An introduction to Elizabethan sonnet sequences, including discussions of the courtly love tradition, Neo-Platonism, Petrarchan sonnets, and an analysis of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Spenser's Amoretti.
See Full PDF See Full PDFUNDERSTANDING THE ESSENCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 1 st , 18 th , 116 th , AND 127 th SONNETS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
One of the most prominent poem sequences of all times, sonnets of William Shakespeare show us that poetry can be a great way to express feelings from diverse aspects and points of focus that range from frustration to lust. We can find a physical aspect of love and spiritual side of it while reading the sonnets. Shakespeare used more than one character in his sonnets to make the sequence more comprehensive and piquant. Through four characters, the sonnets capture the attention of readers. In this paper, the 1 st , 18 th , 116 th and 127 th sonnets of Shakespeare will be analyzed and interpreted from the aspect of meaning, theme, and structure in order to comprehend the essence of the sequence better. These four sonnets are selected and analyzed on purpose; they are the four pillars of the sonnets through which the flow of the whole sequence is changed. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence. As a whole, sonnets tell us a love journey between four characters: a speaker, a blonde young man, a dark lady, and a rival speaker. Even though love is the main foci in the sequence, other sentiments that foster love will be elaborated in this paper.
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English Literary Renaissance
Critics of Shakespeare's Sonnets typically accept the premise that Sonnets 1–126 are addressed to a young man, and Sonnets 127–52 to a woman. Two main schools of analysis, by no means mutually exclusive, have dominated the discussion of these groups: either the Young Man and Dark Lady sonnets are read as belonging to sustained, and usually interlaced, narrative sequences, or the sonnets are seen as a series of n number of contiguous mini-sequences connected by themes and images; we might call these the strong and weak sequence theories. Despite the widespread acceptance of these two approaches, serious weaknesses and inconsistencies underlie the arguments offered in support of both theories. A review and rebuttal of these dubious arguments may help to reestablish the burden of logical proof where it belongs, at the door of those critics who want to make sweeping interpretive claims about the sequence of the sonnets.
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In this paper, I suggest that a balanced approach to Shakespeare's Sonnets is the key to unlocking meaning and beauty.
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Translation and Literature
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Hacettepe University Journal of Faculty of Letters
The Arden Shakespeare published a poetry collection titled On Shakespeare's Sonnets in 2016 in which several contemporary poets have responded to one Shakespearean sonnet of their choice. Most of the themes in the sonnets such as the transience of earthly life, the endurance of love, and the procreation of beauty are retained in their modern versions. However, recent approaches to these themes do not follow the sonnet tradition due to the poets' adherence to modern topics, as seen in the poems of Douglas Dunn, Jackie Kay, and Andrew Motion, and an emphasis on realism instead of the romanticised exaggerations in the sonnet genre, as observed in the poems by Alan Jenkins, Carol Ann Duffy, and Elaine Feinstein. In some of these poems, love for the beloved, for instance, is treated alternatively as a temporary feeling that cannot endure the passing of time. The platonic ideal of love for the beloved is reconstituted with a mother's compassion for her son. The idea of the procreation of beauty is replaced with an adoration of the regenerative power of nature. In some others, the influence of the contemporary context is evident with indications of urban images such as traffic, technology, and shopping malls. Through such examples, this paper aims to discuss some of the rewritten versions of Shakespeare's sonnets to explore the idea that recontextualisation and subversion of the source text are central to the practice of Shakespearean adaptation despite the initial tenet of the production of this particular collection, which is to celebrate Shakespeare's literary heritage.
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Journal of Arts and Humanities
