Before embarking on this discussion, I want to make it clear that I have no opinion on whether or not a pope should resign. This is a matter for the Roman Catholic Church to decide, and they have decided that papal resignation is permissible and honorable. In the course of history, several popes have resigned. ...
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is one of his most famous works because it investigates wisdom imparted from a man who is enjoying the last of his youth to a younger generation. There is an eerie beauty in recognizing the death of one’s vigor and the imagery Shakespeare creates to explain his loss is equally ...
Before William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer, there was the man who both inspired and influenced much of their work: Giovanni Boccaccio. Boccaccio composed ground-breaking literary works during his lifetime that built the foundation for literature today. His poems and epics written in Italian and Latin became classics that would endure for hundreds of years and ...
Edmund Spenser wrote Amoretti about his courtship with Elizabeth Boyle and their eventual wedding in June of 1594. Spenser follows the Petrarchan style; however, one notable difference is that the women that Petrarch writes about are unavailable to him while Spenser wrote about a woman that he actually could have and did have. The rhyme ...
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 is a satire and commentary on other contemporary sonnets in which the subject, generally a woman, is compared to unparalleled beauty. His comment in doing this is that a lover’s beauty is does not need to be explained using comparisons which are so unrealistic that they become absurd. Rather, Shakespeare’s narrator in ...
Of all of the sonnets he ever wrote, Shakespeare may have with Sonnet 116 created no equal in terms of creating a perfect English sonnet that can be understood relatively easily by even someone who doesn’t care much for poetry. Like me. Sonnet 116 is rock solid example of the English sonnet form, presented with ...
