Very Original
(A Critique of Love and Lust on Three Classic Renaissance Poems) The world is full of inspiration: towering waterfalls, unexplored forests, and sprawling night skies seem to have been created for the specific purpose of providing a muse for writers. Yet, despite all the wonders the world provides, mankind tends to focus on one thing in the vast majority of literature - romance. In the modern era, a piece of media cannot seem to exist unless it contains some sort of romantic plot or subplot or both. “In other words, American culture values connection and intimacy above all else. Because this culture’s greatest fear is being alone — according to the media in which Americans are constantly immersed” (Kircher). This idea of love as the ultimate muse is not a new one, of course. It spans back as long as literature has existed. The time period of the Renaissance is no exception to this rule. Many have said that the greatest love stories of all time arose from this period of enlightenment and rebirth. Of course, some argue that the true theme of these famous works are not love at all, but are in fact poems of lust. The distinction between love and lust can be made through the examination of the poems Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, To His Coy Mistress, and To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is a poem concerning the true nature of love. A woman is upset because her husband has to go on a journey. The response of
In the story of Giovanni and Lusanna Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence written and researched by Gene Brucker, Lusanna di Benneto a widow of the artisanal class, has taken her alleged husband Giovanni to court, due to their marriage’s circumstance. The story starts out with Lusanna being married to another man named Andrea Nucci who eventually grew interest in the wealthy young Giovanni who came from a noble social class. As time wore on they eventually fell in love with one another and enjoyed all of its pleasures for a couple of years. It was later claimed by Lusanna that Giovanni had promised to marry her in the event of her husband’s death.
Erick Huerta
Ms.Reid
English 2
23 March 2023
Janie’s Search for Love
The topic of love can never truly be determined in one category as we as individuals have different preferences. Zora Neale Hurston’s
14) devoid of life and passion, are one of the primary means that the speaker utilizes to convey his views on modern love. Their stony, passionless attitudes toward each other are painful to read, but they effectively communicate the nature of their love.
Body Paragraph
Figurative Language and Imagery
Personification
wife’s “waking eyes” (l. 1)
the husband’s “hand’s light quiver” (l. 2)
the woman’s sobs “that shook their common bed” (l. 3)
“giant heart” (line 9) which is egged on to “Drink the pale drug of silence” (line 10).
Each of these examples serve to dehumanize the characters; it is as if their individual eyes and hearts and hands must act independently of them because they are so paralyzed, rendered so “stone-still” (l. 7) by their passionless love.
The meaning of this poem is that if a person commits in any kind of sexual activity it will not always be love. The narrator talks about certain memories that she encounters. She compares them to her feelings that she had while doing sexual intercourse when the next morning followed. Then she realized that it was not love at all when it turned out to be lust. The emotion and imagery in this poem gives very good comparisons about love and lust.
“Love is when the other person 's happiness is more important than your own”-H Jackson Brown Jr. This exhibits that love is when you value someone’s love more than yourself prestige. In the book Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano tries to demonstrate the love between him and Roxane by the use of poems and using Christian as an assistant. For example, “A little longer she is always here”.
The play “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare is a comedy that tells the tale of two pairs of lovers: Hero and Claudio, and Beatrice and Benedict. Though the main plot of the story revolves around Hero and Claudio, Benedict and Beatrice’s romantic relationship is an important subplot to the story. In “Much Ado About Nothing”, Shakespeare uses irony, hyperbole, and use of language to illustrate Benedict and Beatrice as a nontraditional spin on the ideal couple through the strength and security of their love, as can be shown in dialogue not traditionally associated with love.
The love story of Beatrice and Benedict, though the irony of how it was founded makes it non-traditional, has real feelings behind it, making them an ideal
Sometime during the 12th century a collection of twelve narrative poems known as The "Lais of Marie de France” were composed. These now well-known pieces of composition declared Maries’ message through poems involving the elements of love and life that she hoped would be enjoyed by future generations. Several themes are present throughout the various stories however one of the major implications is that of love. The “Lais of Marie de France” demonstrates that not all love is equal, it requires suffering which is derived from selflessness or selfishness one of which is not capable of occurring within courtly love. Maire, seeing love as an energy that cannot be vanquished and that isn’t an easy thing to live up too, defines love as not all being equal.
Yasmin Y. DeGout wrote an essay in the African American Review entitled, "Dividing the Mind: Portraits of Homoerotic Love in Giovanni's Room" (1992). In her essay, DeGouts argues that in his book, "Giovanni's Room", author James Baldwin depicts homoerotic love in two contrasting ways: as a natural yet tragic interaction between the protagonist and his love interest and as an atypical type of relationship caused by a result of David's past. DeGout supports her argument by, first, discussing society's views on homosexuality during the time period of Giovanni's Room as evidence of Baldwin's two depictions of homoerotic love. DeGout discusses the process of Baldwin's theme in his book and how his editor suggested that he destroy his manuscript,
Shakespeare’s theme about Romeo and Juliet is love. The message about love is that it is complicated. It is shown by Romeo trying to be with Rosaline and Juliet.
Shakespeare shows love is complicated by Romeo and Rosaline. On page 909, “Ope her lap” Romeo wants to sleep with Rosalina.
Both men personified the sun to explain why a woman should give her virtue of virginity at a young age. In sum, the symbolism in the poems revolve around personification in order to represent time and to persuade young women to give their virtue.
Moreover, “To his Coy Mistress” and “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” are two honorable and great literary pieces. Although they both deal with the similar theme of carpe diem, they are different because the narrators are trying to portray the theme for different reasons.
Rough Draft
Love's is portrayed differently as love's concept reoccurs over generations. Yet, love tend to vary not only due to generation gaps. Critical literary periods influence literature and thus motifs such as love are expressed differently over centuries. Within literature, love is expressed differently in the sixteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “Since brass, nor stone, nor boundless sea” by William Shakespeare, John Fletcher's,“Take oh ,take those lips away' are written in the Renaissance of the Elizabethan period.
Every period of time has their own outstanding poetry’s features to show their uniqueness of the period. For the English Renaissance period, there are three outstanding features of poetry: “the theme of the unreachable and unrequited love”, “carpe diem”, and “metaphysics”.
The first outstanding feature of the English Renaissance period is “the theme of the unrequited and unreachable love”. To explain in “Whoso List to Hunt” the poem is about a hunter who states that he may no longer desire to hunt this hind since it is uncatchable; the usage of a hunter and a hind is one of the figurative devices called “metaphor” which is making a comparison between two different things but still have something in common, so a hunter is a metaphor of a man
Love can exist as affection, infatuation, obsession, pleasure and in many other ways, as love is abstract. Hence, there is no one single interpretation of love. Love is a theme that has been embedded into language and literature over the centuries, yet due to the ever changing perception of love people continue to search for a universal definition of love. Poems are able to showcase the inner feelings and desires of a poet as well as their own unique views on love. Nevertheless, through poems “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, “Mother in a Refugee Camp” by Chinua Achebe, “The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!”
