英国文学史论文

About Sonnet 18

K081141141 刘艳

KEY WORDS: Beauty Transiency Summer

ABSTRACT: Sonnet 18 is one of the poems of Shakespeare’s sonnet, the age of Shakespeare is in the Elizabeth time of England, which is a world of love poems, As a result, writing sonnet has become the modern works. Then Shakespeare’s sonnet is become the outstanding works in this age. His sonnet is totally different from others which is known as affectation, empty and weak, as we can say meaningless, this poem is 18th of his sonnets, which is dedicated to young nobleman, This long poem encompasses a brilliant satire on contemporary English society through the experiences of a young noble, with great literature value.

TEXT: Not only because of the ingenious structure, rich vocabulary of it, but also because it is a reflection of humanism in Elizabeth age made it has a high literary status, and is enjoyed the reputation of unique. I will appreciate and analyze sonnet 18 from 3 aspects.

Firs, as the background of it and the life of Shakespeare.William Shakespeare was born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record of his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the church, thus his birthday is assumed to be the 23 of April. His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and was later granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds. All that is known of Shakespeare's youth is that he presumably attended the Stratford Grammar School, and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge. He was said to be a teacher, Shakespeare entertained the king and the people for another ten years until June 19, 1613, when a canon fired from the roof of the theatre for a gala performance of Henry VIII set fire to the thatch roof and burned the theatre to the ground. The audience ignored the smoke from the roof at first, being to absorbed in the play, until the flames caught the walls and the fabric of the curtains. Amazingly there were no casualties, Sonnets make up of majority of Shakespeare’s poetry work. Shakespeare did not originate the sonnet form. The basic structure of the sonnet arose in medieval Italy, its most prominent exponent being the Early Renaissance poet Petrarch. The appearance of English sonnets, however, occurred when Shakespeare was an adolescent (around 1580). Both Edmund Spenser and Philip Sydney, among others, worked in this form a decade or so before Shakespeare took it up in the early 1590s, possibly seeking to exploit the ongoing popularity of the sonnet among literary patrons of the day. What we call Shakespearian sonnets today have different forms with the Italian sonnets in that the Shakespearean sonnets end with a rhymed couplet and follows the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. In 1609, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Never before Imprinted” was published, which collected 154 sonnets commonly thought to be written between 1593 and 1599. Concerning the content, these sonnets can roughly be categorized into three groups: sonnet 1—17 addressed a young man’s love of a lady; sonnet 18—126 describe the young man’s relationship with another young male poet; sonnet 127—154 portrait a mysterious dark-haired lady. Given this and the intimacy of the themes broached by Shakespeare in the sonnets, it is natural that scholars would entertain a search for autobiographical sources, and that this search would focus on three identity issues: (1) who is the young man to whom Sonnets 1-126 are addressed? (2) who is the

Dark Lady of Sonnets 127-154? (3) who are the rival poets who intrude in the love triangles of Sonnets 78 through 86? Although piles of works are published in search of the answers to these questions (which may lead to ill suspicion of his personal

life), Shakespeare never ceases to impress the reader with the beauty of his poetry. Second, As its writing skills and aesthetic value.the poem is began with rhetorical question which is addressed the beauty of poem. ’’Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’’ this sentence is comparing her to the summer of this year, in this time, the world is full with green and life, it is the high time that the flower are blooming and leaves are in high green, we can see it as an enjoyable time during the year. But in the next two sentence, we can know the answer of above question, he think the women is more lovely and temperate, because in May, the winds shake the darling buds or leaves fall merciless, then we know can’t comparing woman to summer, what’s more, we can fell that writer is have a pity for the short of summer tome which he want to be longer. In next four sentence, writer continue to express the pity of time’s easygoing, he tell us do not reluctant to the shine of heaven, when it comes, it is bound to dismissed soon after, and becomes gold complexion dimmed, Except the shines, the writer also have a sigh to fair, like he said：“And every fair from fair sometime declined, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed”, in next 3 sentence, the writer highly appreciate the long life beauty of her lover in many aspects, such as “thy possession”or “thy eternal summer”and the pity of death to her, we can fell the limitless beauty and charming or allegiant of her. At final part, the writer expose the truth of long life beauty of her, ”When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”. The reason why the lover’s beauty is so perfect is that her beauty is kept alive in this poem, which will last forever, and never to be end or faded.

Third, As the figures of speech of it and rhyme of it, there so many rhetoric in the sonnet 18, such as metaphor, personification , comparison, alliteration, symmetry and so on. The sentence 1 use metaphor, “thee” to “summer”, sentence 3 use personification to address the great strength of wind, the word ”shake”can understand as a personification, sentence 6 and 7 use comparison between summer and lover to express the short of summer and long life of lover’s beauty, then, alliteration can be found everywhere in this poem, such as “changing course”, “summer shall”and so on, the whole poem use the symmetry to strength the structure of poem. As the rhyme, the whole poem use pentameter iambic,.

At last, we can talk about the theme of it, as a outstanding work I the fields of poem, it has a special theme about humanism and nature and love. we may easy wrongly take it as just as the praise of beauty of the lover, or he doesn’t her beauty faded as the same to shines or fair in the summer, if we read it carefully, we can find it has a theme of the value and transiency of time, it tells us that time has no return, besides, the writer also express a higher theme, that is the useful of literature or poem, To him, the beauty of lover should be eternal, beauty should be admired, and in Shakespeare’s view, the best and only way to do this is to keep it in poem, in a other words, Shakespeare want to express that the art can keep the beauty forever, art not only can make people enjoy the beauty when reading it, but also be a beauty itself. The beauty of normal person may faded with the time passed by, but if you keep it in poem, it will changed, art can bring forever. Like Shakespeare said: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Eternal summer will last as long as the people are reading or seeing .