Essays on Sonnet

Sonnet 18 was written by William Shakespeare, that articulates and accentuates the sentiment of passion and love. The poem expresses the poet’s endearment and perpetual devotion of his subject and how the subject surpasses all tangible beauty. He explicitly expresses this notion through the manipulation...

Sonnets are known by their structure. A sonnet is a 14 lined poem that most of the time has a rhyme scheme. William Shakespeare wrote over 100 sonnets, but they are not known for their sonnet-like structure, they are known for their moving themes or...

The theme of Sonnet 141 conveyed by William Shakespeare, using specific language and tone, is that love might not always go both ways. In this particular sonnet, a man and a woman are in a committed relationship, but the man thinks himself foolish for loving...

William Shakespeare is known for his beloved plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet, but he actually wrote more poems than plays. “Sonnet 18” is one of the most quoted poems in history and most remembered. William Shakespeare uses rhyme, personification, metaphor, and...

Many, both professional and amateur, critics analyze William Shakespeare’s sonnets with a fine tooth comb. From the manipulation of iambic pentameter and rhyme scheme, to the combination of mismatched words, Shakespeare’s sonnets are interpreted in various different ways. “Sonnet 30”, is a popular one among...

John Keats sonnet written in April of 1819, titled ‘On Fame’, on first reading appears to be a love poem. Upon closer reading, it becomes clear that Keats is using women as a simile for the nature of fame, by contrasting the two against each...

William Wordsworth’s sonnet, “The world is Too Much With Us” was first published in, Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807, a collection characterised by its Romantic exaltation of nature. While the sonnet has often been read primarily as a critique of nineteenth-century society’s discord with...

The profound perception in “Sonnet LXXXI” by Edmund Spenser discusses a woman’s physical appearance in a conventional manner as it is characterized by the society. However, the context of the text highlights the unique qualities of the woman, praising both the natural aspects of her...

William Shakespeare is likely the most well-known literary figure in Western history, and thus an analysis of his works can deeply connect us to our cultural history. The beauty about studying Shakespeare is that any one of his works, such as “Sonnet 116” which we...

John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet XIV” is filled with Biblical imagery and language suggestive of Psalmic platitude. Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend Your force,...

Sonnet 147 is written by W. Shakespeare. It has a distinctive style that uses pattern of metrical structure and verse composition. It includes metaphor often extended through entire poem. Tone of the poem changes. The speaker goes from a sad and distressed sound to an...

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889 and then came to the United States in 1912. Upon his arrival in the United States, he enrolled at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He studied English-style poetry that was written by Milton and Pope. McKay soon ascertained...

Innumerable poems address the concept of love, with the written battle between positive love and negative love continuing to be waged today. Not surprisingly, there are not, nor would we expect many future poets to write, many poems that juxtapose both the positive and negative...

“The Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie brings up ideas and controversy over social media because it decreases face-to-face communication. Though Facebook allows people to contact old and new friends, it renders away from the traditional social interaction. Online, people are easily connected by one simple...

Handsome, charming and highly intellectual, Rupert Brooke was one of the first soldier- poets of First World War. His poems are cemented to the ideals and fears of generation at the time of cultural transitions. His literary pieces are extremely influenced of social, cultural and...

Fertility may be the foundation of a society. As the natural production of offspring, the idea of fertility drives a nation. It, quite literally, creates the next generation, and in doing so offers the reality of innovations and the continuation of a culture. Shakespeare’s Sonnet...

Numerous men in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed a sonnet that praises women they loved, most of whom embellished their physical qualities. On the other hand, Shakespeare did exactly the opposite, in his 130th sonnet, he states that his mistress deficiencies most of...

Spenser’s “Amoretti” is a sonnet cycle dedicated to his wife, Elizabeth Boyle. Among this group of sonnets, a seemingly odd one is discovered: Sonnet 68. This one, instead of being a love poem written exclusively for his beloved, it is a diversion from the typical...

We can read in William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost that “Beauty is bought by the judgement of the eye”. It is not a thing that people could grasp or comprehend fully, as well as, it is a subjective experience. Something will be beautiful as long...

Many men in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries composed sequences of sonnets about women whom they loved. William Shakespeare’s incomplete sonnet sequence is among the genre’s most acclaimed. Most authors embellished their women’s physical characteristics, but Shakespeare’s 130th sonnet states that his mistress...

Both ‘How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 116’ explore the ideas of love and romance in the traditional form of a sonnet. Whereas Browning writes about the intense love she felt towards her husband-to-be in Sonnet 43,...

Shakespeare’s iconic sonnet 29 is a sonnet that embodies the superficial nature of humanity, both intrinsically and extrinsically. The sonnet begins with the speaker denouncing his current state, which is quite unfavorable, as he “beweep[s] [his] outcast state” (line 2). However, the speaker continues to...

The careful craft and design of poetry condenses the amount of text needed to convey information. This is true of all art, in that pieces are often qualitatively judged by how much they “say.” Good works may carry one or two levels of meaning hidden...

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 35 we delve deeply into Shakespeare’s thoughts, emotions and frustrations with his lover, the young man (the Fair Youth), which was brought about by an apparent betrayal through infidelity. Within this sonnet and those preceding it, we see the progression of a...

The swelling energy and particularization of imagery of season, time, and light both complement and counter the speaker’s fading body in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. Moving from metaphors of abstract bleakness to those of specific vitality and passion within and across each quatrain, Shakespeare’s sonnet draws...