poetry analysis

 Poetry Analysis 

 

Page requirement: 3 pp minimum; MLA formatting

 

Quotation note: Your essay must be supported liberally with brief quotations. That means at least one or two quotations per paragraph, properly introduced (not just dropped abruptly into the text). Please do not use block quotations. Brief quotations are generally no more than four lines of poetry. When quoting poetry you must indicate the line breaks with a backslash, as follows:

 

Shakespeare reflects on the sadness of aging when he writes, “That time of year thou mayest in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold” (ll.-3).

 

Please note that spaces are inserted before and after the slash marks. If there had been internal periods or commas (after the first and second of these lines) they would have been left in. But the final punctuation, in this case a comma after “cold,” has been dropped. If only one line had been quoted (or part of a line) then the parenthetical insertion would look like this: (l.2) or (l.3). Lowercase “l” = line. Finally, make sure that you add a final period after the parenthetical insertion.

 

If you use run-in quotation, the parenthetical insertion should ideally appear immediately after the quoted part of your sentence, as follows:

 

When he writes of “That time of year  / When yellow leaves, or none, do hang” (ll. 1-2), Shakespeare is reflecting on the sadness of the aging process.

 Shakespeare’s sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” can be usefully compared with Petrarch’s “Upon the breeze she spread her golden hair.” Petrarch’s poem (1334) dates back to the origins of the sonnet form in Italy, and exemplifies the qualities that would be all-too-typical of the sonnets written in Europe for the next 2 1/2 centuries. Above all, in “Upon the breeze …” the female beloved, the object of the poet’s adoration is idealized, almost unearthly in her perfection. Petrarch did this kind of thing beautifully, but fat too many of his imitators, especially in England in the late 16th / early 17th century, failed to achieve any real originality in this mode, and their sonnets were full of what had by then become Petrarchan conventions. Shakespeare, by contrast, in those sonnets in which he addresses a female beloved, rarely if ever resorts to the kind of idealization we find in so many of the sonnets written by his contemporaries. In “My mistress’ eyes …” (1609) he is clearly satirizing those conventional Petrarchan-style sonnets. We might even call this poem an “anti-sonnet,” yet at the same time, if studied closely, we can see a certain back-handed, ironic praise of the beloved. How does he achieve this remarkable feat? In your analysis, break Shakespeare’s sonnet down into its component parts, explaining his meaning and examining his metaphors and images at each step of the way. Consider organizing your analysis as follows: 1. Introduction and thesis; 2. A brief analysis of Petrarch’s “Upon the breeze…” 3. An analysis of Shakespeare’s first quatrain (first four lines); 4. An analysis of the second quatrain; 5. A combined analysis of the third quatrain and the final couplet; 6. Your conclusion.

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