I'm no expert in Shakespeare's sonnets, but I'll do my
best to help out here. I think that you're right. Let's go with metaphor. (Periphrasis
might be another option, if that's a familiar term for
you.)
Sonnet 109 seems to be a sort of apology for
"straying," for being unfaithful to a partner while the speaker was away. (The partner,
as you may already know, is a younger man, and this sonnet and others raise some
hotly-contested possibilities about Shakespeare's sexual
orientations.)
One of the main things that connect this
poem to the other poems in this grouping is the emphasis on transgression. The source
below includes the following statement:
The theme continues throughout Sonnets 111-120,
and the poet uses many terms for the same crime: "stain", "frailties" (109); "offences"
(110); "harmful deeds", "infection" (111); "shames" (112); "diseased" (118);
"transgression" (120);
etc.
The non-literal terms
for "transgressoin" here make me suspect that we'll find a number of metaphors in Sonnet
109, too.
I see a metaphor in line 2: "my flame" probably
means something like "my intense love." Lines 8 and 11 have "my stain," which probably
refers to the infidelity, and "stain'd." Finally, the poem ends with "my rose," which
must stand for the loved one.
You'll often find more than
one poetic element or device in a single poem, of course. Maybe another poster will have
more to say than "metaphor."
No comments:
Post a Comment