Comparing Robinson's Sappho, The Muse And The Romantic Poet

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”

Sappho wrote poems about lust, longing, suffering, and their connections to love. Her poetry is vivid, to the point where the reader or listener can feel the sentiments rising from the core of his or her own being. The poetry truly depicts a realistic picture of the bonds of love. Through the subtle differences of the poems, "A Prayer To Aphrodite," and "Seizure," Sappho conveys the intensity of the longing and suffering of love.

Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.

Carson’s editorial choice in this instance makes the reader pity Sappho for she is seen of as less valued than a man to her previous lover. The depiction of Sappho’s unrequited love is indicative of Sappho’s erotic behavior that has been continually depicted in the text. Sappho’s unrequited desire for other women is further expressed:

Sappho composed her own music and refined the prevailing lyric meter to a point that it is now known as sapphic meter. She innovated lyric poetry both in technique and style, becoming part of a new wave of Greek lyrists who moved from writing poetry from the point of view of gods and muses to the personal vantage point of the individual. She was one of the first poets to write from the first person, describing love and loss as it affected her personally.’ In this text, her style was sensual and melodic; primarily erotic words of love, yearning, and reflection.

Women have endured many things throughout the centuries, either it being suffering, inequality, or hardships from society or cultural expectations. Most women, however, challenged societal expectations and rose against the patriarch by proving they are self-sufficient, especially from the women writers in the text. A common theme that is found throughout almost all of the poetry and texts is how each these writers are self-reliant and the best way some of these woman are able to show this is by writing texts based off their experience by expressing what they think, which in turn empowers themselves and others who read their texts. Regardless of where these women writers come from, the era they live in, and the culture/religion they come from,

Thesis- People are not as they may seem. We see this with the speakers in “To His Coy Mistress,” and, “My Last Duchess,” with different motivations, but similar intentions they both see women as objects but in different ways. They illustrate contrasting viewpoint with their description of the women in their lives - the speaker in the “Coy Mistress” appears to desire and maybe even glorify his mistress, but the Duke appears contemptuous of his Duchess, and talks about her in a vilify way. The word choices and poetic rhetorical devices of the speakers reveal their attitudes toward women.

The world has many if not endless methods and techniques for demonstrating those specially dear a form of affection. However, the display of the complex understanding of Shakespeare, which to the opinion I lack to the fullest, in the 130th Sonnet, Sonnet 130, demonstrates the speaker’s affection through the development of a complicated attitude through his use of certain writing attributes. Anyhow, sonnet 130 expresses the speakers affection by portraying the real person that he loves and stating that he does not need no fancy gibberish to express his love. This sonnet begins with a generalization of an ugly women or so it seems to divert from the ordinary or tradition vision of beauty creating a direct tone in the speaker.

Homans' women's activist readings of nineteenth-century ladies authors have had a huge impact in forming the sex reciprocal models of ladies' written work that developed over the most recent two decades. Thus, and in light of the fact that Mary Lamb's frenzy fits psychoanalytical methodologies, I need to take a gander at Lamb's written work through this basic focal point keeping in mind the end goal to investigate the impediments of this philosophy, and the advantages of drawing in ladies brutality all the more direct. I contend that ladies are fundamentally subjects both of dialect and of viciousness, and that one reason the Lacanian emblematic request is constantly gendered manly in such significant women's activist modifications of analysis as Homans is accurately keeping in mind the end goal to separate ladies from what Derrida named the bowman savagery going before the brutality of composing. Similarly as we can't defend the exteriority of keeping in touch with discourse, as Derrida contended in The Violence of the Letter, so we can't protect the exteriority of viciousness to ladies. Concentrating on Lamb's first story from Mrs. Leicester's School, "Elizabeth Villiers: The

Throughout literary history there has been an abundance of female characters who seem to embody a single stereotype. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott is an extremely influential literary ballad with a protagonist who exemplifies the idea of a ‘pure woman’. By analysing Tennyson’s work, we can come to recognise how Tennyson constructs this feminine image and how this portrayal has influenced and appeared in other literary works. This concept of a pure women represents a very one dimensional portrayal of women, in comparison works such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel contain female characters who express sexuality and are therefore portrayed as evil seductresses. By comparing and analysing these two extremities of female character we can recognise how prevalent this portrayal of the female body as a passive muse is

The syntax of these particular lines adds to the anticipation of the audience. The naval and military imagery creates an expectation of a subject that reflects these first lines, not beauty and love. In fact, the first few lines make the reader expect the opposite of what the poem is going to suggest. This surprise becomes important for a piece that is orally performed because it generates attention, which creates an appeal to the ear and perception of linear succession (Pfeiffjer 3). Sappho, cutting against the harsh beauty of the military, reveals that it is what one most loves that is the most beautiful. This exclamation of love makes the reader expect an immediate explanation of who or what Sappho places this love in, but it is not revealed until later in the poem. Surprise combines with suspense and from the moment Sappho begins, the audience expects her object of love to be revealed (Pfeiffjer 3). There is, however, a difference between the two translations. In Mary Barnard’s translation, the course of the priamel is broken into two different stanzas, putting more emphasis on the establishment of the militaristic expectation the reader suspects. Yet, in Anne Carson’s translation of the poem the lines about the military are in groups, followed by the line “what you love” set alone, drawing attention to the different tone being established (Carson 4). Where Carson succeeds in emphasizing Sappho’s point, Barnard fails. Yet, where

Gender References in Literature Many pieces of literature, through-out the ages of time, are written in theme that bring to surface relationships between different religious or political thought processes or ideas. In doing so the authors, also bring out gender differences and struggles for power and equality. Several of our readings this semester reveals this in the struggles between various races and social status in their relationships and ideals.

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,

‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay are both sonnets that discuss companionship and a glimpse of each poet’s experiences. In ‘Sonnet 116’, Shakespeare illustrates how capability is weakened by its metaphysical stereotype and ideals such as, love, while on the contrary, in ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” Millay feeds on the chaos between the ideal of love and its harsh reality, heartbreak. Both poets seem to be love struck but there is a significant difference in the two. I will compare and contrast ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I will also inquire and analyze why this particular form of poetry established different effects.

The title of the poem “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” suggests that the speaker is not in love with his ‘mistress’. However, this is not the case. Shakespeare uses figurative language by using criticizing hyperboles to mock the traditional love sonnet. Thus, showing not only that the ideal woman is not always a ‘goddess’, but mocking the way others write about love. Shakespeare proves that love can be written about and accomplished without the artificial and exuberant. The speaker’s tone is ironic, sarcastic, and comical turning the traditional conceit around using satire. The traditional iambic pentameter rhyming scheme of the sonnet makes the diction fall into place as relaxed, truthful, and with elegance in the easy flowing verse. In turn, making this sonnet one of parody and real love.