Sonnet 43 Flashcards
Title & Form
Petrarchan sonnet
•14 lines
•iambic pentameter mimics normal speech - metre is disrupted by pauses and repetition, making the reader sound passionate
• Themes of love and devotion
• ‘thee’ direct and personal, but also universal
• enjambement, overflowing with love
• Caesura - breathless with excitement
• juxtaposition between ‘breath and death* emphasises abiding love
Structure
Octave - love is divine
Sestet - temporal phrases
‘Counts’ - methodical and intense
Introductory question is clear, linear structure
Anaphora - same words show her inability to explain the depth of her love whilst emphasising her hyperbolic adjectives
Constant positive tone
Superficial view of love
Metaphysical semantic field
soul Being Grace Right Praise saints God
Religious allusions insinuate that her love is unconditional, is present throughout all aspects of her life, is what gives her life meaning
How do I love thee?
Rhetorical question, she wants to be asked - flattery
I love thee
Repetition shows devotions
depth and breadth and height
Hyperbolic
Swelling imagery- polysyndeton
Devotion
strive for Right
love is as important as freedom
Virtuous, morally right
by sun and candlelight
loved in everything, light imagery
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith
With my lost saints
Smiles, tears, of all my life
Juxtaposition
Shows there has been a journey
The love is not pure, but it is real. Idolising? He has replaced her faith?
Enthusiastic tone, exclamatory for impact
death
Lack of negative tone - her love has enlightened her and she no longer fears death
Eternal love
Her belief in its purity exacerbated
Context
More?
Religious felt strongly by 19th century readers
About her future husband Robert Browning published in 1850
