Ogden Nash Research Paper

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. “Life in A Love” by Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy's “Broken Appointment” are from the Romantic period and “To My Valentine” by Ogden Nash and Langston Hughes' “Love Again Blues” are written in the Modern period

However, like other literary periods the exterior world affected the content created by many writers(“What are characteristics of Modernist literature, fiction in particular?”). In times of sorrow, poets would use irony in their poems to convey humour to readers and project faults in society(“What are characteristics of Modernist literature, fiction in particular?”).. In Ogden Nash's “To My Valentine” irony is prevalent throughout the poem. Nash takes comparisons of hatred and compares them to the character's love for his valentine. “Shipwrecked sailor hates the sea” (9) and “a juggler hates a shove” (10) are comparisons that show hatred. He also uses allusions to circumstances of the time period such as “Axis hates the United States”(3) which is an allusion to World War II. All three lines express a lot of hate. Therefore when Nash states “That's how much I love you” (4) he is trying to convey that he loves his valentine a lot. Likewise, Langston Hughes' “Love Again Blues” makes use of irony except Hughes does not use comparisons to do so. The character is constantly complaining about how his lover's looks deceived him and makes his heart break. He says, “Thought I had an angel-chile” (10) and then follows up with his lover's real image, “a devil”(11). This is an obvious use of hyperbole yet it conveys the mask his past lover wears. However at the end, after all his complaining he says, “But you got to love again”. This statement is ironic due to his excess amount of complaining throughout the entirety of the poem and then suddenly a change of emotions at the end. Love in both poems is conveyed with humour due to issues within the Edwardian