I also describe in the article how line 8’s chiasmus comprises two distinctions, ‘one thing’ vs ‘difference’, and ‘expressing’ vs ‘leaves out’, that prescribe the sonnet’s development and foreshadow its so-called formal characteristics.
(2016, Aug. 23.)
My reading of sonnet 105 suggests that the relationship between the rhetorical figures of ploche, antanaclasis, and polyptoton conveys meaning beyond the meaning conveyed by each figure separately.
In the article, I show how these three figures taken together convey different but related aspects of comparison that range from absolute identity through relative similarity and relative difference to absolute difference: The use of ploche equates to absolute identity: same word, same line, same meaning; antanaclasis to absolute difference: same word, different lines, different meaning; and, polyptoton to relative similarity and relative difference: same word root, or morpheme, but in different grammatical categories, different lines, same meaning.
As these categories of similarity and difference are both mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, might they then provide a helpful way of describing the comparisons that Shakespeare makes in his sonnets? I make a start at answering this question by exploring how another rhetorical figure, chiasmus, provides a means of organising the relationship between ploche, antanaclasis, and polyptoton in sonnet 105 to allow the expression of shades and gradations of meaning between absolute identity and absolute difference.
(Date: 2016, Aug. 23.)
In this article, I explore the possibility of applying a ‘centred form’ analysis to Shakespeare’s sonnet 105. That is, I attempt a ‘reconstruction’ of the sonnet from the chiasmus that is its line 8.
In the next part of this post, I discuss the implications of my findings for meaning in the sonnet.
(Date: 2016, Aug. 23.)
The Memorial Day Project is dedicated to the homeless female veterans of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. It relates to all of war’s victims.
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Lantern-soul world without, within,
low-slung light beneath parchment thin,
clattering poles betwixt, between,
Shadow-flame glow round dragons lean.
… Read more
On the Marionette Theatre
While spending the winter of 1801 in M…, I chanced there of an evening, in a public garden, upon Herr C., who had recently been engaged as lead dancer at the opera and was proving very popular with the public.
I said to him that I had been surprised to see him, on several occasions, no less, in a marionette theatre that had been thrown together on the market place to entertain the riff-raff with short dramatic burlesques strung together with short song and dance routines.
He assured me that the puppets’ pantomime gave him much pleasure, and he made no attempt to hide his opinion that a dancer who wanted to improve could learn much from them.
As this comment, by the way he made it, appeared to be more than just mere whim, I took a seat beside him to ask about his grounds for making such a peculiar claim.
Kleist, Heinrich von. Über das Marionettentheater. Berlin: Berliner Abendblatt, 12–15 Dezember, 1810. Print.
Translation: On the Marionette Theatre, 2015
“Now this bo
ok has made me laugh out loud with its surprising twists and turns that it easily became one of my favorites in this collection”, begins Myra Garces-Bacsal’s recent review on Gathering Books of Alain Chiche’s The King and the Frog, beautifully illustrated by Sylvain Diez and published in English from the original French by Epigram Books, Singapore. Read more
Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich (The Frog King, or Iron Henry) is the first tale in the Grimm Brothers’ collection of fairy- and folk-tales published in 1812 under the title Kinder- und Hausmärchen.
The tale, one of the oldest in Germany, echoes themes from the story-telling traditions of many other cultures as well, of course, and continues to inspire writers and illustrators of children’s books today. Read more
The Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Mass., now has copies of Memorial Day.
Please join me on 17 July 2012 at 5 p.m. at The Grolier Poetry Bookshop,Cambridge, Mass., for a participatory poetry reading from Winters Three and Memorial Day. My thanks to Ifeanyi and Carol Menkiti, and Elizabeth Doran.
