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Romantic or platonic, lifelong or fleeting, love surrounds and shapes our meaningful relationships every day, teaching us lessons, presenting us with new experiences, and changing our lives forever. Good morning, I am Maddison Clark and today, as my role as literary expert, I will be analyzing how the theme of love, within two poems from different time periods, differ and compare. Love is an important and common theme addressed within poetry, as audiences, no matter age or era, are able to relate, in one way or another, to this complex emotion. As we know, love can present itself in many forms, but today, as time is short, I will only be showcasing the theme of love within Shakespeare’s 17th-century poem, Sonnet 130, and Lord Byron’s 19th-century poem, She Walks in Beauty, analyzing both in order to showcase how these poems, separated by 200 years, compare in the portrayal of love.
Written in the early Jacobean era by a famous playwright, poet, and dramatist, this piece stems from a time in which attitudes, values, and beliefs toward love and marriage were shifting. Although money, class, and political factors were still highly considered in courtship, more emphasis, following the modernization of the Renaissance, was beginning to be placed on mutual attraction. This, alongside literature being at its peak, ultimately allowed for a time of experimentation in regard to the theme of love and its conveyance within poems, hence Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Unlike Shakespeare’s other works, in which he closely follows traditional perceptions of love, Sonnet 130 strays from this through Shakespeare’s light mockery and satirical take on the poetic ideal of the time that a lover’s beauty is unparalleled and above that of nature, subverting this through his realistic, “matter of fact” tone.
Sonnet 130, divided into three 4-line quatrains and a 2-line couple, is comprised of a pleasing iambic pentameter, quite popular within poetry, and a progressive ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Sonnet 130, per its name, utilizes the poetic structure of a sonnet, known greatly as the workhorse of love poetry, and its short length in iambic pentameter to express a single feeling, in this case, the poet’s love of a woman, to the readers.
Opening with a negative description of his mistress’ eyes through the simile, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” Shakespeare immediately subverts and reverses traditional portrayal of a woman’s beauty within 17th-century love poems, and instead, paints an image of a woman who possesses beauty below that of nature. Shakespeare can be seen to continue this unflattering comparison of his mistress to nature by drawing on aspects of sight, sound, and smell within the quatrains within metaphors and similes. “If snow is white, why then her breasts are dun” and “If hairs are wires, black wires grow on her head” are examples of metaphors used that further establish and elucidate Shakespeare’s view on his mistress’ beauty.
These lines, like most within Sonnet 130, are filled with vivid imagery, describing the beauty of the poet’s mistress and the facets of nature to which she is compared. This use of imagery, alongside the similes and metaphors within the poem, work together to unfold the mistress’ lacking appearance, starting with the mention of her eyes, which “are nothing like the sun”, and finishing with the way she “treads on the ground” when she walks. The poet, in the first quatrain, can be seen to dedicate one line for each comparison made between nature and the mistress, sun, coral, snow, and wires, and in the second and third quatrains, to expand on this description to occupy two lines for each comparison, roses/cheeks, perfume/breath, music/voice and goddess/mistress. This visual development of the poet’s arguments is set out this way to prevent the poem from becoming stagnant, keeping readers intrigued as Shakespeare leads up to his final 2-lines.
Assonance, anaphora, and alliteration are also intertwined stylistically throughout the poem, strategically working to further intrigue and grab the reader’s attention through repeated words, phrases, and vowel sounds. Assonance can be seen utilized in line 9, “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know”. This use of assonance draws attention to the poet’s first, and only, mention of his mistress’ positive qualities, as well as creates a soft, smooth-flowing sentence matching that of his mistress’ voice. Anaphora and alliteration are also utilized, both within lines 1 and 12, beginning with, “My mistress”, in order to establish and draw attention to the topic, his mistress, as well as link everything within the three quatrains together effortlessly. All three quatrains, working together through the constant use of metaphors and similes, help the reader establish the author’s intended view of his mistress’ beauty, a beauty that is not greater than that of the sun, coral, snow, or roses. Shakespeare, throughout the poem, criticizes his mistress, progressively painting an unflattering, untraditional image of her in readers’ minds, then, in the last two lines, presents a more thoughtful and sincere view, stating that, despite all negative praises made, his mistress is rare and beautiful in her own way. “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare.” His mistress is not perfect, nor exaggerated or idolized. His mistress is human. By ending the poem in such a way, Shakespeare presents readers with an insight into what his love with the ‘dark lady’ was really like, leaving readers with an alternative view of what it is to love, where love comes from, and finding love despite, or even because of, physical flaws.
She Walks in Beauty, published in 1814 by Lord Byron, much like that of Shakespeare, compares the beauty of a woman to nature, yet, unlike Sonnet 130, Byron follows the more traditional, courtly portrayal of love and a woman’s beauty. Within the poem, She Walks in Beauty, believed to have been written following Byron’s first sight of his young cousin at a ball he attended, the traditional perception of 19th-century love is perpetuated, with Byron presenting a serious and adoring piece which holds an idyllic tone as most pieces from the time do. Written in the early 19th century, the attitudes, values, and beliefs towards love at the time were very traditional, with couples usually wedding as a means of business between families, leading to She Walks in Beauty to conform, much like most of society at the time, to a more traditional, courtly take on love. Although dating 200 years after Shakespearean time, She Walks in Beauty closely follows the traditional Shakespearean sonnet structure with a progressive ABABAB CDCDCD EFEFEF rhyme scheme and 18-lines which are divided into three 6-line stanzas, following a regular, iambic tetrameter rhythm.
Lord Byron much like that Shakespeare, opens his poem with a simile, “She walks in beauty like the night/of cloudless climes and starry skies”, immediately emphasizing the clarity and brightness of her beauty. This can be seen to differ greatly show Shakespeare, in Sonnet 130, portrays how his mistress walks, “My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground”. Byron’s comparison of how his lover walks to that of the night can also be seen to possess alliteration and assonance “cloudless climes/start skies”, immediately creating an indelible effect of the woman’s beauty and rhythm that matches how she is described to walk. This comparison can be seen to be opposite to that within Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, in which he compares the woman to a summers day, yet unlike that of Shakespeare, Byron, through this simile, presents the woman’s beauty as not only above nature but, through comparing it to the night sky, as vast and superior; he presents her beauty as otherworldly. Both poets can be seen to continually draw on sight, sound, and smell to depict their desired portrayal of a woman’s beauty, with Shakespeare focusing more on aspects of nature, such as snow and coral, and Byron more on the contrast, through imagery, of dark and light, to describe the same parts of different women.
This can be seen when Byron describes the dark of the woman’s hair and how it lightens her face how the contrast of these aspects attribute to the beauty that shows itself within every strand of the woman’s dark hair, “waves in every raven tress”, and admires the balance of “dark and bright” that meet in harmony within her appearance, but notably in her eyes. This differs greatly from the description Shakespeare gives to his mistress’ hair and eyes in Sonnet 130, painting the woman as having straggly, “black wires” growing on her head and eyes that “are nothing like the sun”.
Within the second stanza, many examples of alliteration and assonance exist, drawing the readers’ attention to the continued contrast of dark and light, day and night, to deepen the description of the woman’s beauty. Such as through the lines, “One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace”, in which the poet depicts the woman as possessing such beauty and perfection that altering even one thing about her would greatly impair or damage this beauty. Alliteration and assonance are further used within the last two lines of the second stanza, in which the author can be seen mentioning the woman’s emotions and how pure and precious she is within. “Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling place.” Through this line filled with imagery, Byron personifies the woman’s thoughts and emotions, which express themselves angelically upon her face, revealing that her beauty is not only limited to her physical attributes but is deep within her. This use of the second stanza relates much to that of Shakespeare, using it to progress his view on his lover while ensuring the poem does not become stagnant.
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