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 90th 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.