...The sonnet tradition A sonnet is a form of poem written in an iambic pentameter, meaning it has 14 lines with three quatrains (4 lines rhyming ABAB) and a couplet (2 lines rhyming AA). The sonnets originated from an Italian poet called Fransesco Petrarca, who wrote love poems, later known as sonnets, to a woman he called Laura in the 1300s. After the woman’s death the poems were published, and, with their huge popularity, writing a sonnet became a way of declaring your love to unattainable women. The sonnets were always themed around about unrequited love and despair. The concept of the sonnets spread quickly around Italy and France but waited to be taken up by the Englishmen until the 1500s. Sir Thomas Wyatt started translating some of Petracra’s sonnets into English, thereby making them readable for the people of Britain. Wyatt wrote his own sonnets as well and he added a new theme as a contrast to the formerly known one, a theme in which the writer wants to break free of the love that enslaves him. The English poet Henry Howard took up writing sonnets as well, and he added male friendship as another theme to write a sonnet about. He also came up with the iambic pentameter, which later became the official structure of a sonnet. Even though these two poets made sonnets and published them together, the sonnet tradition didn’t gain much popularity amongst the people until the 1590s. Writing sonnets suddenly became a trend and loads of authors jumped on the wagon. Sir Philip...
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...16 century William Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 130(1564-1616) sonnet 130 is one of Shakespeare’s most famous conventional and traditional love sonnets. He wrote a series of love poems to a woman named Laura. The scholars imagined the poem as "The Dark Lady." This poem is a love poem, the first 12 lines are described about her hair, the colour of her skin being negative, then on the last 2 lines he admire he loves her no matter how she looks. When we talk about “love” poem, the first thing come up from your mind is something like cajolery you'd find in a Valentine's Day card. Old love poems bring to mind flowery language and the kind of unrealistic glop that you could never bring yourself to say with a straight face. However sonnet 130 uses honesty to present the woman he loves, unlike other sonnet uses excessive or insincere praise to present love. Shakespeare presents love by metaphor He starts the poem out with a simile comparing his mistress' eyes to the sun. He then quickly switches over to using the metaphors to compare the rest of his mistress' characteristics, such as her breasts to snow and hair to wires. The rhyme scheme for the poem is “ababcdcdefefgg” The stress pattern in weak, strong, weak, and strong and Shakespeare. Also uses long vowel sounds. In line 4 the poet says "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. As read in the 21th century it has the implication of electrical wires growing out of the mistress head. During Shakespeare time, wires referred...
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...In life people may encounter many situations where they feel depressed, sad, or disgraced or just plain unsure about something. William Shakespeare writes a poem that shows he determination and certainty about how beauty isn’t just on the outside. In his sonnet 130, Shakespeare writes about how the speaker feels uncertain, yet certain at the same time. Shakespeare uses a critical tone and comparative language to portray the idea that his love for his mistress is rare even though her physical looks aren’t the best in the world. In sonnet 130, Shakespeare uses a tone of criticism to show that her physical beauty may not be the best but he still loves her. For example, in the second quatrain it says, “ And in some perfumes is there more delight, / Than in her breath that from my mistress reeks.” (lines 7-8). The speaker finds himself insecure because he says things like that to describe her true beauty and to prove that he still loves her. In the third quatrain the speaker says, “ I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, / That music hath a far more pleasing sound:” (lines 9-10). Shakespeare is saying that compared to her speaking music has a better sound but he still likes to hear her talk. Shakespeare writes this to point out that real beauty is on the inside not the outside....
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...idea of the importance of the structure in evaluating the meaning and impact of the poems. In the poem Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare and Mending Wall by Robert Frost the structure and form of the poems show the significant role on evaluating and highlighting the meaning of time. The two poems are formed completely different in the way the techniques and structure were used but they convey the similar hidden meaning. As one of the characteristic of the usual Shakespearean Sonnets, Sonnet 18 formed as fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with a varied rhyme scheme. It contains 3 quatrains which state the problem leading to the couplet which expresses the theme of the sonnet and presents the solution. Unlike other Shakespearean sonnets, this sonnet is quite easier and understandable than other sonnets because the way he structured the sonnet is simple. At the first glance, the poem simply gives us the idea that how Shakespeare describes his lover by comparing ‘thee’ as summer’s day. Basically, the first quatrain shows the features of summer that followed by the first line of the poem “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” After this line, the poet stated the features of summer until line 7. 7th line explains how the summer’s day beauty will fade away by the changing of time and the 8th line stated that thee’s eternal summer day will not fade away. Shakespeare structured form in a simple way.?? To wrap it up in a nutshell, it’s like there’s an object and we compare or...
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...Poetry analysis Shall I Comepare Thee (Sonnet 18) By William Shakespeare Before William Shakespeare died, he managed to write 154 sonnets Out of all 154 sonnets the most famous and well-known is Sonnet 18, which this paper is going to be about. Because the sonnets written by William Shakespeare, was so beloved, all of Shakespeare’s sonnet-heritage is being called Shakespearean sonnets. There are different indicators that, helps to define a sonnet. First of all ‘Shall I Comepare Thee’ consists of fourteen lines, where the eight first lines called the octave presents which aspects the poem will regard. The last six lines called the sestet gives a personal view of what the poem really is about. ‘Shall I Comepare Thee’ is divided by three quatrains followed by a couplet and has the traditional characteristic rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg. The metrical aspect of sonnet 18 is that the poem got written in iambic form with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The sonnet has five feet in each line and therefore it is under pentameter. For example if the 2 first lines in Sonnet 18 should be divided into the rhythm of five in stressed and unstressed syllables it would look like this: The stressed syllables, is the ‘green’ ones and unstressed syllables is the ‘red’ ones. Shall I - compare - thee to - a sum - mer’s day? Thou art - more love - ly and - more tem - perate. Shakespeare starts the poem with the question ‘shall...
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...In "Sonnet 18" by Shakespeare the speaker poses a question to himself as to how to best immortalize his beloved subject. At first he compares his love to a summer's day, which the speaker sees as most beautiful. However, he finds the metaphor imperfect so he decides through internal debate and poetic expression that the best way to immortalize his love is through his own poetry. This method eternalizes both his love for her and her beauty in written words. By exploring the contrast between the subject's beauty and a summer's day, the author proves that love can withstand the course of time. The line "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" (1) opens the speaker's debate with a comparison between his love and the season of summer; the author questions whether the beloved subject should be compared to a summer's day. In the consequent lines, the narrators begins to compare his subject to a "summer's day" and answer the question posed in line one, and right away makes the point that the subject is superior to summer, with the line "thou art more lovely and more temperate" (2). The faults of summer continue to be proven with phrases such as "rough winds" which describe summer's temporary nature. Unlike summer, "rough winds" do not shake the subject's beauty .The examples made regarding summer in the first quatrain show that summer's beauty does not last forever, it is merely a time of year that passes within a short period of time . Each subsequent comparison between his lover...
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...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...
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...International Training Course on Integrating a Value Chain Perspective in Small Scale Enterprise Development TRAINING SCHEDULE November 19-30, 2012 Rural development generally includes supporting local people’s livelihoods through income-generating activities and small-scale enterprises. Previous program experiences point to the importance of building local entrepreneurship capacity, establishing business organizations, and enabling access to key institutional support services. New challenges have emerged that influence success of these development efforts such as: 1) managing the impact of emerging markets on rural producers and consumers, 2) improving competitiveness and efficiency of small-scale enterprises, and 3) promoting equitable gender sensitive contributions and benefits among stakeholders including private sector. More recently, value chain approaches have been explored to bring more benefits to rural producers through better market links. Course Description The course focuses on integrating a value chain perspective in rural development, and how this conceptual and methodological framework can enhance program strategies for sustainable livelihoods, profitable small scale enterprises and socially responsive private sector. Learning content includes: basic principles and concepts of value chain development, practical methods and tools in integrating value chain perspective in rural development programming, and lessons learned from case studies on linking rural enterprises...
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...through its material products (the script and the performance) a relative autonomy in comparison with the central court arts of poetry, prose fiction, and the propagandistic masque. When Shakespeare briefly turned to Ovidian romance in the 1590’s and, belatedly, probably also in the 1590’s, to the fashion for sonnets, he moved closer to the cultural and literary dominance of the court’s taste—to the fashionable modes of Ovid, Petrarch, and Neoplatonism—and to the need for patronage. Although the power of the sonnets goes far beyond their sociocultural roots, Shakespeare nevertheless adopts the culturally inferior role of the petitioner for favor, and there is an undercurrent of social and economic powerlessness in the sonnets, especially when a rival poet seems likely to supplant the poet. In short, Shakespeare’s nondramatic poems grow out of and articulate the strains of the 1590’s, when, like many ambitious writers and intellectuals on the fringe of the court, Shakespeare clearly needed to find a language in which to speak—and that was, necessarily, given to him by the court. What he achieved within this shared framework, however, goes far beyond any other collection of poems in the age. Shakespeare’s occasional poems are unquestionably minor, interesting primarily because he wrote them; his sonnets, on the other hand, constitute perhaps the language’s greatest collection of lyrics. They are love lyrics, and...
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...WHAT LITERARY DEVICES ARE USED BY SHAKESPEARE TO PUT FORTH HIS IDEAS IN SONNET-130? IS HE COMPLETELY ANTI-PETRARCHAN? [16] 1st part The language spoken and written of great romances is often poetic, passionate, and filled with metaphors of beauty and devotion. In short, the language of love is the language of exaggeration. William Shakespeare ‘s most powerful description of love is when he satirizes this method of writing and in so doing instead claims that honesty and sincerity are the greatest literary devices when speaking the language of love. Shakespeare's sonnet number 130 demonstrates this. This sonnet hooks the reader from the very outset while maintaining sonnet structure and using literary devices as a source of irony. Shocking the reader by using an unconventional method of satire to introduce a topic is the most effective way to hook an audience. Shakespeare begins his sonnet with the line; "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun -" (line 1). The reader immediately becomes curious to the poet’s reasoning for speaking in this tone. The first quatrain of this poem introduces the topic of beauty.The second quatrain enhances the topic and adds sentiment. In the first quatrain he describes the looks of his mistress, while in the second quatrain he relates how these looks affect him. The third quatrain releases this sentiment, the narrator concludes that he is aware of the ordinary nature of his mistress. The sonnet also satirizes literary devices...
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...Karmvir Sidhu ENG 111 - 64 Sandra E. Terry Feb 7, 2011 Sonnet 130: Imperfectly Perfect The secular world is increasingly fixated on the concept of beauty and the pursuit of perfection, however this preoccupation is not unique to the 20th century. While traditional love poems in the 18th century generally focused on glorifying a woman's beauty, Sonnet 130 written by William Shakespeare goes against the conventional culture of love poems and instead describes the realistic nature of his object of affection. In Sonnet 130, the idea of love and is intensely expressed and taken to a greater level of intimacy where beauty lies within an individual and not just on the surface. The allegorical meaning is presented through images that allow the reader to understand the poem beyond its literal meaning. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, the notion of perfection is evaluated to a point where it is almost made irrelevant in relation to beauty and true love. In Sonnet 130, it seems as if William Shakespeare laughs at the idea of idealism and perfection. The expressions of discontent and dissatisfaction give the poem a satiric tone. This poem is written in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, commonly used by Shakespeare in many of his poems. It follows the ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG rhyme scheme. The first 12 lines are all rhyming pairs, followed by the rhyming couplet. In the first 4 lines of the poem the speaker expresses his lady’s lack of perfection and almost complains about how she does...
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...Interpretation of Sonnet 138 William Shakespeare is known for his ability to use words and put them in a way many meanings can be derived. Because of the beauty of his words and many interpretations of his work, he has stood the test of time. William Shakespeare simultaneously used structure, word choice, and tone to make each sonnet unique. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets are structured to have fourteen lines divided into three quatrains and one couplet. The quatrains are usually separate ideas with different tones and a couplet at the end of the sonnet tying the three quatrains together. However Sonnet 138 is slightly different than most of his sonnets because its first two quatrains are the same in tone. The first quatrain and second quatrains tell the reader of each lover’s deceit to the other. The third quatrain is where the tone begins to differ. Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter and rhyme in the sonnet so that it can be read in a more fluid and comprehensive way. The sonnet is written in ABAB format to give the poem a better sound when read aloud. Shakespeare’s work has been famous for many reasons and will continue to be great, but his word usage may be what he is most famous for. In Sonnet 138, he used word plays, paradoxes, and metaphors to give depth to the meaning of the poem. With so many different possibilities for interpretation of the same poem, individuals may use their imaginations and take what they want from it. Line 1 in the sonnet begins with an interesting...
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...Presentation of love in sonnet 116.. Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare is a poem about love, not between a speaker and his lover, but as a concept. The poem determines what is meant by love, and proposes that, if it is true, love is one of life's constants which does not change with time or circumstance. In the opening lines of the poem, love is firstly presented in the conventional Christian marriage customs of that era, as it stresses the idea that love "the marriage of true minds" should be without "impediments" or barriers and obstacles. This suggests how at the time, there were rules on love which were expected to be followed, it therefore wouldn't result from lust and passion. Alternatively, Shakespeare may be presenting the idea that for love to be real, it must be flawless, if there are faults then it is not love. Shakespeare presents the idea of love being:"unshaken" by storms. And that it: " alters not", it is a constant, an "ever-fixed mark", just as a "star" is found in the night sky. This suggests that Love isn't temporary, it is a powerful, enduring emotion felt throughout a lifetime. This also presents love to be reliable and consistent as the metaphor for love is a "star" it suggests that love can be observed across the globe throughout time. Love is not restricted by time or place, but exists above all considerations. Shakespeare use of extreme language when describing that love "bears it out even to the edge of doom" presents love to be a positive force...
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...English Study Guide E period Beowulf * The Wrath of Grendel Grendel, a murderous, powerful monster lurks outside Hrothgar’s a Danish King’s, extravagant party. God drove out the demons, but they split into many forms of evil spirits, fiends, goblins, monsters, and giants. Grendel is a demonic monster. At night, when the party ended, Grendel ate 30 guests and left blood everywhere. In the morning, the people of Herot and Hrothgar mourned the deaths of Grendel’s victims. However, Grendel came again and ate all of Hrothgar’s soldiers, leaving Herot bare. Hrothgar was incredibly saddened by this. However, God protected him and no help came from the pagan sacrifices. The only protection came from God. * The Coming of Beowulf In the land of the Geats, ruled by Higlac, Beowulf was the greatest and strongest of all the men. He decided to go to see Hrothgar, because he has heard of the horrors Grendel brought. The Geats egged on his adventure, so Beowulf took a crew of the mightiest men he could find and set forth on his journey. They arrived at the Danish shore and were questioned by the guard, who thought they might be raiders or pirates. Beowulf explained they were Geats; his father was Edgetho, a famous soldier and explained why they were there. The guard lets them pass. They enter Herot and are called to see the King. Beowulf is greeted by Hrothgar and explains why he is there. He says he will fight and kill Grendel without fear, and if he looses to...
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...Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Form: 14 lines, each with ten stressed and unstressed syllables known as iambic pentameter (rhythm of the heartbeat) Genre: Lyric poetry – Lyric poetry presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a story or presents a witty observation. Rhyme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG Rhymes may be ear-rhymes or eye-rhymes: an ear-rhyme is one that rhymes in sound, e.g. “increase” and “decrease”; an eye-rhyme is one that rhymes by sight, e.g. “compare” and “are”. Structure: This rhyme sequence sets the usual structure of the sonnet as three quatrains (sets of four lines) concluding with 1 couplet (a pair of lines). It is usual for there to be a pause for thought in the sonnet’s message at the end of each quatrain, especially the 2nd, in order to add tension, with the sonnet resolving to its objective in the final couplet, just as a song normally resolves to its root chord at its close. To convey the sense of resolution and completeness at the end of the sonnet there are often key-words, or tie-words, present in the closing couplet that are also present in the earlier quatrains. This structuring provides a framework on which to build the words, phrases, themes, rhymes, syncopation, punctuation and rhythm of the sonnet making it, at its best, a self-contained work of art. Having established this structure though, the author can then go on to breach the framework to add tension and meaning: a quatrain will not necessarily comprise...
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