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How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barret Browning - Coggle Diagram
How Do I Love Thee?
by Elizabeth Barret Browning
Form
Sonnet - 43/44.
Not intended for publication.
Unusual for female to be so
candidly declaring love.
Context
Published in 'Songs From the Portuguese'.
Religious father; Jamaican sugar plantation; slaves.
Victorian.
Invalid - lung condition/spinal injury; opiates
(subtsnace treat pain or cause sleep).
Recluse after deaths of mother and brother.
Robert Browning - 6yrs younger; accomplished poet.
Abolishionist and humantarian.
1846 secretly married and eloped to Florence.
Structure
Anaphoric Refrain
'I love thee' done deliberately.
Drilling the thought into him.
Heightens theme, reinforces rhythm.
Rhyme: ABBA, ABBA,
CDC, DCD.
Enjambment
Lines 2 and 4 shows how love can't
be physically contained.
Overwhelmed by force of love.
Metaphysical.
Love is so abundant, boundless.
End-stopped lines
Declarative and stop line.
Tone is assertive, turning back on religion.
Caesura
Deals with abstract emotion rather than
just the conventional representation.
'thee/let' adds weight to the question but also to her response,
there are so many ways in which I love you.
Aural Imagery
Alliteration
Repitition of hard, explosive 'p' sounds adds forceful, angry, assured love as the speaker references the pain she has suffered in the past.
Makes speaker appear determined; makes declaration strong.
Pairs: F and S
(eg, griefs, faiths)
Difficult to read or speak/pronounce.
Symbolising difficulty the speaker feels
mentioning her past pain and struggles.
May even echo her breathlessness.
Themes:
Religion.
Intense love.
Faith in love.
Figurative Language
Metaphor/Metaphysical
'soul can reach'.
Boundless, intimate, immeasurable, vast, unquantifiable.
Who can tell where a soul can reach?
By using the abstract notion of soul, essence of who somebody is; can't touch or see; grandiose spacial metaphor.
'childhood's faith'.
Becomes a metaphor.
Death of feeling, total devotion or blind faith.
Suggest absolute belief, almost religious devotion to Robert.
Simile
'as men... right'
Just as people naturally believe moral behaviour is to be admired and strived for, so naturally, "I believe in my love for you".