Shakespeare's sonnets are alive & well online. See, especially, the MIT Complete Works of Shakespeare (.edu), where it's easy to find them all.
Following is an analytical point of departure for your new group. We'll work on these four Sonnets on Monday, and then present (in Deluxe Powerpoints, I'm hoping) on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Following is an analytical point of departure for your new group. We'll work on these four Sonnets on Monday, and then present (in Deluxe Powerpoints, I'm hoping) on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Comment
on the intersections of Form, Language, and Ideas in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Form: We can observe form in certain identifiable groups of lines: in quatrains
or couplets. (And doesn’t the rhyme scheme shape our sense of each sonnet’s form?) Form also includes scansion: the “sound-scape” of each line in iambic
pentameter. And yes!, as our class has astutely observed, one line sometimes “spills
over” to the next, overflowing, in a
poet’s move called ‘enjambment’. Form is
also discernible in the shapes or figures within
a given line – in the repetitions, mirror-images, juxtapositions, and other
grammatical (i.e., syntactic) tricks W.S. loved to use.
Language: Discuss Shakespeare’s grab bag of
word play in diction, imagery, double-meanings, puns, dirty jokes, ambiguities,
sly suggestions, self put-downs, and more.
Try to connect the persuasive power of Shakespeare’s amazing comparisons – his
similes, metaphors, and analogies –
to his claims about life and love.
Ideas: How do Shakespeare’s figures - his forms, his language -- uphold his ideas? How do his shapes and games – his formal discipline; his playfulness in words – support his heartfelt claims
about people he loves (the young man; the dark lady), or about himself? Keep in mind that Shakespeare, too, is a
major character in these poems. They are
not limited to the two people he seems to adore: they are also variously
self-reflective, self-critical, and self-affirming.
(Food for thought... Are his sonnets soliloquies, spoken in solitude; or are they monologues, spoken directly to another person? Depending on your answer, his rhetorical stance -- private reflection vs. shared address or dialogue -- can determine much about a poem.)
(Food for thought... Are his sonnets soliloquies, spoken in solitude; or are they monologues, spoken directly to another person? Depending on your answer, his rhetorical stance -- private reflection vs. shared address or dialogue -- can determine much about a poem.)
