{"id":74,"date":"2017-02-01T11:16:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T16:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/?p=74"},"modified":"2017-02-01T11:20:11","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T16:20:11","slug":"attack-from-all-sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/romancing-the-sonnet\/attack-from-all-sides\/","title":{"rendered":"Attack from all sides"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was interested by how each of the sonnets seemed to have a its own individual theme, a specific point of attack to convince the reader to reproduce (although\u00a0in the cases of sonnets 5 & 6, 9 & 10, there were some prolonged attacks over the course of two poems). At first reading,\u00a0I was particularly struck by\u00a0words that I usually would not associate with a love poem — such as how in Sonnet 4, all of Shakespeare’s reproductive\u00a0imagery is measured in monetary terms, or in Sonnet 1, where he uses strong metaphors about (lack of) food\/eating — but he still masterfully constructed\u00a0these “odder” words to suit his message. It was helpful to\u00a0read Vendler’s article afterwards\u00a0about how there is something “cryptographic” about a Shakespearean sonnet, particularly how there is “an oddness that catches the eye and begs explanation” (40). Vendler also talked a lot about structure’s importance within the sonnet;\u00a0I began to wonder if there was any significance about the sonnets’ arrangement as a whole, although Vendler mentioned that the sonnets were probably ordered ad libitum<\/em>\u00a0so perhaps this is a stretch. Yet\u00a0clearly, these sonnets are a set with an overarching purpose;\u00a0there seems to be a sort of\u00a0inwards to outwards progression\u00a0throughout the ten, starting from basic human needs\u00a0(like food in Sonnet 1, your own image\u00a0in 2, mother in 3, money in 4) to natural\u00a0joys (flowers\/summer in 5 & 6, the sun in 7, music in 8) then finally ending with\u00a0family and society in Sonnets 9 & 10. Perhaps Shakespeare did not intend for this arrangement to be this meaningful, but I find these sonnets all the more persuasive because of the way his argument unfolds within the set, slowly drawing in the reader and amplifying the argument; at first, it seems to be about just making sure your own beauty is preserved for yourself, but then, at the end, your choice to reproduce will affect the whole world.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was interested by how each of the sonnets seemed to have a its own individual theme, a specific point of attack to convince the reader to reproduce (although\u00a0in the cases of sonnets 5 & 6, 9 & 10, there were some prolonged attacks over the course of two poems). At first reading,\u00a0I was particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romancing-the-sonnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}