'From an Essay on Criticism' - An essay on the use of metaphor
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Course
English Studies - Introduction to Poetry
Institution
Durham University (DUT)
This essay is graded A* (96%, 24/25) AS Level commenting at a high level on the use of different metaphors regarding themes in his poem, offering in depth critical analysis of quotes (included in essay) with a perceptive understanding of the issues at play. Also including insightful points on struc...
‘At one level, imagery works through similarity and persuasive likeness, but
some of the most striking imagery in poetry is memorable precisely because it
flouts comparison and challenges credibility.’ How far do you agree with this
account of poetic imagery?
Poetic imagery can be used in varying styles, as seen in the four poems ‘Sonnet
130’, ‘How do I love thee?’, ‘The Voice’ and ‘America’. In tackling this account, one
must question how poetry lodges itself in readers’ memories: is it by standing out
and providing food for thought? Or is it by conveying its point the most effectively
and being currently relevant? This essay argues imagery through similarity and
persuasive likeness makes poetry memorable given it conveys themes effectively
and provokes heartfelt emotion.
In the sonnets ‘How do I love thee’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and ‘Sonnet 130’
by Shakespeare, one disagrees with this account of poetic imagery as Browning
presents the ardour of her love memorably and distinctly. A mockery of the
Petrarchan romantic ideals, Shakespeare’s sonnet scorns the traditional properties
of imagery - his mistress’s eyes ‘are nothing like the sun’ and even coral is ‘far more
red than her lips’ red’. Striking though this may be, the poet seems more intent on
denouncing courtly etiquette than describing his love for his mistress; expressions of
love fade into forgetfulness, overshadowed by his ideological stance that women are
real human beings instead of romanticised ‘goddesses’. Whereas in Browning’s
sonnet, not only is the traditional use of the sonnet portraying the constancy and
steadfastness of her love - illustrating the truth in her claim that ‘[she] shall but love
thee better after death.’, the finality of this statement sealed with a full stop - but
imagery is used conventionally too: ‘I love thee … by sun and candle-light.’ Both
poems make use of light imagery, presenting a stark contrast in their lovers’
depictions. The ‘sun’ to Shakespeare serves as a perfect example of how far his
mistress is from being perfect, resolving not to be blinded by the unrealistic biases of
the time. Light in Browning’s poem has a multi-dimensional purpose: to denote the
light of her love - not even death is capable of extinguishing its shine - and the
direction of it - she will love her husband (the object of affection) in the sunny triumph
of youth, in the dim twilight of her lover’s life and in the ‘candle-light’ of old age.
Moreover, one is urged to question the effectiveness of the different employments of
, imagery conveying the poets’ love: as Johanson describes ‘To be romancing
someone, or to feel a sense of romance, is to be telling a story of love, in the plain
language from the heart’ (8).1 Perhaps this is why the power of Browning’s love is felt
so much more fiercely; the imagery is memorable as it distinctly follows her heart’s
desire to prove her love through a series of relatable - sometimes ‘plain’ - images.
Her comparisons make logical sense to the reader, using universal concepts to
communicate how wholly she loves her husband: ‘with the breath,/ Smiles, tears of
all my life’. The physical manifestations of opposing feelings imply her love spans the
entire spectrum of human emotion and is language truly ‘from the heart’. This is
unlike Shakespeare’s language, where his words undergo a process of irony and
contrariness, detracting the central focus from his mistress: he molds her into a foil
and antithesis to his point - she is ‘nothing like’ natural beauties and with ‘no such
roses’ are her cheeks coloured -, bringing us to Fish’s commentary that ‘Either
everything must converge on a center, or everything must converge in the absence
of a center’ (41-54).2 Given the lack of central cohesion in Shakespeare’s sonnet,
one perceives Browning’s claims of love as memorable due to this fulfillment of the
requirement that everything converge at a ‘centre’, the centre being how dearly she
loves her husband.
Notwithstanding, imagery can be memorable when it flouts comparison and
challenges credibility because it flings thought provoking ideas onto the reader
unexpectedly, heightening its effect. This is evident in Claude McKay’s poem
‘America’, portraying the oxymoronic conflict of his love for the ‘cultured hell’ - his
beloved torturer. So forceful and brutal is the imagery depicting America’s treatment
of him that it jolts the reader out of passivity, pushing us to feel as if we had partaken
in his suffering. Through the underrunning metaphor of America being his mother -
the personification fitting into the traditional function of a sonnet, addressing female
objects of desire, here with an admiring and cowering fixation ‘Her vigor’ ‘Her
bigness’ ‘her might’, we are forced to taste his dire nourishment: ‘she feeds me
bread of bitterness’. The phonetics in ‘bitterness’ warp the gustatory words ‘feed’ and
‘bread’, illustrating them as insufficient sustenance and, given the mix of the tangible
‘bread’ with the intangible ‘bitterness’, it suggests this affects both his physical and
1
Johanson, Love Poetry: “How do I love thee?”
2
Fish, “How Ordinary Is Ordinary Language?”
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