I will prove this is true in the following paragraphs Shakespeare uses a large variety of metaphors and similes. A metaphor found in Sonnet 116,” Loves not Times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks” is a symbol of outer beauty that changes with time. Sonnet 138 shows a similar image, “When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies,” paints the picture of love in a similar way. Both the poems are depicting a love that has been through good and bad that have developed over time. For instance beauty fading with time and also trust fading.
By the end of the poem he talks about how he loves her even though she may not be as beautiful as all the things he described. The main point that he is trying to make is that love doesn't have to be excessive, even with her imperfections, he still loves her. The poem starts off with him talking about his mistress' eyes. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." Instead of being like most poets, Shakespeare says that his mistress' eyes are not like the sun.
In both The Nights Tale and The Millers Tale by Chaucer, female beauty is expressed dominantly. Also in some aspects both poems could be referred to as exploring superficial love, due to the men being overwhelmed with the beauty of women. This is displayed within The Nights Tale as Palamon questions whether the woman before him is “womman or goddesse” after seeing her across the yard. Thus this demonstrates Chaucers use of superficial love as Palamon presumes her as being more than human only dues to her beauty. Furthermore, elements of superficial love are also in The Millers Tale, as Absolon loves Alisoun due to her “goddess corpus”.
In the poem “To Helen” the author used beauty as a form of diction to show his fascination towards the character. In the beginning of the poem the author used the word “beauty” to describe how the speaker saw Helen. The author as well used the word “Psyche” towards the ending of the poem to emphasize Helen’s beauty since “Psyche” means beautiful princess dear to god. The purpose was to emphasize and show the speakers’ admiration and obsession towards Helen. The tone in this poem is peaceful and graceful for when the author says ”Thy Naiad airs have brought me home” signifies that Helen’s beauty is peaceful and gentle and her air can just take him home.
Comparison and Contrast Essay In the poems, “To Helen” and “Helen”, both Edgar Allan Poe and H.D. emphasize the beauty of the infamous Helen of Troy; however, the speakers’ attitudes differ as one praises and worships Helen while the other condemns her for her treachery and remains unmoved by her beauty. Although both poems discuss Helen of Troy, both speakers’ withhold different perspectives within the first stanza. In “To Helen” the speaker sets Helen on a pedestal as he uses the apostrophe “Helen, thy beauty is to me” (Poe, line 1). He emphasizes that he speaks to her as the title “To Helen” sets the praiseful tone within the poem.
In ‘Sonnet 130’ Shakespeare describes his mistress’s eyes as ‘nothing like the sun’, this goes against the normal conventions of a traditional sonnet. This is because in a traditional sonnet the poet would praise the woman that he loved by telling us that her eyes do shine like the sun. He would use the word ‘sun’ to emphasise how important she is to him because everything revolves around the ‘sun’, so this would imply that his life revolves around her. Traditional sonnets were written by men to women who were unobtainable; the women were usually married or engaged. However in ‘Sonnet 130’ the word ‘mistress’ tells us that Shakespeare is married and is having an affair with the woman who he is writing the sonnet to.
In To Helen, the first few lines are “thy beauty to me like those Nicean barks of yore.” Describing Helen as a strong beautiful woman and nothing in a negative manner. It is obvious with both authors use of diction that each poem portrays Helen in a different light and very different from one another. The imagery used to describe Helen in both poems is also very contradicting and it is very apparent how each author feels about her. In Edgar Allan Poe’s he describes her by saying “thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face” using delicate words to show how precious Helen really is and how he adores her. “ How statue-like I see thy hand” meaning her beauty is almost like that of a statue and how he interprets her as being just as perfect.
The speaker bounces back and forth between simile and metaphor to create a specific illustration for readers to envision. A typical sonnet line would commonly express how a woman is as beautiful as the aspects of nature. Shakespeare may not use these similes and metaphors in the typical way, but he does succeed in displaying a vivid description of his apparently less than enticing mistress. The audience learns that this woman’s eyes do not look “like the sun” (1), and that even the fair pink hue of coral is “far more red” (2) than the color of her lips. He does not give descriptions of alluring scents or shiny hair, but instead describes putrid breath that “reeks” (8) and “black wires” (4) that grow in her hair’s place.
He also demonstrates his society's social heirarchy for women. He only uses this, however, to emphasize his disagreement with the "natural order" of things. In his tales, Chaucer portrays the virgin to be pure and the object of all men's desire, the wife to be completely under a man's control, and the widow to be strong willed and independent, yet undesirable, showing the lack of power that women have in Medieval times. In "The Knight's Tale" (KT), Chaucer represents Emily as the beautiful and fair virgin. He does this by comparing her to nature, which is a symbol of purity and innocence.
In Much Ado about Nothing, these two lovers are represented by Claudio and Hero, and the love which Shakespeare presents between them is meant to be romantic love or love at first sight; in my opinion, this is simply lust. There is no evidence in the play to suggest that Claudio's motivation for marriage is actually real love, the love of Hero's personality. He 'loves' her for what she is, not who she is; she fits Elizabethan society's ideal of the perfect woman. Claudio describes her as 'modest' (I.i.147), meaning chaste, an essential quality of an unmarried woman in the Elizabethan era, and in lines 167-168 of Act one, Scene one states: '...she is the sweetest lady that ever / I looked on.' He makes no comment on her character, but this would have been seen as normal in Elizabethan times; women were expected to be seen but not heard, and Shakespeare presents Hero as the conventional woman of her day.