Analysis Of Mary Powell 's ' The Wife Of John Milton '

While the woman may outwardly profess her desire for her sexual partner, the dispassionate diction and detached tone within the sonnet suggest otherwise. For, in acknowledging her lover’s close proximity, she states that she is “urged”

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.

In 1573, George Gascoigne published “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” a poem in which his careful and methodical approach to the sonnet form is evident. Two years later, he published “Certayne Notes of Instruction on Making of Verse,” which only further served to cement his reputation as meticulous and deliberate with his choice of language and form—every choice Gascoigne makes is made with a purpose in mind. This is especially evident in “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” wherein Gascoigne utilizes both the intentionally-chosen sonnet form and vivid imagery to develop his criticism of the classic sonnet in which the beloved’s refusal of the author only serves to make him more determined to pursue her.

In the poem “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” by George Gascoigne, the speaker is tormented by the feelings that he still has for his lover. Gascoigne reveals the speaker’s sorrow and complexity of emotions through the structure of an English sonnet, visual imagery and dejected diction.

Gascoigne uses three quatrains and a couplet to create the English sonnet “For That He Looked Not upon Her.” The first quatrain introduces the reader to the speaker and his issues with his beloved, while also describing the speaker’s appearances after being heartbroken. In the second quatrain, the speaker builds onto his accounting of suffering and sorrow with an analogy of a “mouse” (Gascoigne

George Gascoigne’s English sonnet “For That He Looked Not upon Her” envelops a complex tone that leaves his reader wondering: “Why won’t he look at her?”. Throughout the work, Gascoigne addresses this imperative question by using various literary devices.

Throughout the sonnet, For That He Looked Not upon Her, George Gascoigne uses different literary devices to demonstrate the speaker’s caution of women as a past victim of a misleading love. This poem deals with the spirit of desire and that desire resulting in suffering. These literary devices help underline certain plots and the speaker’s response to them.

“Satan as archangel, before his fall, is never shown by Milton, but this stage of existence is often alluded to, as is the fact that some of his archangelic powers remain”(Carey pg.162). Satan is a character within Milton’s “Paradise Lost” who exemplifies a being on a journey to achieve goodness for himself by getting back at the being who put him into eternal damnation. Satan is forced by his own mind to rebel against God for what he has done to him by ‘making him fall from the eternal kingdom’. Satan is allowing himself to take up a journey through hell, heaven, and earth for the sole reason of trying to gain the seat of heaven because of his yearning for revenge against God, “Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile stirred up with envy and revenge.”(I.34-35). Satan tempts other beings by using a powerful technique known as pathos through his rhetoric seen in the passage, “Look on me, me who have touched and tasted, yet both live.”(IX.687-678) which shows Satan’s style of tempting Eve to eat of the forbidden tree through pathos. He offers himself up as the supernatural being who will take up an adventure which he is hoping will lead him to gain heaven for his own wants and cast God off his heavenly throne. Satan uses the demons in hell to help him achieve his goal of casting out those in power of heaven, which is shown in the quote “We may with more successful hope resolve to wage by force or guile eternal war irreconcilable, to our grand foe”(I.120-122) giving the

Disobedience plays a key role in the unfolding of Milton’s poem. Satan disobeys God because God gave him free will, and causes Eve to disobey Adam, to disobey God.

The Shakespearean sonnet depicts a speaker, who can barely close his eyes and sleep. The reader understands the scene is at night, in the bed after a long day. The tone of the poem is sorrowful. Shakespeare wants to share the reader with sleeplessness, separation, and agony that the speaker faces day and night, because of his remoteness from a special person: “For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee.” The idea of love is delivered throughout the lines using contrasts: “Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night.” Here “shadow” means an image, the speaker compares seeing the image of his special person in the darkness to a jewel seen at night. The image

Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2010 AP Literature and Composition)

This sonnet serves to invoke a strong sense of realism in love, arguing that as strong an intensity of emotion as may be held, may be held, without the need for delusions of grandeur, taking the view that trying to reconcile two essentially different and diverse things as equal is to do true justice to neither. The beloved in this case thus represents more the need for a character developed to challenge stereotype than an actual real-life woman,

Milton’s poetry/sonnets are different from any other. He involves Politics and Religion. In his sonnets he will start them off one way, and then with the last two lines throw a twist on it. This is one reason Milton is famous.

The concept of revenge has prevailed as an integral component of literature, exemplified in Paradise Lost written by John Milton among other works. In Paradise Lost, Satan acts as the main proponent of revenge. The actions of his character create the basis for a Miltonic ideal of revenge, later modified by Emily Brontë and Mary Shelley. Wuthering Heights written by Brontë presents Heathcliff as a modernization of Satan. The characters share the experience of evolving from their lives as outcasts within their societies by means of revenge. The monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein romanticizes the Miltonic concept of revenge found in Paradise Lost. Although the creation and experiences of Satan and the monster differ, their premises for revenge become similar as the monster realizes his contempt toward his position within society and desires to retaliate. While the revenge exemplified in Paradise Lost shares similarities with both Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, the origins of the desire for revenge, as well as its function within each book, differ due to changing life and literary styles following the writing of Paradise Lost. While the roots of the revenge of Satan lay in a desire for power, Heathcliff and the creature use revenge as a means to chase love and companionship.

As Book VIII of John Milton’s Paradise Lost begins, the “new-waked” human Adam ponders the nature of the universe and the motion of the stars (ll. 4-38). When Adam has finished his speech, Milton takes the opportunity to describe Eve, who is listening nearby. We find Eve reclining in the Garden, but with grace, not laziness: “she sat retired in sight,/With lowliness majestic from her seat” (41-42). This “lowliness majestic” is the central phrase to understanding Eve’s character—she is both humble and glorious. Everything that beholds her is captivated by her “grace that won who saw to wish her stay” (43). Even in this paradise, every other beautiful creation is drawn to Eve. She walks