Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
English - Structure and Form (Sonnet 116, La Belle Dame sans Merci, My…
English - Structure and Form (Sonnet 116, La Belle Dame sans Merci, My Last Duchess, Remember. )
Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare (16th century)
Analysis
Three four line sections (with alternate rhymes) and ending with rhyming couplet.
A classic Shakespeare sonnet is normally made up of 14 lines.
The first quatrain tells us what true love is not.
The poem is conventional in form, it uses the metre that Shakespeare relies on in his plays, Iambic pentameter.
The next tells us what it is, through the extended metaphor of a storm at sea.
The third quatrain personifies time as the Grim Reaper and insists that "Loves not Time's fool", varying the rhythm to trochaic at this point to make the message clear,
Iambic pentameter as each line has ten syllables made up of five (Latin penta) poetic "feet", each of which has two syllables, the second of which is stressed.
This the rhythm of everyday speech and provides a reassuring heartbeat beneath our reading of the poem.
La Belle Dame sans Merci - John Keats (1819)
Analysis
The metre is iambic, but because there are 8 syllables to the line they are called iambic tetrameters.
The final line of each stanza is shorter, perhaps to symbolise how the knight's life has been cut short.
Here there are twelve regular quatrains, each with the second and fourth lines rhyming.
The first three stanzas are spoken by an unnamed speaker; the knight then tells his story of how he reached this sad state.
This is written in the form of ballad. This was a medieval way of story-telling, usually divided up into short song-like stanzas.
The final stanza echoes the first, but answers the speaker's question.
My Last Duchess - Robert Browning (1842)
Analysis
This in the form of a dramatic monologue.
The Duke totally dominates the scene, speaking in one long stanza, allowing the Envoy no chance to give his opinion.
Even sometime putting words into his guest's mouth. "And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,/ How such a glance came there"
One of the reasons why browning likes the monologue so much, is that he is able to exploit the gap between what the speaker (within the poem) wants us to know, and what the poet (standing outside the poem) allows us to read between the lines.
What things do we (as readers) learn here, that the Duke does not mean to tell his visitor?
In one way the piece is very unlike most lyric poetry - there are no notable metaphors or similes.
All the images are of things that are literally present, or that the Duke recalls from his memory of the past, perhaps to reflect his lack of imagination and empathy.
Analysis 2
This means that most punctuation marks appear within the lines (not at the end) and so, as we read the poem, we do not notice the very formal and controlled metre and rhyme scheme which would make the poem sound artificial.
Thus the truth is disguised, just as the Duke is hiding his cruelty behind a very formal and elegant facade.
However, Browning does not end stop the lines, he makes them run on by using enjambment.
The poem is one in which the relationship between appearance and reality is important, between what things seem and what they really are.
The metre is iambic pentameter and Browning arranges the lines in tightly rhyming couplets or pairs.
On the surface it is an account of a polite negotiation between a noble Duke and a Count's messenger, enlivened by the host's decision to show his privileged guest a masterpiece by a great portrait painter and to recount something of its subject, his previous wife.
Beneath the surface is a terrible story of ruthless and despotic power - of the Duke's disapproval of the natural and innocent behaviour of his naive wife, who supposedly did not understand the value of his great name and who therefore had to be murdered.
Pronouns, Possessives and other forms of address
Although we are told that the speaker is the Duke of "Ferrara" in the subtitle, the only named characters in the poem are the two artists, who symbolise the Duke's monetary power.
The Duchess and Count are known only by their titles, while otherwise only pronouns are used.
The first person pronouns (I and Me) for the Duke are, not surprisingly, the most common, and we find the possessive pronoun "my" occurring frequently.
This suggests the Duke's self-obsession and serves to dehumanise the other characters
The poem ends with "me!"
The Duke finds other ways to avoid using names: he calls the Duchess "such an one" dismissively, while his bride-to-be, mentioned well after her father, the Count, is impersonally "his fair daughter's self" who is to become the Duke's "object", or possession.
Remember - Christina Rossetti (1849)
Analysis
'Remember' is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter
Petrarch, who pioneered the form, wrote his love sonnets to Laura in the fourteenth century. Rossetti's poem consists of an ABBA ABBA octave though the rhyme scheme of the sestet changes from petrarch's usual rhyme to CDD ECE, perhaps to emphasise the radical new direction this love poem takes.
As with all petrarchan sonnets there is a volta (or 'turn') at the end of the eighth line and the sestet (six-line section) begins.
The volta is signalled by Rossetti's use of the word 'yet': the argument of the sonnet changes direction at this point.
Even though the speaker seems to reach peace with the idea of her death at the end of the octave, her tone changes with the volta, which is the break between the octave and the sestet.
The volta typically accompanies a change in attitude, which is true in this poem.
She wishes above all for her lover to be happy, even if that means forgetting her.
The speaker now even renounces the need to be remembered, which is ironic because the poem is titled 'Remember'.
She is, in a surprising twist, willing to sacrifice her personal desire in an expression of selfless, true love.