Constructivism, Realism and Climate Change

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    Stuart Bryan ENGL2658 Assignment

    It is widely assumed that Elizabethan Sonneteers followed a pattern embodied in their

    Petrarchan forebears, and that thematic deviations are the result of misdirection.1

    There is an expectation that the speaker will exalt a platonic love for an impossibly

    beautiful, ethereal mistress, using a set of familiar established conventions.2To

    approach Elizabethan Sonnets through this framework, however, is to discount the

    complexities and nuances of the ways in which love and desire may be explored.

    Indeed, in Philip SidneysSonnet 2 (of the Astrophil and Stella sequence) the poet

    takes the hyperbolic Petrarchan clich of a hapless figure struck down by personified

    Love and imbues the experience with melancholic, even violent undertones. In

    ShakespearesSonnet 18, the powerful idolisation of the addressee is subverted by

    contextual homoeroticism. Therefore, while both poems superficially conform to

    Petrarchan treatments of love, closer analysis reveals a clash of motifs, a clash that

    shows that any generic categorisation is unable to contain or indeed constrain the

    diverse experiences of human love and desire.

    In the octaves of each sonnet, the thematic development of love resembles those

    found in Petrarchan poetray. In Sonnet 2 the octave presents the stereotype of a

    passive lover, at the mercy of personified love. Love is forceful and unexpected, the

    imagery in line 2s wound given by love which will bleed as long as he lives

    endowing love with aggressive attributes. This figure, Loveis immediately

    personified as a sentient external force, employing a cupid motif that reoccurs

    1Ransom, J.C : Shakespeare at Sonnets', The World's Body (New York), 1938, p. 2862Hunter, GK: Essays in Criticism, Vol 3 Edition 2, Oxford University press, 1953, p 152-164

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    throughout the sequence. The motif strengthens the idea of a domineering,

    mischievous form of love that has overcome the speaker physically and mentally. In

    the first quatrain Loveattacks him slowly, not with a dribbed shot(line 1), but in a

    veiled and underhand manner. It is worth noting here the unusual turn of phrase

    Sidney employs in but known worth did in mine of time proceed, Mine of time

    being a subterranean metaphor referring to infiltrating enemy castles3. The undertones

    of of this place Love as Astrophils opponent, a malevolency that heis overcome

    by. Evidently, the speaker has not fallen in love with Stella in the conventional sense,

    but rather submits to the pressure exerted upon him by the forceful Love. His

    reluctance to this effect is epitomised in the halting punctuation in line 7s I Forced

    Agreed, giving a rhythm that imitates a man being dragged into something against

    his will.1

    While Sonnet 2s octave presents a speaker overwhelmed by a forceful and insidious

    love, Sonnet 18s concerns the speakers directdeclaration of devotion. The poet

    begins with a powerful comparative metaphor in Shall Icompare thee to a summers

    day?Light, almost innocuous in tone, he selects an example from nature as a

    comparison abounding in connotations of pristine beauty and purity. Immediately, he

    begins to denigrate the very example he has just brought in order to exalt the

    ineffable, wordless, ethereal beauty of his love. Line 2 enables the sustention of the

    comparison, with each subsequent description of the deficiencies of a summers day

    heightening the speakers devotion and love to the addressee. Double meanings and

    wordplay abound throughout the octave, with temperatepraising her humorous

    3Jonathan Smith, Astrophiland Stella, Sonnet 2, 2012, Accessed 22 March 2013, available from;

    http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/

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    disposition while maintaining the weather analogy.4Although the manner in which

    the comparative metaphor is used to heighten the speakers devotion to his addressee,

    it in itself is not an unusual representation of love. It is in the sestet (the third quatrain

    and couplet in Sonnet 18), then, where the second conflicting motifs enter the sonnets,

    rendering their treatments of love far more complex than Petrarchan stereotypes.

    The sestet in Sonnet 2 builds upon the reluctant yielding to love established in the

    octave. His state is a paradoxical one, the speaker asserting that he calls it praise to

    suffer tyranny, needing to find happiness in his misery. It is himself, rather than

    Stella, that he needs to convince that all is well.Absent is the sudden ecstasy found

    in Marlowes Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight. Sidney subverts the

    Petrarchan undercurrent that, despite the current agony love has created, that the

    turbulent emotional state will be rectified. There is instead a sullen, slave-like

    resignation to love. In line 8svolta, Sidney characterizes love as like a jailer,

    imprisoning him and leaving him to come to terms with his plight. His mental state

    deteriorates, and by line 12 his conviction is all but gone, the poet suggesting a

    descent into madness as he needs to employ the last remnant of [my] wit as with a

    feeling skill he paints his hell. The conflicting double meaning of the metaphor

    contained in the last line epitomizes the poets ambiguous attitude towards love.

    Astrophil, as Hamilton notes, is divided against himself5, and eventually admits his

    need to delude himselfcreate a false front to conceal the hellish situation he finds

    himself in.His hell may be the Petrarchan meaning of hell, one that is ephemeral

    and will emerge into fervent platonic desire for Stella. But the tone of the rest of the

    4Robert H. Ray: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, The Explicator, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1994) p. 10

    5

    Hamilton, A.C: Sidney's Astrophel and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence, ELH, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar.,1969), p. 69

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    sonnet suggests a darker alternative, a psychological hell that Astrophil needs to

    make the best of.1

    While the sestet in sonnet 2 presents a love fraught with confusion, ambiguity and

    even misery, at the volta in Sonnet 18 the poem shifts to a pensive, reflective

    examination of the speakerslove and the depths it reaches. In line 7 and 8, the

    inevitability of decaying beauty is in sharp counterpoint to the opening couplet

    affirming the ineffable beauty of the speaker. Even the holistic pure beauty of his

    love, will sometime decline as all things in nature must. However, a marked shift

    occurs at the volta in line 9, the conjunction butused to override the implications of

    line 7 and 8. For the speakers love transcends temporal limits, sustaining the

    summer metaphor and claiming her beauty as eternal. This is most demonstrable in

    lines 10, 11 and 12 where repeated hyperboles concerning her immortal beauty

    suggest that even death [shall] brag thou wanderst in his shade, providing her with

    an ineffable mysticism made possible by the strength of his affection. In the last

    couplet the speaker moves away from the abstract and provides the audience

    quantification; his love and her beauty shall as long as men can breathe, measures

    which add weight to the words themselves.

    So, what aspect of love within the sestet deviates from the Petrarchan clich?The

    answer lies in the poetic context of the piece. There is wide critical acknowledgement

    that the first 126 of Shakespearessonnets are addressed to a man, or fair youth.6With

    this in mind; the speakers eternal devotion to a beauty that shall not fade is infused

    6

    Fort, J. A: The Order and Chronology of Shakespeare

    s Sonnets, Review of English Studies(1933)

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    with a poignancy that accompanies cultural taboo and social condemnation. The love

    is forbidden, yet regardless the speaker maintains that it will last forever. Moreover,

    the palpable fervency with which the love is expressed is only enriched and deepened

    in knowing that homoeroticism was illegal. Arguably, then, reading Sonnet 18 in

    context reveals that the treatment of love subverts both social and Petrarchan

    conventions concerning the nature of love itself.

    Universally pertinent themes of love and desire are not immutable. Their

    manifestations, the way they are explored in the sonnets prove the diversity of the

    experience itself. Thus, to approach Elizabethan Sonnets through the framework of

    Petrarchan representations of love and desire is misguided. In Sonnet 2, Astrophil

    struggles to reconcile the paradox between his misery and the knowledge that his love

    should bestow joy. Concordantly, Shakespearespowerful declaration of devotion and

    his meditations on the nature of beauty and the eternality of his love are inflected by

    the contextual homoerotic undertones to the poem. Stylistically both sonnets

    seemingly bear resemblance to their Petrarchan forebears. But it is the deviations

    from the Petrarchan archetype that the conflicting motifs of love and desire embody.

    Subversions that, ultimately, testify to a human experience that is unable to be

    constrained by any one academic framework.

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    Bibliography

    1.

    The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Second edition: Volume 2:

    The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century. Broadview Press. 2010

    2.

    John Crowe Ransom, Shakespeare at Sonnets' in The World's Body (New

    York), 1938, p. 286

    3. Jonathan Smith, Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 2, 2012, Accessed 22 March

    2013, available fromhttp://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-

    and-stella-sonnet-2/

    4.

    Robert H. Ray: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, The Explicator, Vol. 53, No. 1

    (1994) p. 10

    5. Hamilton, A.C: Sidney's Astrophil and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence, ELH,

    Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 69

    6. Fort, J. A: The Order and Chronology of Shakespeares Sonnets, Review of

    English Studies (1933)

    http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/http://blogs.hanover.edu/astrophil/2012/08/09/astrophil-and-stella-sonnet-2/