How do any of the following poets’ views on love compare? It may also be worth analyzing and/or comparing some of these poets literary devices (mostly likely images and/or metaphors).

Both Petrarch and Shakespeare are influenced by courtly love, a love that is built on a person’s suffering to attain a great relationship. In Petrarch’s 90^th poem, he describes how he suffers endlessly for his love for this woman as he uses vivid images. He believes the hardships or ascetic suffering he endures brings him higher to the truth because one needs to work hard for love. Petrarch is lured by this woman’s beauty as he describes her “gold hair” that “scatters in the breeze,” eyes that emit “wavering light, beyond measure,” a voice that is more than human, and her “moving…of angelic form.” He ends this poem by saying he has been hit by cupid’s arrow, as he will forever be scarred and tormented by his love.

Petrarch’s idea of courtly love influences Shakespeare, but Shakespeare is a bit more cynical and dark in his views in certain poems. However, Sonnet 116 is the exception that fits in with petrarchism as it celebrates marriage as an unbreakable commitment built on values and morals. Love is a force that endures suffering and pain in order to become stronger and for the people involved to gain knowledge. Love never dies even when someone tries to be destructive as it is “not a love/ Which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove:/ O no! it is an ever-fixed mark.” Shakespeare also uses a star that guides boats as a metaphor that guides love. Lastly, he concludes by saying that he knows he is right in his views but in the case that he is wrong and someone can prove it, he has never written, meaning he’ll take back what he said and no man has truly loved.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Sappho’s poetry reveals the raw emotion and struggles of love expressed through pain, jealousy, and intense fire (passion) between the lover and the loved. Her eloquence lies in the truth and hardships of love, not just  the beauty and romanticism typically alluded to in other poems.  Love, for her, was a story experienced by the same sexes as well as between the sexes. Sappho’s poems introduced to her contemporaries an understanding of all relationships and the term we use today, lesbian.

Poem 94 illustrates the heartbreaking separation between two people as she begins by writing “I simply want to be dead. Weeping she left me.” Her partner, in tears, expresses how badly things have come between the both of them, leading to Sappho’s change in tone as she expresses the good and beautiful times they shared with images of woven garlands and flowers. Sappho focuses more on herself rather than her beloved in an attempt to express her deep sorrow and suffering to her lover and the reader. By expressing her emotional vulnerability, Sappho empowers women with independence. This same strength was seen in Lysistrata’s plot to end a war, using women as the negotiating tools by withholding sexual favors to evoke a truce. Her crazy scheme not only proved to be successful, but it revealed the power and influence that women share.

How does Dido’s experience affect our perception of the work as a whole? To what degree do we have sympathy for her? Is she a victim of fate or has Aeneas mistreated her or her both?

In “The Aeneid,” destiny and fate are factors that define the character’s actions and desires. As love cripples Dido’s character, like an illness that slowly leads to her demise, the tragedy created lies in her pain and loss. Destiny, fate, and the will of the gods become powerful forces that both Dido and Aeneas cannot overcome. Unwilling to marry after the death of her husband, Cupid’s spell along with Juno and Venus’ interference become responsible forces in her horrific ending. Dido’s suicide is overshadowed by the diminishing of her qualities of strength, confidence, and power as a queen and individual, which were reflected within her prior to her obsessive love for Aeneas. Left alone and destroyed by Aeneas, this tragic romance changes the perception of the story brought on by the lack of control of their destinies. As readers, we become saddened and confused because despite Aeneas’s sympathetic and tender side, his ability to leave Dido and continue his quest and legacy for Rome represents both the belief that fate and his mistreatment were responsible for Dido’s death. The passion and volatility of her love emphasizes the image of her being a victim, weakened by Aeneas’ order, control, and loyalty to his prophecy.