Pre - 1914 Poetry Coursework

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HW                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       29/3/09

                                        Pre -1914 Poetry Coursework 

Love poems can be traced back many years, love is typically thought of as lust, commitment and sacrifice all rolled into one and here is a quote from Abraham Crowley on love "A mighty pain to love it is, and 'tis a pain that pain to miss; but of all the pains, the greatest pain is to love, but love in vain." Love poems tend to be thought of as very conventional. Traditionally, i would expect a love poem to have comparisons, comparing their loved one to angels or goddesses and to build a image in the readers mind that their love was pure and faultless, they would also include in the poem comparisons between their loved one and goddesses or angels and would describe their facial features to something so pure and faultless. However, i have found that some unconventional love poems describe their loved ones to something ugly or dark, some may compare their loved ones to fleas and insects but yet they say that their love is pure and unbreakable.

In From Fidessa written by Bartholomew Griffin which was a petrarchan sonnet written in 1596, Bartholomew Griffin talks about his lady obsessively as he uses the metaphor ‘My lady's hair is threads of beaten gold’ which gives the reader the image that she has the looks of a goddess which fits in with the conventional images of love. It also fits in with how women were thought of in this time period as they were mainly depicted as goddesses or angels by many men, I think this is obsessive love because its like he keeps ranting on about how beautiful she is and how she is faultless in appearance he even goes as far as to say ‘Her feet, fair thetis praiseth evermore.’ This shows the kind of extent he goes to, describing her feet which shows just how obsessive his love is for this women, he says her feet, should be praised ever more this showed how deep and pure his love is, as he has even fallen head over heels with her feet which is a unsignificant part of the body to find appeasing. This is a conventional sonnet because he makes the comparisons between his lady and pure objects such as ‘beaten gold’ which is expected in a conventional sonnet.

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In sonnet 18 famously written by William Shakespeare and published in 1592, this sonnet was the 18th in 154 and arguably one of the better known of his sonnets as it is shrouded by mystery by the fact that he is writing a love sonnet to a man while normally love sonnets are traditionally made for women and homosexual relationships were frowned upon in those times as they were thought as ‘not natural’, Shakespeare says this man is more ever-lasting and beautiful then natures beauty, as he says ‘Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art more ...

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