare is still nowadays seen as in idol in English literature. No one can read one of his works and be left indifferent. His way of writing is truly fascinating. His sonnets, which are his most popular work, reflect several strong themes. Several arguments attempt to find the full content of those themes.
In truly Renaissance English artistic fashion, poets such as Phillip Sidney and William Shakespeare negotiate poetic boundaries, while implementing Italian conventions. They manipulate the sonnet form and climb Castiglione’s “ladder of love” throughout their poems. Sidney’s Astrophil (Astrophil and Stella) behaves wildly, as Castiglione’s Bembo (The Courtier) expects from a young courtier; he is incapable of being able to see beyond physical form. Shakespeare’s speaker in “Sonnet 130” sees beyond form, almost to a fault. He berates his lover by straying from typical poetic intimacy, but he does so because he sees beyond her physical beauty. Sidney implements predominantly traditional Petrarchan sonnets, but creates a caricature of a “sensual lover;” while Shakespeare experiments with style, and he creates an exceptionally “reasonable lover.” Some scholars sharply contrast the two authors, asserting that Shakespeare’s Sonnets negatively respond to sonnets like Astrophil and Stella. However, the two both develop distinctive stylistic alterations to Italian conventions and Shakespeare borrows from Sidney within his poetic innovation.
An analysis of Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII,” from the book 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor, reveals the emotions of the experience of eternal, unconditional love. Neruda portrays this in his words by using imagery and metaphors to describe love in relation to beauty and darkness. The poem also depicts the intimacy between two people. I believe the intent of the poem is to show that true love for another abolishes all logic, leaving one completely exposed, captivated, and ultimately isolated.
Sonnet To My Mother by George Baker Most near, most dear, most loved, and most far, Under the huge window where I often found her Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter, Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand, Irresistible as Rabelais but most tender for The lame dogs and hurt birds that surround her,- She is a procession no one can follow after But be like a little dog following a brass band. She will not glance up at the bomber or condescend To drop her gin and scuttle to a cellar, But lean on the mahogany table like a mountain Whom only faith can move, and so I send O all her faith and all my love to tell her That she will move from mourning into morning.
Lackluster love is the subject postulated in both sonnets, Petrarch 90 and Shakespeare 130. This is a love that endures even after beauteous love has worn off, or in Petrarch, a love that never was. The Petrarchan sonnet utilizes fantasy to describe love. It depicts love that is exaggerated and unrealistic. Shakespeare’s sonnet, on the other hand, is very sarcastic but it is more realistic as compared to the Petrarch 90. Petrarchan sonnets, also called Italian sonnets were the first sonnets to be written, and they have remained the most common sonnets (Hollander 28). They were named after the Italian poet Petrarch. Its structure takes the form of two stanzas, the first one an octave, in that, it has eight lines, and the next stanza is a sestet, meaning that it has six lines. The rhyme scheme suits the Italian language, which has the feature of being rhyme rich, and it, can take the forms of abbaabba, cdcdcd, or cdecde. These sonnets present an answerable charge in the first stanza, and a turn in the sestet. The sestet is the counter argument of the octave.
In “Ode to A Nightingale,” a prominent significance to Keats is his idea of the conflicted interplay in human life of living and death, mortal and immortal, and feeling versus the lack of feeling or inability to feel. “The ideal condition towards which Keats always strives because it is his ideal, is one in which mortal and immortal,…beauty and truth are one” (Wasserman). The narrator plunges into a dreamlike state when hearing a nightingale sing. As the nightingale sings, he shares its elation and feels the conflicting response of agony when he comes down from his dreamlike ecstasy and realizes that unlike the nightingale in his imagination, “Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird,” his life is finite (61). “Where palsy shakes a few, sad last gray hairs, where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” (25-26).
Through the form of sonnet, Shakespeare and Petrarch both address the subject of love, yet there are key contrasts in their style, structure, and in the manner, each approaches their subjects. Moreover, in "Sonnet 130," Shakespeare, in fact, parodies Petrarch's style and thoughts as his storyteller describes his mistress, whose "eyes are in no way as the sun" (Shakespeare 1918). Through his English poem, Shakespeare seems to mock the exaggerated descriptions expanded throughout Petrarch’s work by portraying the speaker’s love in terms that are characteristic of a flawed woman not a goddess. On the other hand, upon a review of "Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere, through “Introduction to Literature and Arts,” one quickly perceives that Petrarch's work is full of symbolism. However, Petrarch’s utilization of resemblance and the romanticizing of Petrarch's female subject are normal for the Petrarchan style.
This poem that I am going to be focusing on is titled "Ode to Autumn",
As pains and sufferings are the part and parcel of man's life,therefore,to forget his personal sorrows. He indulges in the world of natural beauty. As in the "ode to Nightingale", Nightingale and he becomes one, his soul sings in the bird which is the symbol of joy. The song of the bird transfers him into the world of imagination and he forgets his peronal sorrows in the happy world of the nightingale: