Compare And Contrast Congreve And Maugham's Treatment Of Love

Compare the views of relationships in ‘The Unequal Fetters’ with those in ‘To his Coy Mistress’. What is suggested about the different ways in which men and women view love?

Love is unique in its striking ability to be a driving force in dictating interpersonal relationships. It patterns behavior and orients individuals towards their distinct, unique attractions. According to Velleman, love penetrates deeper than one’s qualities; it extends to one’s rational will, or the essence of a person. To him, though love appears to have particularity, it is also a moral emotion. Kolodny subscribes to the relationship theory, asserting that an ongoing, interpersonal, and historical relationship with a relative is a part of the reason for love. In Kolodny’s view, the existence of the true self is irrelevant, as is the morality of love. Both Velleman and Kolodny disprove the quality theory; however, their perceptions of love and its morality differ. I believe that Kolodny is correct in his view that morality is irrelevant to love and that there must be factual reasons for love. Although it is enticing to believe that one is attracted to the essence of another, the essence is not motivation enough for love. The relationship theory takes into account the motivation needed to love a particular person from a historical, interpersonal, and ongoing perspective.

Ever since the beginning of time, love has played an enormous role among humans. Everyone feels a need to love and to be loved. Some attempt to fill this yearning with activities and possessions that will not satisfy – with activities in which they should not participate and possessions they should not own. In Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker encounters an emotion some would call love but fits better under the designation of lust for a woman. In contrast, the speaker of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” urges virgins to marry, to make a lasting commitment in which love plays a

William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All” both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems

Most of the major characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night experience some form of love or marriage. Whether it’s unrequited like with Antonio and Malvolio, or it is something seemingly unattainable like with Duke Orsino. Regardless, it is clear that love is prevalent as one of the central themes Shakespeare seems to emphasize in Twelfth Night. With that, we see him communicate different interpretations and feelings regarding the subject. He does this with the medium of melodramatic characters. In this essay, I will elaborate on the opinions of love that Shakespeare communicates through one of the leading characters:

In the play `Romeo and Juliet` the writer William Shakespeare uses the theme of love as a main feature to push the story along. Presented are a plethora of variations of love including family love, true love and courtly love. This essay aims to analyse these three types of love chosen.

Moreover, the poems share the same theme, love, but they are thought of differently. In “Pamphillia to Amphilanthus” or Poem A, love is shown as a joke and not serious. Whereas in “I… and Your Eyes” or Poem B, love is shown as admirable and motivational. In Poem A, the theme of love is not positive. However, in Poem B, love is amazing and

Indian activist, Mahatma Gandhi, once said, “Love is one of the most powerful forces of the world.” “Cyrano de Bergerac” is a French play that’s about a man who falls for a girl who doesn’t love him back. “Sonnet 18”, also known as “Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”, is one of Shakespeare's famous poems and it compares a woman to a summer day. Both brilliant allegories have many similarities in their massages despite being written almost three hundred years apart. Regardless of basic plot and word length, both stories posses surprisingly identical messages. Edmond Rostand's, “Cyrano de Bergerac”, and Shakespeare's, “Sonnet 18” both exhibit their themes of love, but while Rostand does it more through metaphors, Shakespeare does it more through personification.

1862 England (Victorian Era) was somewhat of an uptight society, especially compared to today. The majority of people, especially those in the upper class, were expected to be utmostly prim and proper and follow societal norms at all times. This included love, or what love was defined as during the period. George Meredith, in his poem aptly titled “Modern Love”, sets a scene where a husband and wife are sleeping side by side, both reflecting sorrowfully on their melancholy marriage. Meredith argues in this poem that the institution of modern love is inherently flawed, by exposing to the reader that while the husband and wife still care for each other, they want to leave each other because they are both scared of “modern love”. By doing so, Meredith is able to justify his overarching message that applies to all: love is a feeling that cannot be artificially replicated, and attempting to do so is only a detriment.

During both Tales we also incorporate two statements from the Art of Courtly Love. The Art of Courtly Love, it states “Love is always increasing or decreasing” and “Real jealousy increases the act of love.” This is also used in our modern age of relationships. Through marriages and anniversaries, there is loving increasing. While when two lovers begin to separate it is when love begins to decrease. In a negative view, we can see when a lover previously in a relationship became jealous, they can become jealous-hearted. These statements on love we experience regularly today, is also present in both

Many people love romantic comedies. Some of these stories are based around misunderstandings, which add humor to the plot. This, of course is similar to Rostand’s play Cyrano De Bergerac, but Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, is centered around a relationship full of deceit. It has a pleasant facade, but when the viewer digs deeper into it, they find out the dark reality of the relationship of the main couple. Communication is vital to any relationship. A group of friends need to communicate openly in order to remain friends. The same thing applies to spouses. For the purpose of this essay, Cyrano and Roxane from Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, and Nora and Torvald from Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” will be compared. The relationships of Nora and Torvald, and Roxane and Cyrano are different in many ways but they have one thing in common, a lack of communication. Thus, by this

Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Moliere, is one of the most studied and renowned literary authors in history. Moliere was proficient in the art of satire and many of his plays used this element as the forefront of the plots to get across to the audience what it was Moliere wanted to get across. Moliere’s time period allows him to exploit the hypocrisy of his time through the use of his most powerful tool, his characters. During the time of Moliere, France was becoming the major power in Europe.

Both poems, Sonnet 43 and Ghazal convey emotions and passionate feelings of love in different ways. Sonnets and Ghazals are poem that are meant to express strong feelings of love. Khalvati and Barrett Browning chose them to illustrate their loving feelings to their lovers. Barrett Browning does not correctly carry out all the rules of Sonnets in her poem which gives an effect that she would do anything for her lover and that there are no rules to their love, whereas Khalvati does not break any of rules in Ghazal, this might, perhaps mean that her love is unrequited and that she would follow all the rules to get the attention of the person she loves.

love” makes evident Chaucer’s skewed views of love and marriage with underlying tones of misogyny. He expresses these views throughout the work, however, the theme of love and sex is most evident in the sub-stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale.

The genre of comedy, throughout the history of dramatic art has always served to not only entertain audiences, but to make them aware of their own individual flaws, or flaws that exist in society. (Weitz, E.) Comedy has no precise definition, and its boundaries are broad. One function of comedy however has remained the same - to hold up a mirror to the society of the time but through pleasure, inviting audiences to reflect and also providing amusement. Set in the late nineteenth century, the play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895) epitomises comedy, as both a literary and dramatic genre. Wilde was masterful in his ability to combine aspects of evolved comedic traditions and dramatic conventions to critique Victorian society. Drawing on characteristics of Greek and Roman tragicomedy, the choices in the play’s plot involves elements of tragedy as well as scenes that serve as comic relief and give the audience a sense of finality through a happy resolution. (Bureman, L) Focussing on the upper class stratum, Wilde employs a comedy of manners Molière style, of the Restoration Period in the seventeenth century in the play by combining forms of comedy with aspects of realist drama. The portrayal of archetypal figures such as Lady Chiltern and Lord Goring satirize rigid moral value of the time and expose their hypocrisies, through dialogue involving irony, wit and humour. Elements of farce and disguises characterized by ‘commedia dell’arte’, a form of comedy first developed in