Theme and Technique in Shakespeare's Sonnets

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Shakespeare's use of the theme of time-as-destroyer, in three of the sonnets: No's 64, 65, and 73. Shakespeare's poetic techniques are analyzed in detail. Some of these include meter, alliteration, antithesis, syllogism, personification, ploce, and chiasmus. In order to demonstrate these different techniques, the author makes extensive comparisons between the three sonnets.

From the Paper:

"The poem is an apostrophe, addressed to the absent (or at least voiceless) lover. It says these things you may see in me: that I am aging, that I am like a setting sun, that I must soon die. But because you see this impermanence, this fading or deterioration, you only love me more. Now, impermanence has become a positive thing, fueling the love his beloved has for him.
"The imagery in this sonnet is gentler than that of the two others. There, we had raging, engulfing oceans, and battering days, and rocks and brass and hard, indomitable things. Now, the imagery is of yellowing leaves, and boughs that once had sweet singing birds on them. The giving over to inevitable death is not one raged against, but is a sweet thing like the setting of a sun. His late stage of life is being compared with fading light, and with night which is "death's second self that seals up all in rest." We are being eased into death here, being made to think of it as slumber."

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