...Symbolism “Shakespeare My Mistress Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” On a closer reading of "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun,” the lyricist tone appears agitated by the worlds unjust comparisons of human likenesses to Gods’, objects and abstracts. Yet, he assures readers of his love on behalf of his mistress. The poet reveals an inner peace toward love by use of concrete and abstract symbols. Focusing on Symbols leads to Shakespeares’ poem “My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun,” as he downplays love, in contrast to Elizabeth Barret Browning symbolism as she uplifts love, while Robert Burns try reassuring love. Shakespeare symbolizes his love using a form of figurative speech, paradox, in depicting his frustrations of disproven...
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...Sonnet: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun The poem “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” by William Shakespeare talks about how the speaker sees his mistress’ appearance. He describes this mistress using the traditionally used characteristics that make a woman beautiful. Instead of pointing out the best traits that makes his mistress physically beautiful, the speaker portrays his mistress in a more realistic way, with characteristics that are believable. The poet uses a specific style, a descriptive comparison method, to communicate his message. This sonnet rhymes ababcdcdefefgg, which shows that it is a typical English sonnet as described by Vale (2010, p.84). With this form, the speaker was able to describe his mistress in a seemingly negative way. He describes her as not as beautiful as the objects that a woman’s beauty is traditionally compared to, but as the opposite. With this form, simple diction and poetic syntax, the poet creates a serious mood in the poem which perfectly communicates his message. The poet uses a descriptive comparison style to communicate his message. He picked descriptions that usually are used to compare certain features of a woman’s beauty, and then contradicts them with this mistress’ features. He chooses specific features that, perhaps, he believes they best show a woman’s beauty. These are: the eyes, lips, breasts, hair, cheeks, breath and voice. This has begun right at the beginning, in the title of the poem, “My Mistress’ Eyes...
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...from physical attraction to a truer love. Finally, his allusions to religion become much more specific and more directed to the person he is writing about. Clearly Shakespeare’s poetry matures with time and is reflected by his definition of love and how differently it is expressed in Sonnet XVIII compared to Sonnet CXXX. In Sonnet XVIII, Shakespeare focuses on nature imagery to describe his young love. “…Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines…” He begins by comparing the love to a summer’s day, but says she is more beautiful. He refers to summer being too short and the sun, at times, shining too brightly and making the day too hot, but other times the sun may be blocked by clouds completely. All of his references here are to cosmic entities as well as weather, referencing the warmth of the sun and the overall warm calmness that a perfect summer’s day traditionally exudes. All this imagery is quite straight-forward and almost juvenile, as comparing beauty to something that is naturally beautiful is easy, but the real challenge artists need to overcome to truly become successful, and mature...
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...Assignment 1 1. The rhyme scheme of the poem is abab cdcd efef gg 2. The tone of the poem refers to the emotional resonance, the feeling of the speaker. ”My Mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” 3. I agree that “in this poem the speaker seems to be mocking or making fun of the Mistress’s looks”. The speaker mentioned the idealised version of female beauty namely the idea of “rose” in a woman cheek “But no such roses see in her cheeks”. 4. It refers from the classical Petrarchan sonnet in that is not idealised or romanticise a woman’s beauty. I would like to mention the first line where the speaker says “My Mistress eyes are nothing like the sun”. He mentions the idealised version of female beauty. 5. A simile is a comparison that uses the word “like” or “as” in the poem we read “My Mistress eyes are nothing like a sun”, this line compares the mistress’s eyes to the sun. A metaphor is a comparison that does not use the word “like” or “as” but simple states that one thing is the same as another thing. In the sonnet we read “black wires grow on her head” this is a metaphor comparing the Mistress’s hair to wire. Personification is a form of metaphor; it involves turning a non-human object into a human aspect e.g. “I have seen roses damasked, red and white (line 5) roses turn into a human attribute. 6. Our society promotes ideals of woman’s beauty that are as unrealistic as those that are mentioned in the poem, the ideal women in old days is not perhaps...
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...B02 Homework: July 10, 2012 SONNET 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun (1609) Questions 1. How many images are there in this poem? What are they? Describe and give examples. * 5 images: Visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, and kinesthetic. Consider, for example, the dominant sense of visual: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. The last line points towards the feel of the mistress' hair, stressing the sense of tactile as we can imagine the rather unpleasant feeling of the speaker as he goes to touch his mistress' hair. There is a definite appeal to olfactory in the fragrance that the mistress exudes, as the "breath that from my mistress reeks" An auditory image is captured in the sound of her speech, "music hath a far more pleasing sound." And a kinesthetic image is captured in the movement of her walk, “when she walk, treads on the ground” Thus we can see that this poem successfully appeals to a number of the senses to create excellent imagery. 2. In this poem, the poet compares his “mistress” to a conventional beautiful woman. Describe how a conventional beautiful woman looks like and how the poet’s mistress looks like. * The speaker is honest about his love, and describes her as an average person. He says her eyes are "not like the sun" - meaning they are not overly bright. He...
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...the sun, red corals, white snow, damasked roses, perfumes and music. When imagining these things it makes me feel very positive about something that he is describing, and I cannot help it, but to imagine a very beautiful mistress. As the speaker keeps describing all of the beautiful objects, he goes on and uses all these things to compare his mistress to what she is not, she is the total opposite and far from all of these thing. 2. In my opinion the speaker is a man who does not care very much for any type of attachment to her physical features and has a lust type of love for this woman. The way I come to this conclusions is, for the reason that the speaker compares his mistress to all the beautiful things she is not. As well for the reason that he states in line (11) “I grant I never saw a goddess go” meaning that if she was one like a goddess, he would be much hurt to see her leave. Another example is in line (10) he states, “That music hath a far more pleasing sound” compared to her voice. It almost seams that he enjoys her company but would much rather not hear her speak, and would much rather listen to the sound of music instead of her voice. I can be misinterpreting the message that the speaker is trying to create, but as I keep reading the sonnet over, I can not help but to feel that the speaker only is proud to have a mistress even if he is not completely in-love with all her attributes 3. I believe that in the sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun” and...
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...Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is a surprising simile: 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'. We might normally expect poets, especially those of Shakespeare's time, to praise the women they love by telling us that their eyes do shine like the sun. But a writer of Shakespeare's calibre is not going to follow the herd and make exaggerated comparisons; here he is describing reality. Over the next few lines Shakespeare continues to describe his mistress in terms of the senses of sight, smell, sound and touch, but there is no flattery here. Colours are focused on first: 'Coral is far more red than her lips' red' tells us that lips are not naturally a bright red colour. Pale skin would have been sought after, but Shakespeare's mistress had dun-coloured breasts, dun being quite a dark colour. It seems that she did not have soft, sleek hair, as in line four it is compared to wire. Shakespeare relates that he has seen beautiful two-toned or 'damasked' roses, but that there is no rosiness in his mistress' cheeks. The poet is quite forthright in telling us that his mistress has bad breath; in fact it 'reeks', and there is no hint of perfume. Line nine gives the first compliment: 'I love to hear her speak', but Shakespeare admits in the following line that he would actually prefer music to her voice. In line eleven Shakespeare implies that the way his mistress moves could not be compared to a goddess, and he goes on to say 'My mistress when she walks treads upon the ground', creating the...
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...Evangelista 1 Micah Evangelista 10/1/13 My Mistress’ Eyes In the sonnet, My Mistress’ Eyes, the speaker partakes a blunt, mocking tone, to describe his mistress. He uses truths in order to convey that his feeling of true love is real. The speaker recognizes the average beauty of his mistress, and uses love metaphors against themselves. For instance, the speaker is blunt when addressing the eyes of his mistress, claiming they are nothing like the sun. (Line 1) He goes on in a straight-forward manner, saying her lips are not red, breasts are a grayish shade, hair is wires, cheeks are pale, smells horrible, breath reeks, sounds annoying, stops on the ground, etc. (Lines 2-12) The speaker seems to have a mocking tone towards other poets who use unrealistic things to describe their true love. He is trying to prove that a woman doesn’t need to look like a goddess, in order to be loved and be beautiful. The speaker provides evidence that shows a person does not have to define the one he loves in unearthly measures to prove his “extravagant love”; going back to lines 2-12 with the truthful portrayal of his mistress. He did not describe her in regular love poetry words, but rather in insulting and factual words. Basically, the speaker is calling things out as he sees it. Just like the speaker’s blunt and honest description for his mistress, his love is pure. Evangelista 2 Evangelista 2 The speaker reveals that he loves his mistress as herself in the last couplet. He understands...
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...voice). All of the counter-arguments ends with, ‘such is our love now’ except the final one which concludes ‘such is our love’ as if their love is no more! There are two ways that you could digest this poem, the reader could follow all instances of the male voice first and then the female voice or you could read it as a conversation. Sonnet 130 is in the usual style of a sonnet, one long verse where every other line rhymes, except the final two lines which forms a rhyming couplet. The opening section appears to be insulting his mistress, but the concluding couplet changes the entire meaning. In each line, Shakespeare introduces a new trait of his mistress; this creates the effect of an expanding and developing argument, which is then contradicted by the last couplet. There is one similarity however as they both contain significant endings, Our Love Now’s dramatic ‘such is our love’ and Sonnet 130’s concluding couplet “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare. As any she belied with false compare.” Both poets use specific language to establish the mood of the poem. Sonnet 130 uses archaic language such as ‘dun, damasked and belied’, Shakespeare used...
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...Brittney Montgomery ENC1102 March 29, 2015 The Highest Standard of Beauty The poem “Dim Lady” by Harryette Mullen skillfully mimics the sonnet “my mistresses’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” Mullen’s expert use of poetic structure and subject matter highlights the similarities and the differences to the original writing by Shakespeare. Despite Mullen and Shakespeare’s pieces being written more than three decades apart, Mullen identifies the same slanted view of beauty that is present in Shakespeare’s original work, although Mullen presents his view in a contemporary fashion. The poem “Dim Lady” provides current readers with a lively satire that is concerned with flawed standards of beauty in a modern day format. Although “Dim Lady” and “my mistresses’ eyes are nothing like the sun” share many similarities in the areas of subject matter, style, and rhyme scheme, the two pieces also present many differences. Shakespeare’s sonnet “my mistresses’ eyes are nothing like the sun” exhibits a very traditional style and poetic structure. The poem includes a rhyme schemes that is used as the conclusion for the piece. Shakespeare uses a traditional form of sonnet in his work because this was the honored style during his period. Shakespeare’s sonnet includes many outdated and invalid stereotypes as well as some vocabulary that is not utilized in present day. For instance, in Shakespeare’s sonnets uses the noun “dun” which is defined as a dusty color, but the word is not common and...
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...Lovers are always portrayed on a pedestal, possessing ethereal, goddess-like qualities. However, in “Sonnet 130,” by William Shakespeare, metaphoric contrast is used to depict his mistress as a rare natural beauty. Shakespeare ridicules the traditional expression of love, while successfully expressing his own. The rhyme scheme of this sonnet follows an abab cdcd efef gg pattern. As a “Shakespearean” sonnet, it is organized into three quatrains of four lined stanzas and a closing couplet of two rhyming lines. The meter follows the rise and fall of natural speech with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable known as an iamb. In this sonnet there are ten syllables, or five feet, per line following the iambic pattern, thus a pentameter. In this way the poem is able to flow smoothly and naturally when read aloud. At first it seems like any other love poem: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. The first line is deceiving for the reader, as one expects to hear about her supernatural beauty. However, the succeeding lines confirm that although his mistress is ordinary when compared to the sun, coral, and snow — she is not as beautiful as these things. In fact, she is quite the opposite, with dark eyes, pale lips, brown breasts, and black hair. There is no room for subtlety...
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...“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” that the beauty of his lover is eternal and shall last forever and as long as there are people breathing and living on this planet, they will admire the impeccable beauty of his lover. Whereas, on the other hand, in sonnet 130, the depiction of invective and insults of his mistress form in the reader’s mind. It goes to the extent where he is comparing both his lover and his mistress and states, “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun” that it doesn’t have light, life, ray of sunshine in them, they are dull. Although, in sonnet 18 he compared the beauty of his lover to the sun itself. The whole sonnet 130 degrades and affronts the mistress, by writing that her hairs are like “black wires”, her chest is dark brown, and her body odor is fetor. He illustrates that he know she is full of flaws but despite all these things he still admires and loves her. Both the sonnets use imagery and metaphors to describe and characterized the beauty of his lover and of his mistress. In sonnet 18 its used to describe how his lover is so breathtakingly beautiful just like the season of summer and Sonnet 130 he used it to portray how his mistress is everything but beautiful but he still loves her and how beauty if not everything....
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...__________________________________________________________________________ SONNET 130 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. ANALYSIS The renaissance poet worries about finding new ways for expressing the beauty, but also to renew the themes of his works. In this period the poet wants to create a new world of beauty throughout a simple world. An important style of Renaissance Poetry was epic style, and sonnets (Shakespeare). Characteristics include: Rhyme, intensity in feelings, repetition, meter, iambic pentameter. The Renaissance poems came in many languages, commonly Latin, Italian and Greek. Some are translated and being used today as a historical and religious sources. The topics of the poems varied from religion to heroes. Most of the Christian poems talk about how they survived the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Poems about heroes-heroines were very...
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...by American poet, Robert Frost. In the poem, the bird is personified as possessing the human characteristic of knowledge. Frost uses personification in order to send the message that bird has “knowledge and understanding of the different seasons and what occurs in each season” ("The Oven Bird - Robert Frost,” n.d.). Unlike “Sonnet 130” the theme of this poem is not love, but about life being too short. This Shakespearean sonnet is consisted of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. In “Sonnet 130” the first twelve lines are used to compare the woman in an unflattering way to nature’s beauties ("Poetic Form: Sonnet," n.d.). The ending, however provides readers with a twist: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare”...
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...Theme Love Like many of Shakespeare's sonnets, this poem is an expression of love. In order to express your love, you have to talk about it, define it, examine it. In telling his mistress that he loves her, our speaker also has to give us an idea about what his love is like. This poem is partly about where love comes from, what motivates our feelings of affection for someone else. Specifically, it's about finding love in spite of (or maybe even because of) physical flaws. Appearances "Appearances" is a major theme in Sonnet 130, since our speaker spends a lot of the poem talking about what's wrong with his mistress's looks. He does a pretty complete dissection of her face, her body, and her smell. He doesn't say anything at all about her personality, but instead sticks to his laundry list of problems with her appearance. This gives Shakespeare a chance to poke fun at our obsession with looks and to show how ridiculous it is to ask any person to live up to some ideal of perfect beauty. Women and Femininity In Sonnet 130, the theme "Women and Femininity" is connected to the idea of appearances. This poem is all about female beauty and our expectations and stereotypes about the way women ought to look. You know how in magazines women pretty much tend to look the same? They all fit into a very narrow definition of what is beautiful. Essentially, the speaker in this poem is pointing out that love poetry does the same thing. It makes women into goddesses, not real human beings...
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