English Coursework

[yunie666]

ok so ive just done my english coursework and i was wondering what you guys thought of it. Im a 14 yr teen who likes writing but i have no idea if im any good at it. Its not a story its more of an eassy i like constructive cristism and i just wanted your opinions, here it is!


English Coursework

How do the images in the poems “Sonnet 130” and “Anne Hathaway” lead to two different representations of love?

The images in the poem “Sonnet 130” represent love in an untypical way, as the quote “and in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” suggests. We would expect a love poem to portray love in a more romantic fashion than this quote shows. However, the theme of this particular sonnet is honesty, and I think the poet would like us to understand that this love is very powerful because it is based on the truth, and not on flowery phrases and unrealistic metaphors. In describing his mistresses’ breath he says ‘ that from my mistress reeks’, and this is actually quite a negative way to describe someone’s breath – the word ‘reek’ usually relates to a bad smell and is therefore unusual in a love sonnet. This creates a far stronger impact on the reader than in the more typical type of sonnet, making the reader think more about the language used, and how it shows the strength of Shakespeare’s love.


However in the poem “Anne Hathaway” the representation of love is shown differently. The quote “The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff tops, seas
where we would dive for pearls” shows the flowery language more typical in a sonnet about love than the previous poem. I think that the poet is pretending to be Anne Hathaway and in doing this she is idolising Shakespeare and the times she had with him as he has just died. In her grief she is romanticising everything she did with Shakespeare to make it seem that they had a great relationship. The phrase “the bed we loved in was a spinning world” makes it seem like they loved each other a lot, it shows that Anne Hathaway still wants to remember everything she did with Shakespeare that was good including having sex. The impact of this on, us, the reader is that is we know that Anne Hathaway loves Shakespeare deeply and this creates two main feelings in the reader – we are glad that she has been lucky enough to have such a deep love, but we are also sad that she had to lose him.

so what do you think?