英国文学课件Sonnet.doc

Sonnet 18Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summers lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or natures changing course untrimmd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 能不能让我来把你比拟做夏日？ 你可是更加温和，更加可爱： 狂风会吹落五月里开的好花儿， 夏季的生命又未免结束得太快： 有时候苍天的巨眼照得太灼热， 他那金彩的脸色也会被遮暗； 每一样美呀，总会离开美而凋落， 被时机或者自然的代谢所摧残； 但是你永久的夏天决不会凋枯， 你永远不会失去你美的仪态； 死神夸不着你在他的影子里踯躅， 你将在不朽的诗中与时间同在； 只要人类在呼吸，眼睛看得见， 我这诗就活着，使你的生命绵延。我想将你比作迷人的夏日 我想将你比作迷人的夏日， 但汝却更显可爱和温存： 狂野之风摧残着五月蓓蕾的柔媚， 也一天天消逝着夏日的归期： 苍天的明眸偶然泻出璀璨， 却难以辉映他暗淡的容颜； 一切明媚的色彩渐已消褪， 过程是如此苍白； 然而你却如永恒之夏， 所有的美好永远也不会改变； 就连死神也不敢对你嚣张， 因你将永生于不朽的诗篇： 只要世人一息尚存， 你将和这诗篇永驻人间。SummaryThe speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: Shall I compare thee to a summers day? The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summers day: he is more lovely and more temperate. Summers days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by rough winds; in them, the sun (the eye of heaven) often shines too hot, or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as every fair from fair sometime declines. The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (Thy eternal summer shall not fade.) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloveds beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.CommentaryThis sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeares sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeares works, only lines such as To be or not to be and Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? are better-known. This is not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the eye of heaven with its gold complexion; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the darling buds of May giving way to the eternal summer, which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause-almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The procreation sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speakers realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, in my rhyme. Sonnet 18, then, is the first rhyme-the speakers first attempt to preserve the young mans beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speakers poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloveds eternal summer shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, the speaker writes in the couplet, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.Shakespeare Sonnet 18Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day Linda Sue GrimesFeb 18, 2007 William Shakespeares sonnet, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day, is one the bards most widely anthologized sonnets.“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day” is the typical Elizabethan, also called Shakespearean or English, sonnet, consisting of three quatrains with the rime scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF and a couplet with the rime GG. The speaker is addressing his poem.First Quatrain “Shall I compare thee to a summers day”In the first quatrain, the speaker muses about comparing the poem to a day in summer; then he begins to do just that. In comparison to a summers day, the poem is deemed “more lovely and more temperate.” The qualification of more “lovely,” at this point, seems to be just the speakers opinion, but to prove the poem more temperate, he explains, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”: the “rough winds” that blow the young buds of flowers about is certainly not mild or temperate. And also summer just does not last very long; it has “all too short a date.”The poem, when compared to a summers day, is better; its beauty and mildness do not end as summer along with its “summers day” does. We might wonder why the speaker, just after claiming his intention of comparing the poem to a “summers day,” then first compares it to a spring day“the darling buds of May.”Even before summer begins, the May flowers are being tossed about by intemperate breezes; therefore, it stands to reason that if the prelude to summer has its difficulties, we can expect summer have its own unique problems that the poem, of course, will lack.Second Quatrain “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines”In the second quatrain, the speaker continues elucidating his complaints that diminish summers value in this comparison: sometimes the sunshine makes the temperature too hot: “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.” The sun often hides behind clouds, “often is his gold complexion dimmd.” The reader can realize the implications here: that these inconvenient qualities do no plague the poem.Then the speaker makes a generalization that everything in nature including the seasonsand he has chosen the best season, after all; he did not advantage his argument by comparing the poem to a winter day or even people degenerates with time, either by happenstance or by processes the human mind does not comprehend or simply by the unstoppable course of nature: And every fair from fair sometime declines, / By chance, or natures changing course untrimmd.”So far, the speaker has mused that he shall compare the poem to a summer day, and the summer day is losing: even before summer begins, the winds of May are often brutal to the young flowers; summer never lasts long; sometimes the sun is too hot and sometimes it hides behind clouds, and besides everythingeven