Poetry Compare and Contrast Love and Madness True love is the theme in the poem “Porphyria’s Lover,” by Robert Browning, and “Annabel Lee,” written by Edger Allen Poe. They were written in the same time period both having romantic notions, and share the same dramatic monologue style. Both are similar poems in their deranged views of love. However, the manner in which their beautiful lovers die and how they felt after their death, differ greatly. The men in both poems truly loved their women in the beginning, but by the end they had become obsessive, drove themselves to insanity, and slept next to the dead bodies of their lovers.
In the play you can see familial, friendly, unrequited, true, and sexual love. All the different types of love and the relationships that came with it are the cause of the tragic ending of Othello the Moor and the gentle Desdemona. The first type of love that you see in the play is family love. The relationship between Brabantio and Desdemona in the play is very strained seeing as how she ran off to get married without his consent, which back in the day was a big no-no. You can still see the love that they have for each other when Desdemona says “To you I am bound for life and education; / My life and education both do learn me/ How to respect you.
Although there is a lot of reference to violent and aggressive behaviour it does not make her hesitant, one could even say she was blinded by her love for him. To his coy mistress is a metaphorical poem, where the speaker addresses a woman who has been slow to respond to his sexual requests. In the first stanza he discusses how he would love constantly for an unlimited amount, if only time was not running out. If he could he would give her everything and anything till death. He quickly begins to mention how short life is even referencing her ‘preserved virginity’ being taken when she’s dead as ‘worms shall try.’ He finishes by focusing on the present and telling her to make the most of the time that they have now, which hints at the use of sexual innuendo.
It also suggests that she misses her past through the use of a rhetorical question which makes the reader feel sympathy for her. In the poems “Medusa” and “Les Grands Seigneurs” both of the poems explore gender conflict through love/relationships and they are both written from a woman’s perspective. In “Les Grands Seigneurs” the character was single and she was able to manipulate men and was “their queen”. We can interpret that she controlled the men through lust. In the poem “Medusa” gender conflict through control is also illustrated when she says: “a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy”.
‘She seemed to hear my silent voice And loves appeal to know’ (L19, 20) This depicts love as obsessive and selfish. A love that exists only in the mind of the lover. John Clare is writing as an adult looking back to his youthful past, to his 'First Love'. It is an innocent love toward a girl he has only just seen, yet feels instantly transfixed and ensnared by. The very first line of Clare's poem declares 'I ne'er was struck before that hour' The use of the word struck gives us an image of someone unexpectedly being hit by a spell or by one of cupids arrows, leaving him unable to resist falling in love.
She refers to novelist Lou Salome and her loathing in giving up intellectualism for love and sex, portrayed through her inability to recall details of kissing a famous philosopher. H. then juxtaposes Salome to Saint Therese who spoke passionately about loving forever – she notes extreme difference between disinterest of apparent “mistress of Europe” and extreme romanticism of other in love with God, and ask for some of balance between them; “shall we meet half way between sanctity and liberation?” persona then finds she does not need to open collection as she is not upset, instead she understands that “this farewell’s left me joyful” in certainty that her lover will return to her: ‘my lover will come again to me”. Here unlike beginning of poem, she projects power, the insight brings her serenity, symbolised by image of her moving into “peaceful sunset” feeding her geese, pastoral scene where she is dominant force. Her reference to “latter children” and sunset contrast her youth at poems opening, term “afterglow” is implicitly sexual and is clear this afterglow is different to that of her youth – poem clearly shows her maturity and change. The audience reflect that while the poem is superficially about a farewell to a
She wants us to feel it and I know this in the end of her poem when she writes “In the wonderful MAGIC OF LOVE” and because of this line I have no doubt in my mind that she was madly in love when she wrote this poem. Now in the poem “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims he takes a much different (and more realistic) approach on how he perceives the idea of his love. As early as the first line he starts to criticize his girlfriend/wife by writing, “My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases, At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring.” In the first line he’s already calling her incredibly clumsy but tries to soften it up by calling her “dear” but by using the word shipwreck it’s almost like wherever she goes and everything
06/14/2012 YASH PANCHAL Love and Seduction “My Last Duchess” by Browning and “To His Coy Mistress” by Marvell are examples of two men searching for the right words to express their emotions towards a woman. The speakers in both poems are talking about love and seduction. Even though they both are written in two different centuries, both pieces have remarkable similarities as well as some of the common expected differences. “To His Coy Mistress” values women and their love they give, while “My Last Duchess” totally humiliates the role of women in society. “My Last Duchess" and "To His Coy Mistress" shows the act of the men in these two poems.
Medieval women are typically considered to be young beautiful ladies who are damsels in distress, awaiting their knight to come rescue them. “The Canterbury Tales” reveals that this notion is far from the truth. Refuting this idea in the novel is The Wife of Bath. She is overtly manipulative by using her exuding sexuality. Her husbands, all five of them were teased with sex, but they had to provide luxuries that she desperately craved for.
In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary, a completely romantic character, is deliberately placed into a harshly realistic world. Throughout the story we see Emma’s constant longing for the romantic life she has continuously read about, but her hopes always seem to back fire. She is an exaggeratedly, sentimental woman with the instruction, appearance, and the expectations of an heiress, living the reality of the middle class life as a farmer’s daughter. Her fantasies of romantic idealism eventually lead to her and her husband’s downfall. Her self–centeredness and unrealistic perception of reality cause her to ignore her child, deceive her husband, fall into promiscuity, and go so severely into dept that she offers her body in payment.