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Aesthetics In Shakespeare's Sonnets

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Vol. 4(8), pp. 398-403, October, 2013 DOI: 10.5897/IJEL2013.0479 ISSN 2141-2626 ©2013 Academic Journals http://www.academicjournals.org/IJEL International Journal of English and Literature Full Length Research Paper Aesthetics in William Shakespeare's Sonnets Maryam Ebrahimi* and Bahman Zarrinjooee Department of English Literature and Language, Islamic Azad University of Boroujerd, Iran. Accepted 30 August, 2013 This study focuses on aesthetics in William Shakespeare's sonnets. It shows the dominant aesthetic aspects of the sonnets. It uses theories of intertextuality and semiotics in terms of aesthetics. Study of theories of Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) and Roland Barthes (1915-1980) regarding semiotics in Shakespeare's sonnets shows metaphors of the sonnets as aesthetic signs. This study …show more content…

Therefore, this study uses critics like Roman Jakobson, Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes. These critics have been chosen, because they make a huge turn in literary criticism of their time. Roman Jakobson, who is a Russian structuralist, studies structure of language. Jakobson's linguistic communication theory is very central in studying a literary work aesthetically. His theories about syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are significant in studying a metaphor. Mikhail Bakhtin is a critic who is influential in aesthetics, semio-tics, and intertextuality. He elaborates the dialogic aspect of texts. Words or utterances associate with other words and utterances, and they enter into a "dialogic interaction" (Bakhtin, 1984: 90). Therefore, Bakhtin's (1984: 21) "polyphony" shows the plurality of meaning of signs in William Shakespeare's sonnets. Julia Kristeva's intertextuality shows that many systems of signs act as texts in which one text transfers to another text and this Ebrahimi and Zarrinjooee

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