Comparing 3 Romantic Sonnets
During the nineteenth century, the thematic and structural conventions of the sonnet appealed to a number of poets of the Romantic genre, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti and Alice Meynell. They used the sonnet form, the Italian in particular, in ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, ‘A Dream’ and ‘ Renouncement’ respectively, which we are going to explore mainly in terms of form as examples of the sonnet traditions. We shall look at how Browning, Rossetti and Meynell use these sonnet restrictions and conventions to explore themes described in their sonnets. As the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics explains, convention involves ‘an implicit agreement between a writer and some of his readers that allows her certain freedoms in, and imposes certain restrictions upon, her treatment of style, structure, and theme and enables these readers to interpret his work correctly.’ Poets choose to write in sonnet form over other poetic styles partly because of its challenging structural and contextual limitations, which require precision of poetic expression, but also because these very limitations allow certain poetic freedoms other poetic forms do not offer.In the Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H.
Sonnet conventions work in accordance with the theme, tone and mood of ‘Songs from the Portuguese’ and ‘A Dream’, and even more so in Meynell’s ‘Renouncement’. The theme here is a relationship where feelings and desires have to be suppressed, expression controlled and thoughts must remain undisclosed. The poet confesses: I shun the thought that lurks in all delight-
Some topics in this essay:
Christina Rossetti,
Dream’ Meynell’s,
Elizabeth Browning,
Rossetti Meynell,
Stephen Denning,
Poetry Poetics,
Charles Gayley,
William Shakespeare,
Alice Meynell,
MH Abrams,
sonnet form,
rossetti meynell,
browning rossetti,
rhyming scheme,
christina rossetti,
browning rossetti meynell,
sonnet conventions,
portuguese’ ‘a dream’,
‘songs portuguese’,
rhyme pattern,
tone mood,
traditional sonnet,
write sonnet form,
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Approximate Word count = 1383
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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