University Level Literature Essay

Examine two or three examples of one of the following forms to illustrate its main features: ballad, sonnet, elegy, couplets, blank verse, free verse. How does the form relate to the content of the poems discussed?

In 'next to of course god america I' (p. 1394) by E.E. Cummings and Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 116' (p. 266) the sonnet form is used for two contrasting purposes - Shakespeare for a typical romance but Cummings for satire and experimentation. In this essay I will explore how the sonnet form is constructed to give such different meanings. Shakespeare employs the rigid English sonnet structure to discuss 'the marriage of true minds,' opening the poem with the topic that is then unravelled as he tries to define what love is. The first quatrain plays with language, 'love is not love/ which alters when it alteration finds,' to suggest the complex nature of love that the speaker perceives as immovable, this toying with language contrasting to the implication he gives that love cannot be toyed with. This sense of power is developed in the second quatrain, where typically the English sonnet explores and idea before the 'turn' and concluding couplets, 'ever-fixed mark,' and 'star,' giving it celestial qualities and so showing the speaker's definition of love as something natural and uncontrollable. This is very much in keeping with previous sonnets in his own sequence and in others, and in adhering to the conventions of the sonnet form; he links the solidity of love to the solidity of the sonnet's structure, implying that it cannot be altered. This certainty is brought to a resolution in closed couplet, 'If this be error upon me proved/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved,' however this is somewhat problematic - as a lyric poem, the speaker presents a subjective view as absolute fact because we can never prove his 'error' in defining an abstract and elusive concept, and so this goes unchallenged until later sonnets in the sequence and in poetry in general. 'Sonnet 116' self-consciously fits in to the sonnet tradition by presenting conventional romance and epitomising what the original sonnets were supposed to be. By contrast, Cummings deliberately flouts the conventions of the typical sonnet by using it to ridicule blind jingoism and love of a different kind, as he asks, 'what could be more beat-/iful that these heroic happy dead.' This highlights the cynicism by breaking the word 'beautiful,' to show that there is really nothing beautiful about it - the use of enjambment showing how these archaic ideas to the speaker are broken themselves. As a response to World War I, Cummings not only follows in the sonnet tradition but also in the war poetry tradition, and incorporates symbols of 'lions,' reminiscent of the phrase 'lions led by donkeys,' which was often used to criticise the ranking system in the army, as well as typically pro-war sentiment, 'oh say can you see,' being the opening line to the US National Anthem, linking this speaker to the entire American population that he represents in this typical language. This sonnet, like Shakespeare's, also positions the reader, but here Cummings wants the reader to become more critical rather than accepting - again, another subversion of the form - and uses every technique possible to stray from tradition whilst the topic itself is tradition. The lack of punctuation and capital letters shows the unravelling of the concepts he talks of, linking the form of a sonnet to the ideas used to inspire the nation that the speaker feels are against the original foundations America was built on, yet another question asking, 'shall the voice of liberty be mute?' Like Shakespeare, Cummings creates a reflexive poem, but deliberately draws attention to the work's status as a poem - this voice is, to a certain extent, the voice of liberty, and in typical Modernist fashion he makes the speaker ambiguous with the isolated final line, 'He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.' This questioning of voice opposes the natural appearance of Shakespeare's and brings the sonnet form into context - as the world changed, Cummings and others changed the sonnet. Despite the contrasting content of these sonnets, they actually both recognise the necessary conventions of the sonnet form and use or misuse them for the desired effect, which in both cases is an assertion of opinion, although we can never know whose opinion this really is. Where 'Sonnet 116' is exemplary of the English sonnet, 'next of course to god america I' is a subversion of this, both possessing self-awareness of how each fits into the sonnet tradition.