论莎士比亚十四行诗的语言特色

题目（英文）On the Linguistic Features of Shakespeare’s Poem                                          

题目（中文）    论莎士比亚十四行诗的语言特色                                 

一、Introduction to the Author

                   William Shakespeare(1564-1616)

1.Life story

William Shakespeare , the greatest and the most famous of all English authors, has been regarded as one of the rare geniuses of mankind who have become landmarks in the history of world culture .Goethe once made a judgment on Shakespeare when he wrote, “I do not remember that any book or person or event in my life ever made so great an impression upon me as the plays of Shakespeare.” However , we know little about the man Shakespeare . The facts of Shakespeare’s life come down from three sources: church and legal records, folk traditions, and the comments of his contemporaries. These sources make it possible today for us to collect some information to make a sketch of his life.   

2.Works of Shakespeare

Shakespeare is at once a playwright and a poet. The year 1593 and 1584 witnessed his writing of the only two long poem: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. During the years from 1592 - 1598 he composed one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, which adorned his fame as a poet of startling faculty. He is most successful in the field of drama. In the years from 1590-1612 , Shakespeare wrote altogether thirty-eight play. 

二、Introduction to the sonnet

The sonnet is a kind of lyric short poem originated from Italian folk. It prevailed throughout Europe in the early Renaissance, its structure is very strict, it’s divided into two parts: the upper paragraph is eight lines, the lower paragraph is six lines , each line is eleven syllables. Rhyme arrangement: abba abba cdc ded..

Shakespeare’s sonnet is more rigorous in structure. He divides the sonnet into two parts: the first part is divided into three four lines, and the second part is divided into two lines of ten syllables per line. Rhyme arrangement: abab cdcd efeg gg.

For a poet, the more rigorous the structure of the poem, the more difficult it its to express emotion, while Shakespeare’s sonnet is unrestrained and free, just as his dramas are full of imagination. And the language of his poetry is full of imagination and emotion.

Shakespeare published the sonnet in 1969, which was his last non-theatrical work.Scholars can’t determine when each of the 154sonnets was completed, but there is evidence that Shakespeare wrote such sonnets for a private reader throughout his career.Critics praise the sonnet as a deep reflection on the nature of love, sex, reproduction, death and time 

三、Literary appreciation

                      

 Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate;

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:

But the eternal summer shall not fade.

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare makes his beloved immortal by means of his poetry. This theme is a conventional one in Elizabethan sonnet. But Shakespeare treats it in an original and individual manner. Shakespeare writes a monologue in the form of an address. It contains a carefully reasoned argument which, as in many of Shakespeare’s sonnet, moves in series of steps

The first line, a question, proposes a comparison between Shakespeare’s beloved and a summer season. Summer is chosen because it is lovely and pleasant. In the second line the comparison is restricted: in outward appearance and character the beloved person is more beautiful and less extreme than summer. The reasons for the restriction are given in the next four lines which describe the less pleasant aspects of summer . In the seventh and eighth lines Shakespeare complains that every beauty will become less one day. The ninth line takes up the comparison with summer again: summer has by now become the summer of life. The comparison turns into a contrast by referring back to the seventh

The poet’s assurance becomes even firmer in lines eleven and twelve, which contain a promise that death will be conquered. “Eternal line” refers to lines of poetry but also suggest lines of shape. It point forward to the triumphant couplet which explains and summarizes the theme: poetry is immortal and makes beauty immortal. Because of the step by step arguments .

Shakespeare’s conclusion makes the impression of great certainty. His method is rational and logical  Shakespeare wrote a series of sonnets, most of which were probably addressed to a noble person for whom he felt deep love and admiration. In many of them he deels with the problem of time, sometimes optimistically as in the present sonnet, sometimes in a mood of despair

四、Shakespeare’s literary achievement

Shakespeare is one of the founders of realism in world literature. He maintains that the purpose of dramatic performance is “to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature”. In his works, he paints the decline of the old feudal nobility and the vice of the new Tudor monarch. Besides , his plays have good plots and life-like characters too. His drama is an expression, a monument of the English Renaissance since he wrote about his own people for his own time.

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