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Literary Analysis #3
My girlfriend’s eyes are not bright
Nor are her lips red.
Her breasts are as white as snow
And her hair as black as wires.
I’ve seen imperfect roses in red and white
But not even her cheeks can compare to these.
And even the foulest smelling of perfumes smell better
Than my girlfriend’s breath, which reeks.
I enjoy hearing her talk, although I am aware
That music is more pleasing to the ear.
I admit that I have never seen a goddess walk
But when my girlfriend walks, she treads.
However, I love her despite everything
And I don’t need to lie about her to prove so.
Sonnet 130, despite featuring a brief mention of breasts, is far less sexual than sonnet 129. This sonnet relates entirely to sexual desire and how the narrator views it. The first quatrain depicts the act of sex itself, and the narrator describes lust in carnal terms. The second quatrain relates to the aftermath of a sexual act, and how afterwards the doer regrets having partaken in the act. While the common theme of Petrarchan sonnets is usually love, they often feature scorn or blame. The speaker in sonnet 129 does not blame his sexual partner, but rather sex itself: “Past reason hated as a swallowed bait/ On purpose laid to make the taker mad” (7-8). Shakespeare ultizes poetic language such as metaphor and personification by comparing sex to an animal—” lust/ is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame/ Savage, extreme” (2-4)—as well as a person—“extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust” (4). He also uses vivid imagery that contributes to the narrator’s pessimistic view on sex. The couplet at the end does not contain animalistic imagery like the preceding quatrains but religious imagery: “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well/ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” (13-14). Heaven, in this case, obviously refers to the bliss one experiences during sex, while hell refers to the shame they feel afterwards. Despite the poem’s antagonistic message, it maintains a rhyme scheme that is typical of the Petrarchan sonnet. This gives the poem a lullaby-like quality to it, which relates to its theme of the bedroom being a hellish hunting ground. At one point the narrator even compares sexual intercourse to a dream: “Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream” (12). Dreams, like sex, do not last forever, and when one wakes up from a dream they feel a certain kind of sadness. By likening the act of sex to dreams, Shakespeare is suggesting that sex is dreamlike for most people, but eventually they must “wake up” and face the consequences.
Marie de France’s “Lanval” perfectly exemplifies the romance genre. Although it is a long poem, it is not considered an epic like “Beowulf.” While “Lanval” and “Beowulf” share some similarities (a heroic knight and a mythical creature of some sort, to name a few) they don’t quite fall into the same genre. The main difference between epics and romances is that epics consist of an already respected hero fighting evil monsters, whereas medieval romances feature a knight who is essentially a nobody proving his chivalry through quests, and “Lanval” is indeed a romance in this sense.
Although he is a knight of the legendary King Arthur and is considered very handsome and diligent, Lanval is not particularly popular and would not be missed if he were to die: “…good land/ and wives to wed, he gave them all/ save for one man, who’d served them well/ Lanval. The King forgot this man/ none put in a good word for him” (16-20). The knights’ and barons’ neutrality towards him quickly turns to dislike when he rejects Queen Guinevere’s advances and admits his lover is more beautiful than her. It isn’t until the end of the poem, when Lanval’s lover reveals herself to everyone, that Lanval regains the respect he lost for disrespecting the queen. In addition, Lanval earns the approval of his fellow knights and the barons, as they realize that he truly has value if the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen has eyes for Lanval and Lanval alone.
This poem is also a romance in that it ends happily, with Lanval and his lover escaping to Avalon. It can be argued that there is a chilling ambiguity to the final two lines: “More of Lanval no one has heard/ I cannot tell another word” (645-646). The fact that Lanval was never seen again suggests that he died, but given the overall lightheartedness of the poem, it’s more likely that he and his lover are living a peaceful life away from King Arthur and his knights, who’d never cared much for Lanval anyway. Another facet that makes “Lanval” a romance is that it includes, well, romance. In fact, it is the love between Lanval and the lady that causes the poem’s major events to happen, these events being Guinevene chastising Lanval and King Arthur putting him on trial.
This poem is also a romance for its nonlinear plot structure. Unlike in “Beowulf,” which has a consistent plot (Beowulf journeys to fight a monster, defeats it, and is celebrated, then repeats these steps until his death), the plot in “Lanval” is constantly changing. It is because of this that readers doubt if the lady will ever reappear and save Lanval from the predicament he’s gotten himself into. Some might even doubt if she was even real, as surely something so ethereal must be too good to be true. But she saves Lanval, and in doing so, reverses gender roles by becoming the knight in shining armor to Lanval, the damsel in distress.
