Translate

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Defining a Sonnet

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

My guess for this sonnet is that it belongs to Petrarchan. For some reason, I think it's more personal and less to a satire of Shakespeare's plays. I feel that the narrator of the sonnet is the one telling the story instead of an omniscient point of view like Shakespeare's sonnets. There's a shift in direct characterization and a more detailed approach in defining someone. The theme of this sonnet has to be that looks are deceiving, so anything to cover up is just a false image to another person's eyes. The tone is somewhat passionate yet at the end shows a condescending approach.

EDIT: I didn't interpret this sonnet correctly (hah, totes not a poem reader as you can tell). This is a Shakespearean Sonnet that consists of 4 quatrains and a couplet. Because Shakespeare was a modernist, so this sonnet was a response to the Petrarchan Sonnets. The rival sonnets were very classical ones that did depict the realism of people and the surroundings. Shakespeare Sonnets were real, not ideal. The sonnet is actually how one feels about the partner with all the negative features, but then detriments it all by saying he still loves her anyway.

Basically, you can laugh at my first paragraph...go ahead I dare you...I need to practice more on literature :(

No comments:

Post a Comment