For example, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” though it is somewhat interrogative. Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different in nature.For example, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.” Personification: Personification is to give human qualities to inanimate objects.
For example, “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” and “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.” Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses.For example, as the sound of /r/ in “Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade” and the sound of /s/ in “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line.For example, the sound of /l/ in “So long lives this” and /t/ sound in “to Time thou grow’st.” Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the initials of two successive words.For example, the sound of /ou/ in “Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st”. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line.Shakespeare too has used some literary devices to enrich the poem. Literary devices are modes that represent the writer’s unique ideas. Analysis of Literary Devices Used in Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? He is going to achieve this through his verses, believing in this way, that his friend will become one with time. He makes efforts to ensure his friend will live in human memory forever, saved from the oblivion that accompanies death. The poem explores the phenomenon of beauty and the speaker’s sincere efforts to preserve this eternal joy in the form of a poetic piece. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker compares the person to whom the poem is addressed with the inevitable, specific aspect of a summer day. Major Themes in “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”: The stability of love, immortal beauty, and man versus nature are the poem’s central themes.These eternal verses will pass the gentle image of his friend to the coming generations. So, he tries to preserve the beauty of his friend in his precious verses. Soon, he realizes that everything on the earth suffers a decline, and he wants his friend to live forever. First, he compares his friend with the summer season, keeping all of its attributes intact. It begins as the speaker praises his anonymous friend without ostentation, intending to present the image of a perfect being. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” As a Representative of Beauty: The poem is about love.It captures the harmony of man and nature. It also reflects the writer’s attachment to the beautiful art of writing. The poem discusses natural beauty and the capacity of poetry to render that beauty into everlasting beauty. It was first published in 1609 in The Passionate Pilgrim. Popularity of “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”: This poem was written by William Shakespeare, a renowned English master.Through readings of apostrophic poetry by Waller, Donne, King, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, the essay calls for criticism of the lyric that pays closer attention to the differences among historically diverse lyric cultures. But the apostrophes of Renaissance lyric characteristically portray first-person speakers as writing in real time and space to “empirical listeners.” What makes Renaissance lyric distinctive is its persistently social mode of address. As Culler helps us see, apostrophes are surprisingly important in Renaissance as well as romantic lyric. Culler famously argues that the definitive trope of lyric is apostrophe, in which first-person speakers address pointedly fictive personifications, such as a sick rose or the west wind, in order to emphasize subjective voicing over objective perception. This essay questions the pertinence of these models to the Renaissance lyric by reading that poetry in the light of Jonathan Culler’s classic account of the romantic lyric in his Pursuit of Signs (1981). Romantic models dominate our conception of lyric poetry.