Sonnet 73 Essay

In the book Break Blow Burn, Camille Paglia delineates William Shakespeare’s intricate and complex poem, “Sonnet 73.” In order to thoroughly examine the poem on its deeper meaning, Paglia presents historical details about its context, analyzes formalistically and considers archetypal elements, and explains its philosophical undertones. Paglia begins by describing the history of the sonnet. It was established as a “courtly love tradition” in France before spreading to English writers, who adjusted the sonnet to be “ridden with ‘conceits’” (4). Shakespeare revolutionized this type of poem by restoring it from “an exhausted romantic genre” to a “instrument of self-analysis” (Paglia 4). Furthermore, Shakespeare transformed the genre to include more substance, while maintaining an attention to detail. Paglia elaborates that consequently, the sonnet became less about individual suffering; rather, its new focus was on the “human condition” and universal themes (4). Moreover,
Shakespeare wrote three quatrains, but each part strengthens the whole by disclosing “mankind’s interconnection with nature” (Paglia 4). According to Paglia, the final couplet explains the evanescence of things man craves, but nonetheless, they still contain value because “life’s transience intensifies its pleasures” (6). Furthermore, Paglia closes with the idea that humanity is affected by abstract forces, such as nature, rather than God and the afterlife; consciousness is defined by basic qualities, and humanity will always be “reabsorbed by nature” (7). By interpreting Shakespeare’s poem through a variety of approaches, Paglia informs her readers of the poem’s historical background, its formalistic qualities, its archetypal features, as well as its philosophical connotations. With these interpretations, she demonstrates how much meaning can be gathered from a short, yet comprehensive