The power of immortalizing literature is in the hands of the reader.

Yosfan

The power of immortalizing literature is in the hands of the reader.

One of the things that is on people minds is immortality. What will happen to them when they die but more importantly how and will they be remembered. Nature portrays immortality with the cycle of life. Everything has a beginning middle and an end and then starts all over again like the sun that will rise tomorrow or the tie that keeps occurring. Literature, according to some poets, possesses the same characteristic as nature. These poets claim that as long as people write poems and people reads them the subject matter of the poem regains immortality. The difference between nature which is a power on its own and literature is that while nature doesn't rely on anything external to sustain/unsustain immortality, literature relays on an external factor, the readers/ auditors, to give the subject matter as well as the poet immortality. In this paper I will demonstrate how poets reinforce my claim through their poems.

Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser as well as sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare "eternal lines" (l.9) employs the theme of immortality. The poet tries to achieve immortality for his lover. In the sonnets, both personas state that their lover will be immortal" So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (l.14). Both sonnets convey a message that even though the poet writes the sonnet the subject matter immortality is in the hands of external force; the readers/ auditors "so long as men can breath or eyes can see"(l.13). Both personas in the sonnets argue that the poet's creative ability comes amounts to writing the sonnet but unable to make the sonnet immortal. By reading the sonnet and therefore