Representations of Romantic Love in Poetry Across the Periods Essay Example

sonnet popular in the Elizabethan period.

The conversational rhythm, which departs from the strict iambic pentameter of the sonnet form, is indicative of the light-hearted mockery of traditional courtly love. Shakespeare’s ingenuity is in the use of the sonnet form itself to enhance the parody of conventional sonnet. The first quatrain introduces the argument, and the next two quatrains advance the argument further. Under the pretence of insulting his mistress, he mocks her physical faults.Repeatedly, he takes typical, extravagant metaphors and sets them up in binary opposition with the humanity of his beloved. Imagery of divine beauty is contrasted sharply against her plainness.

The whiteness of snow is contrasted against the dullness of her skin, and her breath reeks rather than giving off the delights of perfume. Strong, evocative words such as ‘dun’, ‘black wires’, and ‘reeks’ are used to further foreground the shortcomings of his beloved. In doing so, Shakespeare argues the absurdity of divine comparisons and confronts the reader with the reality of a humanity that is imperfect and flawed.The final rhyming couplet completely reverses the tone of the sonnet. While the quatrains use harsh rhyming sounds and sharp consonants, the couplet is gentle and adoring with softer vowels and rhyme. Shakespeare ends by privileging the humanity of the woman.

Despite her faults, she is as beautiful and dear to him as any goddess. Divine beauty and grace are irrelevant to the human experience of love, and any attempts to compare the two must be insincere and untruthful. The metaphysical period of poetry carried Shakespeare’s notions further and asserted a more genuine representation of love.While the metaphysicals lived during the Elizabethan time, these

poets were university educated and privileged the mind over the body.

Romantic love was intellectualised as first and foremost a union of the mind. Witty arguments based on false logic were used to woo a woman. Thus, the woman became an intellectual equal. Humans were thought to be beings of reason. All emotions, including love, could be analysed and argued logically.

This led to the development of the conceit, which is an extended metaphor or simile that draws an unlikely comparison between two objects.New scientific discoveries were used as the basis of these arguments and conceits. John Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ exemplifies the representation of love in metaphysical poetry. ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ is one of Donne’s later poems, and reflects his reputation as the greatest poet of the metaphysical period. It was written to his wife Anne before he left for a long trip.

The poem begins quietly, at the passing away of a ‘virtuous man’. Donne movingly uses this imagery to suggest that the parting of lovers is like death.Yet, when love is virtuous, lovers should part with quiet dignity, and with ‘no teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’. Donne distinguishes their love from the purely sensual love of the common people, which ‘cannot admit/ Absence, because it doth remove/ Those things which elemented it’.

Their love is the union of their minds and souls, and therefore, cannot be broken by physical separation. Donne draws on his vast knowledge of astronomy, alchemy, and mathematics to create three unlikely, yet poignant conceits to support this argument.The lovers are likened to the planetary bodies, who are sustained in their own universe and are not affected by

the disasters caused by the ‘moving of th’earth’. This elevates their love above the ordinary ‘harmes and feares’ of superficial love. Secondly, their love is compared to refined gold, pure, noble and when stretched apart, ‘endure not yet/ A breach, but an expansion’.

The compass is Donne’s most famous conceit. The two lovers are likened to the two arms of a compass. Their souls are joined, though they may be apart.Only by the wife’s stability in the centre, can he draw a full circle and be made complete. The closing of the compass and the imagery of the arm as it ‘growes erect’ implies the growing joy and expectation as the other arm returns home.

The poem is characteristically conversational in tone and rhythm, though it is neither rushed nor flippant. This gives the poem a tender seriousness. The first two verses contain many soft alliterative ‘s’ sounds. Along with the predictable rhyme scheme and rounded vowels, the tone of the poem is calming and gentle.

The form is similar to the ballad, with four-line verses that create the slow, soothing atmosphere of the poem. Unlike Elizabethan poetry, metaphysical poetry valued the woman as an intellectual being. The representation of romantic love transcends the physical and implies that lovers are made perfect by the union of their souls. The modern period contested the extreme rigidity and conservatism of the Victorian period that preceded it.

The horrors of World War I changed society’s outlook on life. There was a sudden liberation of passion and thought, and women began to lobby for equal rights.The discourse of feminism often replaced the discourse of femininity, with women rejecting the notion

of being the weaker sex. Poetry also became more real, more intimate, psychologically complex and without pretence.

While earlier periods tended to place poetry on a higher plane, modern poetry equated with the daily life of the common people. Poets tended use sophisticated metaphor, obscure imagery and paradox to convey an intentionally ambiguous message. Representations of love diversified, although many poems were underpinned by explicit sexuality. W.

H.Auden’s ‘Lullaby’ presents a modern representation of love in a time of uncertainty. ‘Lullaby’ is a poem concerned with the conflict between romantic love and social turmoil. There is a set syllable count of predominantly 7 syllables per line. This creates the characteristic rocking movement of a lullaby. The conceit of sleep is used throughout the poem.

Love, like sleep, has the ability remove people from the chaos of the conscious world and deliver them to the unconscious, where the beauty of experience of being in love appears to be immortal and eternal.Love seems to have infinite powers. In the poet’s own vision of Venus, there is ‘universal love and hope’. The reference to the ‘glaciers and the rocks’ and the ‘hermit’s sensual ecstasy’ foregrounds love’s ability to arouse feeling even in the most isolated corners of the earth. For one night, away from the imminent war and their inevitable separation, the lovers can be together in this unconscious paradise.

The immediacy of this night is evident in the line, ‘But in my arms till break of day’, in which Auden pleads for one last night.The alliteration of the ‘s’ sounds in the lines, ‘Not a whisper, not a thought,/ Not a kiss nor look be lost’ gives

the night a great, tender significance. The paradox is that in a society of intolerance and violence, love is also fragile and mortal. Auden laments they must awake and return to consciousness. The passing of midnight, coming of dawn, and end of sleep are a metaphor for beginning of World War II. After tonight, they must separate and will no longer be lovers.

In the mortal world, only the force of time to erode innocence, beauty and love remains eternal.