Sonnets (Vol. 62) | Robert Crosman (essay date 1990)
Robert Crosman (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: “Making Love Out of Nothing at All: The Issue of Story in Shakespeare's Procreation Sonnets,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, Winter, 1990, pp. 470-88.
[In the following essay, Crosman studies the first seventeen sonnets and contends that a distinct narrative may be discerned.]
My thesis is that there is a discernible story in Shakespeare's sonnets, and I will support that thesis with a reading of sonnets 1-17, the so-called procreation sonnets. Because there is widespread distrust of finding narrative in the sonnets, I will begin by discussing the nature of that distrust, and will then argue in favor of permitting Shakespeare's sonnets to tell a story.
Let us begin with some characteristic and influential pronouncements on the subject:
1943
The sonnets may not be in an order which is absolutely correct but no one can deny that they are related and...
[The entire page is 11473 words long]
Navigate
