Compare and Contrast the poem ‘Sonnet CXXX’ by William Shakespeare and an extract describing Iranian love poetry from the book Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour published in 2009.

The poem and text are connected the the techniques used by the poets to describe women in love poetry. Shakespeare’s sonnet, written for his mistress the Dark Lady is part of his sequence parodies of Petrarchan blazon objectification of the female form, similarly the extract from Censoring an Iranian Love Story explores the technique used by Iranian Sufi poets in the past, the humour here is also tongue in cheek as the narrator makes reference to body parts that were ignored in comparisons as their use would be considered inappropriate. The form and structure of of both texts vary, Text A is a Shakespearean sonnet with a abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme with a volta before a couplet, whilst using iambic pentameter in a first person setting. Text A additionally uses caesurae to present stereotypical images of idealised beauty. Text B on the other hand is a single paragraph of continuous prose and detailed descriptions which similarly are used to portray the ideals associated with Iranian beauty, Text B however uses a third person narration.

Text A written for Shakespeare’s mistress uses comparative nouns to describe desired qualities of an Elizabethan woman, and the qualities which have been bestowed own his mistress. He does this by pairing nouns such as “red”,“coral” as well as “Breasts”, “dun” and “black”, “wires”. By using these noun pairs Shakespeare has declared that his mistress is not stereotypical in her beauty. Text B alternatively uses a lexical set of fertility this is shown through “fruits and flowers”, “narcissus flowers”, “orchid”, “cypress tree” and “pomegranates”. The noun “orchid” also points towards the sexual nature of the poem as orchid can