Portia's speech employs the use of several metaphors to help get her point across. First she says, "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces." Portia is saying that if doing good deeds were as easy as knowing how to do them, then everyone would be better off. Likewise, small chapels would be grand churches and poor men's houses would be giant palaces. Later in the speech Portia says, "I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." Portia is saying that its easier to preach goodness to others than it is to do the good you preach yourself. In a way she is making a comment on human nature, saying that people can talk about all these lofty ideas of goodness all they want but very few ever actually follow through.
In my research, I found an article by Lee Jamieson that discussed the character of Portia. In his article, Jamieson writes how Portia spends her whole life being passed from the control of one man to another. She was in her father's control while he was alive and after he passed, she is still in control. She is bound to be married to any man who passes her father's love test and she does not even get a say in the matter. Once she is married that control will be passed to her husband and she will be under the rule of a new master. Her speech describes her frustration with the lack of free will she has and how it bothers her to her core.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
Sonnet 147
Sonnet 147 by William Shakespeare is an extremely interesting piece of literature. In contrast to his other sonnets, love is personified in a dark light. It is compared to a fever that feeds on its host, extending the illness that caused it. In essence, Shakespeare is saying that the very thing feeding his love will ultimately be responsible for the demise of his love. He uses the metaphor "My reason, the physician to my love" to compare his feelings of love and the rationality behind it to a patients relationship with their doctor. In this case, he is writing that his own reason is angry with him for ignoring it and giving into irrational ideas to the point where reason has left him. He has been driven mad by passion and by his love. "Past cure I am, now reason is past care" is Shakespeare's way of saying that he is too far gone. He has been driven out of sanity by his love and there is no way back. He likes his thoughts and actions to those of a madman's. ("My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are") In the final couplet, there is a large twist. He references his earlier sonnets where he compared his lover to the sun and called them fair and bright, when in actually they are "black as hell, and dark as night."
This sonnet shows the dark side of love that has not been shown in previous sonnets. This poem focuses on the lustful, greedy nature of love and how it can take hold of a person. The sonnet shows how love can drive people insane and make them blind to reality.
According to an analysis by Robert Appelbaum, the poem "dramatizes a condition of the inner life, at once physical and mental, through which an individual has failed to prevent himself from falling in to the extreme, unhealthy madness of love." Appelbaum suggests that like a fever, love burns. He writes that since not much was known about fevers at the time, the subject of the sonnet acquired the fever through food. The subject continues to eat the food even though consuming more of the food will make the disease worse. Appelbaum goes on to explain that when the subject's reason left him, he cannot keep himself from continually eating this food and making his fever worse. He says that the first two quatrains paint the picture of a man who has spiraled out of control due to his disease and has accepted that death is the only conclusion.
This sonnet shows the dark side of love that has not been shown in previous sonnets. This poem focuses on the lustful, greedy nature of love and how it can take hold of a person. The sonnet shows how love can drive people insane and make them blind to reality.
According to an analysis by Robert Appelbaum, the poem "dramatizes a condition of the inner life, at once physical and mental, through which an individual has failed to prevent himself from falling in to the extreme, unhealthy madness of love." Appelbaum suggests that like a fever, love burns. He writes that since not much was known about fevers at the time, the subject of the sonnet acquired the fever through food. The subject continues to eat the food even though consuming more of the food will make the disease worse. Appelbaum goes on to explain that when the subject's reason left him, he cannot keep himself from continually eating this food and making his fever worse. He says that the first two quatrains paint the picture of a man who has spiraled out of control due to his disease and has accepted that death is the only conclusion.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Sonnet 64
The theme of this sonnet is time conquers all. The sonnet depicts various scenes of decay due to time and the absolute truth that nothing lasts forever. Unlike the previous sonnets we have read, sonnet 64 departs from themes of love and passion and focuses on the theme of man's mortality. The line "And brass eternal slave to mortal rage" represents man's inescapable tendency to fight with and kill one another. Sonnet 64 also talks about how nature gradually decays things over time and that too is inescapable, represented by the lines "When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore." Near the end of the sonnet, Shakespeare ties this theme of decay back into the theme of love by saying, "Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate That Time will come and take my love away." He uses this massive metaphors that cover millions and millions of years and ties them back to a love that would last at most one human lifetime, subtly showing without saying the passion of itself. This sonnet shows that love is so powerful an emotion that it can be compared to something as massive as time or nature. The metaphor in the last line compares the fear of losing your love one day to someone who weeps that they will die one die. It makes the point that there is no reason to worry about the inevitable and by worrying it, you are only wasting more time.
In my research, I found an interesting article on JSTOR that contained the analysis of this sonnet by over 10 literary experts. One of the more interesting analysis' was one by James R. Caldwell. He was particularly captivated by the juxtaposition of the clause "which cannot choose" and the word death. He stated that this juxtaposition suggests that death cannot choose but weep. Lover fears death, and death fears life. He writes that this personification of death is justifiable because the speaker has been dealing with forms of death such as ruin and decay.
In my research, I found an interesting article on JSTOR that contained the analysis of this sonnet by over 10 literary experts. One of the more interesting analysis' was one by James R. Caldwell. He was particularly captivated by the juxtaposition of the clause "which cannot choose" and the word death. He stated that this juxtaposition suggests that death cannot choose but weep. Lover fears death, and death fears life. He writes that this personification of death is justifiable because the speaker has been dealing with forms of death such as ruin and decay.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is a wonderfully written sonnet full of imagery and metaphors. In the sonnet, Shakespeare compares a woman to a summer's day in order to articulate her beauty. In doing so, he holds her up to an impossibly high standard that no woman could ever actually live up to. This represents the passion of love and how it makes people see their lovers in a light that cannot be obtained in the real world. Sonnet 18 focuses on the themes of the stability of love and its power to immortalize. The sonnet starts by praising the woman and slowly builds her into the image of a perfect being. At the third quatrain, the sonnet shifts and the woman is summer. By doing this, Shakespeare showed that she has transformed into the standard by which true beauty can and should be judged. Shakespeare then expresses his longing for the woman to be forever in human memory, and he tries to accomplish this through this sonnet. He believes this sonnet will embody the woman and it will carry on her image long after she's gone.
In my research of this sonnet, I found that the poem is less about the subject of the poem and more about the poem itself. Shakespeare is actually proclaiming that the poem will last forever, making it more about his own skill than about the subject of the poem. He personifies various things like Summer, the Sun, Nature, and Death. Death is a rival for the poets love and also a rival of the poems longevity. The use of metaphors is prevalent throughout with almost every line containing a metaphor.
In my research of this sonnet, I found that the poem is less about the subject of the poem and more about the poem itself. Shakespeare is actually proclaiming that the poem will last forever, making it more about his own skill than about the subject of the poem. He personifies various things like Summer, the Sun, Nature, and Death. Death is a rival for the poets love and also a rival of the poems longevity. The use of metaphors is prevalent throughout with almost every line containing a metaphor.
Sonnets
To be honest, I don't know much about sonnets. The only time I've ever really come across sonnets is in shakespeare I've read in either middle school or high school. I know they have a specific structure that consists of 14 lines. They usually deal with themes of love and they usually have a specific rhyme scheme, but that rhyme scheme depends on the author. I know that Petrarch was one of the founders/ early users of sonnets and that he was one of the influences that shaped sonnets into what they are now. In my research, I came across a webpage on the Folger Shakespeare Library that detailed the history of the sonnet. According to Folger, Giacomo Da Letini invented the sonnet in thirteenth century Italy. Francesco Petrarch is credited with bringing sonnets to a high form of development in the fourteenth century. His sonnets were dedicated to an idealized woman named Laura who Petrarch fell in love with at first sight, or so his sonnets say. Petrarch's model and uses of extreme feeling was brought to England by Sir Thomas Watt and Henry Howard in the sixteenth century. They adjusted the rhyme scheme and the meter to accommodate the English language. They, like Petrarch, used various imagery to convey their feelings of love, mainly the pain it brings and the passion that makes it worth it. This English sonnet model strongly influenced English Renaissance poets including Shakespeare himself. It became common place in England for men to write sonnet sequences and circulate them in manuscript form. Shakespeare published 154 sonnets in 1609 and they were written in a new style. It borrowed from the Petrarchan and English sonnet writing fashion but included a new rhyming scheme that became known as Shakespearian style. According to Folger, Shakespeare's sonnet writing was actually too good and it ended up contributing to the fall of the sonnet as no one could come close to matching his skill and versatility.
In addition to the Shakespearean form, there is another style of sonnet called the Spenserian sonnet. This form of sonnet was invented by Edmund Spenseras. The rhyme scheme of this style of sonnet is a-b-a-b b-c-b-c c-d-c-d e-e. In this style of sonnet, the three quatrains develop three distinct but closely related ideas, with a different idea in the couplet.
Moving away from the history and towards the mechanics, sonnets have a specific set of rules. In The English Sonnet, T.W.H. Crosland outlines the requirements for a sonnet. According to Crosland, a sonnet must be 14 lines long and consist of an a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g rhyme scheme. It must consists of 3 quatrains and 1 couplet.
In addition to the Shakespearean form, there is another style of sonnet called the Spenserian sonnet. This form of sonnet was invented by Edmund Spenseras. The rhyme scheme of this style of sonnet is a-b-a-b b-c-b-c c-d-c-d e-e. In this style of sonnet, the three quatrains develop three distinct but closely related ideas, with a different idea in the couplet.
Moving away from the history and towards the mechanics, sonnets have a specific set of rules. In The English Sonnet, T.W.H. Crosland outlines the requirements for a sonnet. According to Crosland, a sonnet must be 14 lines long and consist of an a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g rhyme scheme. It must consists of 3 quatrains and 1 couplet.
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