Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale is a romance in which Chaucer, through his character the Knight, expresses his views on the courtly love system of the Middle Ages. I will further discuss this story and how it reflects the criticism of a society that applauds a system that takes little stock of a woman’s true feelings on being involved in courtly love. The tale takes on a typical plot of a romance and in the eyes of the aristocrat that is simply all the story is about. However, to the rest of the literate population out of the penumbra of that high level of the hierarchy, the tale is more about the unfairness of the courtly love system. The men are supposed to be sick with love, vehement about it, and so sweet a woman would have to accept his advances.
William Shakespeare's tragedy, Romeo and Juliet is a popular study for various themes, including love. The five types of love include unrequited love, romantic love, parental love, friendship and love of family honor. Love is an overpowering force that takes over all other values, loyalties and emotions.The ones I will be elaborating is romantic love and love of family honor. I find these the direct cause of the eventual ending of the plot- the death of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. The romantic love of Romeo and Juliet has become very popular and is the ideal example of star-crossed lovers.
Despite being written during patriarchal Jacobean society, the protagonist is a female, which is was highly unusual in those days. Of course this protagonist is Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play, through Lady Macbeth's actions we are forced to believe that she is evil. In contrast, the novel John Steinbeck tells a story of dreams, hopes and loneliness. We are introduced to a majorly significant and complex character, named Curley’s wife.
In this conversation the poet uses colloquial language to bring the characters alive. For example ‘Lo, I have brought my gift’ where Maude Clare draws attention to herself. Rossetti shows Maude Clare’s personality through the use of imperative verbs, for example ‘Take my share of a fickle heart’ followed by ‘Take it or leave it as you will’. This shows that Maude Clare is strong and determined despite being rejected by Thomas. In Victorian society women were expected to be passive and honest, and competed for more wealthy and worthy men.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s sonnet sequence Sonnets from the Portugeuse, explores the experence of idealised love in the patriarchal confines of the Victorian era, juxtaposed against F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, which comments on the unatanability of idealised love due to the corruption of the American dream. Through an exploration of love, both composers subvert societies preconcieved attitutdes to love through the reccurring motif of ‘Plato’s ladder of love’. Barrett-Browning’s poems highlight the realities of a spiritual, connected love, contrasting to Fitzgeralds commentary on the illusionary goals of ‘true’ platonic love in the post WWI hedonistic, materialistic society. Barrett-Browning conveys the Romantic ideals of platonic love, against the prudish rationalism of the Victorian era. The Petrarchan sonnet form has an inbuilt dialectic structure, enabling her to have a progressive narrative, which follows the path of the Platonic system.
Also the simile “like a silken knot,” the use of this simile is comparing her to something soft and fragile, therefore there is a theme of possessiveness and this shows that lower class women in the Elizabethan era were easily manipulated by higher class men. However, the “Lord” shows his commitment towards “Cousin Kate”. “I watched her walk along the lane,” in this quote the verb shows his concentration on Cousin Kate and implies that he is falling deeply in love with her at first sight. Therefore, there is a theme of falling in love at first sight not only in the poem “Cousin Kate” but also in Romeo and Juliet. In a dialogue with religious metaphors that figure Juliet as a Saint and Romeo as a pilgrim, he tries to convince Juliet to kiss her as it would be the only way in which Romeo can be free from
Deception William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” is a romantic comedy about young lovers and the circumstances surrounding their relationships. It is a captivating tale that discusses the ideas of love, tragedy and loyalty. Deception is one of the central themes in the story and the reason for the love between Beatrice and Benedick, the romance and problems between Claudio and Hero and the ruse of Hero’s Death. One case of deception occurs between the characters Beatrice and Benedick who serve as a relief from the more serious love in the story. Beatrice and Benedick are longtime adversaries who often engage in battles of wit and both swear that neither will ever fall in love.
This is similar to Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights. Emily published her novel during the Victorian time where women also married for “higher power, political reasons and wealth “. Both novels Romeo and Juliet are similar due to the fact that their main story lines are based on love and tragedy. However both tales are full of such powerful emotions as well as one of them being love. They both have a lot in common such as the forbidden love between two star- crossed lovers, also most characters from both novels share common roles and similar emotions such as the tragic loss of some of the characters for example when Romeo thinks that he has lost his beloved Juliet or when Heathcliff loses Cathy.
Compare ways in which Shakespeare presents a character changing in Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth. Shakespearean romantic comedies such as ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ feature one prominent aspect, complex love relationships amongst different pairs of characters, whereby the audience expects two or more characters to inevitably fall in love. Contrastingly, Shakespearean tragedies, like ‘Macbeth’, indulge in a noble and respected character changing into a tragic Hero, eventually resulting in his death. Similarly, one of the mutual features is the change in characters caused by external influences, whereby Leonato, Don Pedro and Claudio influence Benedick to love Beatrice, whilst the witches and Lady Macbeth influence Macbeth to kill the king; as other characters pursue this change, these changes are inevitable. However, Shakespeare presents Benedick’s change in a more positive and light-hearted manner, whilst Macbeth’s change revolves around negativity and wrong-doing as the approach to each individual genre is different, where comedies are humorous and happy, whilst tragedies are gloomy and grief-stricken.
Vous êtes- Armand » (104) which was said by Blanche is an allusion to the play “Camille” by: Alexandre Dumas. The play is about a lady who is a courtesan who forsakes Armand. In this case, Blanche may have foreseen her relationship with Mitch in the same manner. The similarity Blanche and the “Lady of Camillias” is that they are both frail and are tainted by past sexual indiscretion with idealistic young men who are still trying to find true love and a new chance in life. When Blanche says “We are very Bohemian...” (104), the term Bohemian is the allusion itself.