Analysis Of Elizabeth Barrette Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese

Both the texts ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F.Scott Fitzgerald and ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning explore the ideas of aspirations and identity developing a deeper understanding of the texts. Both texts share these ideas through the characters and the values of idealism and hope, and personal voice and identity. Although the two texts are separated in time and context, they both reflect the world of the text and composer.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is regarded as a literary great, recognised for his many plays that still feature in many educational syllabuses across the world. He has also received adulation for his poetry and sonnets. This essay works on the basis that there are two individual specifications of love; lust and true love. Definitions of these loves can be found embedded within several sonnets and will be explored further on in this essay. Other types of love could also be distinguished and analysed within Shakespeare's collection of sonnets, however, for the purposes of this composition to achieve in depth analysis, the two most prevailing types of love will be focussed on. This essay will seek to determine Shakespeare's definition of both

      Sonnet CXVI is one of these evasive sonnets.  It is indeed elusive and if we are lucky enough to catch hold of it, we may find that we do not in fact possess it entirely.  Most interpretations of Sonnet CXVI focus on the constancy of love, which I concede, is indeed an attribute of the sonnet, but is hardly its main point.  Wedged between sonnets that begin "Those lines that I before have writ do lie" (CXV) and "Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all" (CXVII) one has to reconsider the facile premise that this poem is only about love in its highest, ideal form.  In the present paper, I will focus on sonnet CXVI, but not in conjunction to its surrounding sonnets.  Instead I will try to read the sonnet without any inclinations to possessing its meaning and let the sonnet speak for itself.

This sonnet dramatizes the conflict between appearance and reality, specifically drawing attention to the excessive use of romantic cliches in literature during the elizabethan era. William Shakespeare uses similes and metaphor to compare the speaker’s mistress to that of unpleasant and insulting attributes. In doing this, Shakespeare makes a joke out of the traditional conventions of love poetry at the time and their unrealistic nature when describing women. The nature of these comparisons give the reader a sense of discomfort and the volta within the concluding couplet cause the reader to reevaluate the sincerity of the falsehoods riddled in typical poetry regarding love.

In this sonnet the female figure is made to look a tad conniving, untrustworthy, and uncontrollable. The line from the poem that supports this states, “I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember” (485). This could mean she once only had eyes for him and somehow lost interest, which is the cause of his depression. A few lines down the peom says, “And now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change”(485). This means that she is hungry for something that will please her and satisfy her appetite whatever it may be but we know for sure it is not our male character as he sulks at the sight of her careless wondering. He yearns for her loyalty to be only to him and is depressed by the fact that he may never have or be able to grasp it. This is a characteristic of love that is unobtainable and the writings of sorrow from heartache. This void and need leaves the male character creating a gloomy mood to the sonnet. Here we can clearly see how roles are switched where as our male character is the tool

The assessment of the language in the poem shows the balance of this positive and negative tone Shakespeare is trying to achieve to develop the theme. The sonnet focuses on the theme of love and loyalty, but also alludes to the

In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare implicates love as an steadfast condition of the heart. Shakespeare accosts us with the idea that love is beyond definition and value. The poem explores the consequences and implications of love and proposes us with the theory that love is one of life’s constants that does not change with time or circumstance. Browning in My Last Duchess chooses to challenge Shakespeare’s values with the Patriarchal values demonstrated in the form of Duke Alfonso II. The structure integrated in the poem is representative of the dilemma Shakespeare faces with the couplet at the end of the poem changing the tone. The line ‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’ gives the reader a defensive challenge. If the poetry is an error and love is not steadfast then he has not written and no man has ever loved. Using specific examples and applying metaphoric attributes to love, Shakespeare proves that true love will not crumble to the will of society, or nature, or time. In contrast, Browning in My Last Duchess associates and characterizes love with Pride, Possession and greed. This monologue indicts the duke in bad light and asserts us with a different perspective of love. The Duke of Ferrara is a proud character that has his power consolidated within his wealth and

At first glance, it’s dark and callous, while showing the speaker apparently in contradictory minds about his lover. The recipient of this prickly sonnet was not the archetypal blond, pale and rosy-cheeked beauty that was so fashionable in court, but rather the opposite. Not to say, the former is not beauty, but by today’s prism opinions she’s likely on par amongst the vast multihued acceptance.

The year is 1846. Against her father’s wishes, Elizabeth Barrett has secretly married Robert Browning, running away with him to the sun-strewn olive groves of northern Italy. They lie next to each other in bed, doing what they do best. They are writing. Mrs. Barrett Browning, with her gentle cursive, composes an eloquent sonnet that sings of a harmonious love that transcends death. Mr. Browning feverishly pens a new masterpiece about malformed love, obsession, and murder. Like many other Victorian poets, both European and American, the Brownings fixate upon the connections between love and death; although it may seem as though the husband writes only about a lust for control. Yet, by all accounts, he was a loving and compassionate spouse.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s sonnet is not written in a typical English form but rather it is an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, having fourteen lines, the first eight being the octave and the final six the sestet, written in iambic pentameter. The octave contains the main idea of the poem and starts with a rhetoric question about what kind of love the speaker feels for “thee”. It is a method of the speaker to convey their feelings by counting the ways of loving another person, even though their love is beyond any limits, spiritual and reaches “the ends of Being and ideal Grace” (I. 4) at the same time. Although the feelings are strong and pure, the speaker remains humble as it is not expected to gain any personal benefit because love is not supposed to be taken for granted (I. 8). In the sestet comes the turn, where the speaker looks back to the past and almost compares the unfortunate experiences and how they have affected their perspective of love concerning the person of interest (II. 11-13). The counting of reasons never stops as the speaker emphasizes that even after death there will be an even greater reason to prove their love with the permission of God.

Everyone needs love and attention from the people around them as well as somebody to love. Nevertheless, sometimes you can do everything that is in your power, yet love does not work out like you wanted it to. Maybe your affection is not reciprocated or it might not fit into other people’s conception of love. “Sonnet CXXX” and “Sonnet CXLIX”, both written by William Shakespeare and from his collection “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” which was published in 1609, deals with above-mentioned themes as well as love in general.

The poem is a sonnet with three quatrains and a couplet divided into two stanzas that closely resembles the Petrarchan sonnet form. The speaker emphasizes the traditional aspect of the love through the conventional form of the sonnet. From the division between the stanzas in a Petrarchan sonnet, the speaker introduces a shift from the speaker’s observation on traditional love because the second stanza in a Petrarchan sonnet presents a counterargument. With the shift, the speaker suggests a separation between the traditional and modern love; therefore, the Petrarchan sonnet emphasizes the differences between the past and the present. When the speaker replies that hopefully no one will uncover the chords, words such as “unmuffle,” “mysterious,” “unresolved,” “becloud,” and “clearly” develops obscured vs. clear imagery. The contrast presents a conflict of revealing the truth about the modern theme of love, which suggests that the truth is too hard to accept. Because there is more obscured imagery, the speaker suggests that the truth is hidden in secret and that there is a small possibility of the truth coming to light. The contrast suggests that only a few, represented by the clear imagery, acknowledge the truth, and the majority, represented by the obscured imagery, are clouded by the their dreams. The speaker wishes that people’s dreams will hide the

Throughout the entire sonnet the speaker says things like, “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head” (4), and “And in some perfumes is there more delight” (7); although these things may appear as rude he still explains how he loves her. In line 13 he states, “And yet by heaven I think my love as rare” (13). This reinstates that even though his mistress may not be as beautiful as other worldly things, he loves her regardless. His love is true because he embraces and accepts her

The sonnet talks of the human propensity to turn to excellent things to make life simpler, and leave times of distress and sadness. We discover comfort and serenity in lovely things of nature like shady limbs and streams and rills.

In Sonnet 116, love is seen as the North Star, the fixed point of guidance to ships lost upon the endless sea of the world. It is the point of reference and repose in this stormy, troubled world, "an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;..."