Saturday, August 1, 2015

"Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,/ When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st (11-12)"-----Explain the lines.

Here’s where the poem starts to move into more meta territory, bringing out that central issue of immortality through artistic representation. First we get to see a real-life example of artistic immortality, as lots of readers will recognize the "death" through whose "shade" we wander from another famous work of literature: the Bible (and specifically Psalm 23:4). Here’s a character who seems to have gained some literary immortality, since so many people read the Bible. Then the speaker gets even more assertive, .......................................

TO THE THE FULL NOTE YOU HAVE TO BUY...

Sonnet 18 Visual Representation + Analysis

Write a Brief Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18.

One of the best known of Shakespeare's sonnets, Sonnet 18 is memorable for the skillful and varied presentation of subject matter, in which the poet's feelings reach a level of rapture unseen in the previous sonnets. The poet here abandons his quest for the youth to have a child, and instead glories in the youth's beauty.

Initially, the poet poses a question — "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" — and then reflects on it, remarking that the youth's beauty far surpasses summer's delights. The imagery is the very essence of simplicity: "wind" and "buds." In the fourth line, legal terminology — "summer's lease" — is introduced in contrast to the commonplace images in the first three lines. Note also the poet's use of extremes in the phrases "more lovely," "all too short," and "too hot"; these phrases emphasize the young man's beauty.

Although lines 9 through 12 are marked by a more expansive tone and deeper feeling, the poet returns to the simplicity of the opening images. As one expects in Shakespeare's sonnets, the proposition that the poet sets up in the first eight lines — that all nature is subject to imperfection — is now contrasted in these next four lines beginning with "But." Although beauty naturally declines at some point — "And every fair from fair sometime declines" — the youth's beauty will not; his unchanging appearance is atypical of nature's steady progression. Even death is impotent against the youth's beauty. Note the ambiguity in the phrase "eternal lines": Are these "lines" the poet's verses or the youth's hoped-for children? Or are they simply wrinkles meant to represent the process of aging? Whatever the answer, the poet is jubilant in this sonnet because nothing threatens the young man's beautiful appearance.

Then follows the concluding couplet: "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The poet is describing not what the youth is but what he will be ages hence, as captured in the poet's eternal verse — or again, in a hoped-for child. Whatever one may feel about the sentiment expressed in the sonnet and especially in these last two lines, one cannot help but notice an abrupt change in the poet's own estimate of his poetic writing. Following the poet's disparaging reference to his "pupil pen" and "barren rhyme" in Sonnet 16, it comes as a surprise in Sonnet 18 to find him boasting that his poetry will be eternal.

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade (9)"- Explain the line.

The above line is taken ..................

In line 9 we come to realize that this whole comparison with the summer is bizarre. Check out this line: "thy eternal summer shall not fade." That’s like saying "thy unbreakable armor shall not be broken." Duh, his/her eternal summer won’t fade, because it’s eternal. Plus, there’s the added issue that the comparison..................

TO THE THE FULL NOTE YOU HAVE TO BUY...

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate (1-2)"------Explain the line.

The above line is taken from ........................

At first glance, the poem seems to start like a really awkward little love poem, doesn’t it? It feels like the poet is almost awkward in professing his love. He has to ask whether he ought to go ahead with the comparison (couldn’t he just make the comparison without all the anxiety?), and the best compliments he can come..................

TO THE THE FULL NOTE YOU HAVE TO BUY...

WRITE A NOTE ON THE FORM AND METRE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET 18 ?

This is a classic Shakespearean sonnet with fourteen lines in very regular iambic pentameter. With the exception of a couple relatively strong first syllables (and even these are debatable), there are basically no deviations from the meter. There aren’t even any lines that flow over into the next line – every single line is end-stopped. There are two quatrains (groups of four lines), followed by a third quatrain in which the tone of the poem shifts a bit, which is in turn followed by a rhyming couplet (two lines) that wraps the poem up. The rhyme scheme..................................

TO THE THE FULL NOTE YOU HAVE TO BUY.....

How does William Shakespeare Personifies the nature in his "Shall I compare thee" or Sonnet 18?

From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tries to set up a contrast between the beloved and a summer’s day. He tries really hard to distinguish them, ultimately arguing that the beloved, unlike nature, will be saved by the force and permanence of his poetry. The thing is, the contrast doesn’t really work, since summer, if anything, seems much more eternal than the beloved. If being written about preserves immortality, then the summer ought to be immortal because the speaker’s writing about it as well. And then there’s the fact that summer actually is, in some sense, immortal, since it returns in full force every year.

Line 1: This is a rhetorical question, as the speaker definitely doesn’t care how or whether we answer him, and it also...................................

TO THE THE FULL NOTE YOU HAVE TO BUY.....

Write a note on Change of Fate and Eternity in Sonnet 18?

CHANGE, FATE, AND ETERNITY

However much it might look he’s praising a beloved, this poet is definitely more concerned with tooting his own horn. Really, you could sum up the poem like this: "Dear Beloved: You’re better than a summer’s day. But only because I can make you eternal by writing about you. Love, Shakespeare." That message is why images and symbols of time, decay, and eternity are all over this poem. Whether or not we think the beloved is actually made immortal (or just more immortal than the summer’s day) is up in the air, but it’s certainly what the speaker wants you to think.

Line 4: This is where the speaker starts pointing to how short summer feels. Using personification and metaphor, the speaker suggests that summer has taken out a lease on the weather, which must ......................................

To get the full note you have to buy..

Out standing analysis of Wlliam Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.

SECTION I (LINES 1-8) SUMMARY

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 1-2

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

The speaker starts by asking or wondering out loud whether he ought to compare whomever he’s speaking to with a summer’s day.
Instead of musing on that further, he jumps right in, and gives us a thesis of sorts. The object of his description is more "lovely" and more "temperate" than a summer’s day.
"Lovely" is easy enough, but how about that "temperate"? The meaning that comes to mind first is just "even-keeled" or "restrained," but "temperate" also introduces, by way of a double meaning, the theme of internal and external "weather." "Temperate," as you might have heard on the Weather Channel, refers to an area with mild temperatures, but also, in Shakespeare’s time, would have referred to a balance of the "humours."
No need to explain this in great detail, but basically doctors since Ancient Greece had believed that human behavior was dictated by the relative amount of particular kinds of fluids in the body (if you must know, they were blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Yummy, no?).
By the early 1600s, this theory was being strongly challenged, but people in Shakespeare’s audience would have known that "temperate" meant that someone had the right amount of those different fluids.
The other important (and less disgusting) issue these lines bring up is the question of "thee." Normally, we’d just assume that the object of the poem is his lover, and leave it at that. But with Shakespeare, these things are always complicated.
What can we tell about the relationship between the speaker and his addressee from the way he addresses "thee"?
For the moment, all we can really tell is this: the speaker doesn’t seem to care much what "thee" thinks. He does ask whether he ought to make this comparison, but he certainly doesn’t wait long (or at all) for an answer.
So is he just wondering out loud here, pretending "thee" is present?
Even better, and this is important, could "thee" also be us readers? Is it just us, or does some small part of you imagine that Shakespeare might be askingyou, the reader, whether you want him to compare you to a summer’s day? Keep that on the back burner as you go through the poem.
Finally, just a note on the meter here:
Go ahead and read those first two lines out loud. Notice how they’re kind of bouncy? That’s the iambic pentameter: "compare thee to a summer’s day."
So do you want to see a cool bit of foreshadowing? The pronoun "I" is a stressed syllable in the first line, but the pronoun "Thou" is unstressed in the second line. Guess who’s going to be the real subject of this poem.

Lines 3-4

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Here the speaker begins to personify nature. In other words, some of the smack talking he’s doing about summer sounds like he’s talking about a person.
Basically, strong summer winds threaten those new flower buds that popped up in May, and summer just doesn’t last very long.
The way he describes the short summer, though, is what’s interesting. Summer has a "lease" on the weather, just as your family might have a lease on your car; like a person, summer can enter into, and must abide by, agreements.
The point here is clear enough: the summer is fated to end.
But check this out: isn’t summer also fated to begin every year once again? Can the summer possibly have "too short a date," if it happens an infinite number of times? Isn’t it, in a meaningful sense, immortal?
Keep this in mind as you read on.

Lines 5-6

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

Here comes the major personification of nature. Put simply, the speaker’s saying sometimes the sun is too hot, and other times you can’t even see it at all (hidden, we assume, by clouds).
But instead of being boring, he calls the sun the "eye of heaven," refers to it using the word "his," and gives it a "complexion," which generally means refers to the skin of the face.
Check out how much more information about the summer we’re getting than we are about the beloved. Indeed, the speaker is carefully describing the summer individually, and even in human terms, while he only describes "thee" in one line and only relative to the summer.
"Complexion," in particular, is especially interesting, as it brings back the whole "humours" theme we saw in "temperate."
"Complexion" used to be used to describe someone’s health, specifically with regard to their balance of humours. Thus, we see here again that the speaker is combining descriptions of external weather phenomena with internal balance.

Lines 7-8

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

With these lines, the speaker gets even broader in his philosophy, declaring that everything beautiful must eventually fade away and lose its charm, either by chance or by the natural flow of time. Kind of like teen pop stars.
Now what exactly does "untrimm’d" refer to?
We might read it as what happens to "fair" or beautiful things. By that reading, things that are beautiful eventually lose their trimmings, or their decorations, and thus fade from beauty.
On the other hand, "untrimm’d" is also a term from sailing, as you "trim," or adjust, the sails to take advantage of the wind. This gives "untrimm’d" a completely opposite meaning; instead of "made ugly and plain by natural changes," it means "unchanged in the face of nature’s natural changes."
Here, then, we are subtly prepped for the turn we’re about to see in…

Lines 9-10

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

The turn! Check out the "Form and Meter" section for more on line 9 in sonnets, but here’s a classic example of a "turn."
Suddenly (though it was foreshadowed a bit in line 8), the tone and direction of the poem changes dramatically. Moving on from bashing summer and the limitations inherent in nature, the speaker pronounces that the beloved he’s speaking to isn’t subject to all of these rules he’s laid out.
The speaker argues that, unlike the real summer, his beloved’s summer (by which he means beautiful, happy years) will never go away, nor will the beloved lose his/her beauty.
But remember what we mentioned in line 4? The summer in real life actually is an "eternal summer," since it comes back every year for all eternity. Just like we saw with all of the personifications of nature in the previous lines, we begin to notice here that "thee" and the "summer’s day" are really quite similar.
Both can fade away or, depending on how you look at it, be eternal, and both can be personified. That’s why here, at line 9, the poet switches direction – both the beloved and nature are threatened mainly by time, and it is only through this third force (poetry), that they can live on.
It’s also worth picking up on that word "ow’st." That apostrophe might be contracting "ownest" or "owest," and both work nicely. Either the beloved won’t lose the beauty he/she possesses ("owns"), or won’t have to return the beauty he/she borrowed from nature and now owes back.
These readings both resonate well with line 4, in which the speaker described the summer months as a "lease," or a temporary ownership that had to be returned.

Lines 11-12

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;

In another bit of personification (so far we’ve had summer and the sun), the speaker introduces death.
Death, the speaker claims, won’t get a chance to claim the beloved in the valley of the shadow of death (this death’s shadow idea is from Psalm 23:4), since he/she is immortal.
The general meaning of line 12 (you’re eternal) is actually easier to see if you read the line as a metaphor. As a metaphor, "lines to time" definitely refers to a poem, since they are lines set to a meter, or time.
Here, then, the poet is making two bold claims: first, that his poem is "eternal," and second, that it nourishes and develops "thee," as it is where he/she is able to "grow."
Now this willingness to discuss the fact that he’s writing a poem within the poem itself is pretty cool stuff.
One fancy way of describing this kind of artistic tactic is called "breaking the fourth wall." That’s a metaphor itself, and you can think of it as a stage: in a normal play, any indoor action goes on as if the front edge of the stage were an imaginary wall. The actors, in other words, are supposed to pretend they’re in a real world with four walls and no audience watching them. If the actors, however, recognize that there’s an audience out there, they’re considered to be "breaking" through that fourth wall, as they try to do away with the artificiality of pretending they’re just living out a normal life up there on stage.
Well that’s exactly what’s starting to go on here. If you were thinking this poem was a love letter to a beloved, you can forget it. This is a poem written to be read by an audience, and that audience, by continuing to read the poem, will try to make the beloved grow into a character, and in turn make him/her immortal.

Lines 13-14

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The couplet, in the end, is really just a fuller admission of what the speaker points toward in line 12.
He has completely shattered the fourth wall, and (successfully, we should add) predicted that this poem will continue to be read, and the beloved will continue to be analyzed and re-analyzed for all time.
In other words, by allowing us to try to give life to "thee" (figuring out who he/she was), the speaker and the poem itself give "thee" life.
In other words: as long as men live and can read, this poem will continue to live, and so keep "thee" alive.
But let's examine the language more closely. First of all, we’ve got some more personification: technically, eyes don’t really "see," and poems certainly don’t "live."
Also, it’s worth noting the incredible arrogance here: why should we believe that as long as humankind exists, this poem will continue to live? Can’t we imagine a world in which every copy of this poem were burned, and so "thee" would stop living?
And even if people are still reading the poem, what kind of "life" is it that the beloved will be leading? This definitely doesn’t sound like heaven. The beloved can’t make any choices for his or her self, isn’t conscious, and can only be recognized as the poet described him or her.
In fact, we ought to wonder whether it is "thee" who will be alive, or rather the poet’s (very limited) representation of "thee."
Plus, remember how in line 9 we noted that summer could also be eternal? Well, the end of this poem kind of makes you wonder. So why, again, is the beloved eternal but not summer? Just like summer, the beloved is going to fade away in real life, and just like summer, the beloved has been written about and preserved in a poem. How come, by the end of the poem, it’s only "thee" who lives on and not nature?
Finally, remember how back in line 1 we were already wondering if "thee" might not just be the speaker’s lover, but also us readers? Well now the speaker has broken through the fourth wall, and revealed himself as not just a lover, but also as a writer of poetry.
So check this out (this should be fun for you math kids out there): the speaker is talking to "thee," and that speaker is actually the poet. Now who do poets write for? That’s right, for us readers.
So we have three conditions here: the speaker speaks only to "thee," the writer speaks only to us, and the speaker and writer are the same thing. Doesn’t that mean, then, that "thee," is the same as "us"? Trippy.
Frankly, we think that’s a pretty cool reading. Basically, the speaker here is speaking to all of mankind. All of us feel this pressure of mortality, but here Shakespeare crystallizes that anxiety in a poem, so that this idea of mankind will live on forever.
The last lines, then, can be read as circular: "so long as mankind lives, mankind will continue to live."
Cool? Too weird? You decide.
In any case, these last two lines hammer home something we suspected from those very first pronouns: this speaker seems more interested in himself and his abilities as a poet than the qualities of his addressee.

Write a note on the theme of sonnet 18?

Sonnet 18 Themes

Love

Sonnet 18 opens up looking an awful lot like a traditional love poem, but by the end it’s pretty clear that the poet is much more into himself and the poetry he produces than the beloved he&#........................

Literature and WritingLike much of Shakespeare’s work, Sonnet 18 is all about writing and expressing one’s self through language. This is, at its clearest, a poem about the power of the written word over dea......................

Time

The speaker of Sonnet 18 is absolutely fixated on fate and mortality, but believes he’s come up with an effective time machine: poetry. Instead of contemplating a beautiful summer’s day...............

Man and the Natural World

On one level, Sonnet 18 is clearly concerned with the relationship between man and the eventual, inescapable death he’ll encounter in nature. On another level, the poet also seems fascinated............

........you have to buy to get the full note.

UNIQUE TUTORIALS

ad