The Inversion of Cultural Traditions in Shakespeare's Sonnets | Robert Ellrodt, Université de Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle
Robert Ellrodt, Université de Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle
In an earlier essay I have pointed out that Shakespeare, while writing within a convention in his Sonnets, had in fact left out much of the convention, discarding a great many themes and rhetorical devices. From this point of view the Sonnets might be described by negatives like Gonzalo's utopia: no moment of enamoration, no wooing or whining, no flinty heart, no kiss, no adventures of Cupid (with the ironical exception of the closing sonnets), no address to Love, to the Muse, or to a river, no catalogue of delights, no blazon, no emblem, no mythologizing, no pastoralism, no military metaphor, no astro-logical or heraldic poem.1
A statistical study of the vocabulary in the sonnets of Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton confirms this originality. Shakespeare has the lowest percentage of words expressing the traditional feelings of the Petrarchan lover:...
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