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Question:

mischa91
mischa91
Student
College - Senior

Can anybody help me to find the rhetorical devices in "Sonnet 39" by Shakespeare. Are there, for example, any metaphors?  Antithesis?

 

O how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring, And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone. O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth hence remain.

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Posted by mischa91 on Tuesday May 19, 2009 at 10:39 AM and tagged with sonnet 39, sonnet shakespeare.

Answers:

  1. mark1966
    mark1966 Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    This sonnet is one of the opening collection addressed to 'a young man.' It is a series of rhetorical questions that reflect on the theme of absence and the sadness at being apart. As the e.notes guide to the sonnets states it is a formal Elizabethan sonnet written within  the structure of fourteen lines and the iambic pentameter. It has three quatrians (four lines) and a concluding rhyming couplet that sums the poem up. The poem reflects on the paradox that he appears to be simultaneously two beings,, yet they lead separate lives and have separate identities. It uses alliteration in 'thou teachest' and 'time and thoughts' using the 't' sound and the oxymoron - the antithesis- of 'sweet' and 'sour.' I hopoe this helps!

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    Posted by mark1966 on Thursday May 21, 2009 at 3:37 AM