Narrative and Continuity in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Chris Valeo
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
May 2025
End Date
May 2025
Location
PUB 323
Primary Discipline of Presentation
English
Abstract
William Shakespeare's poetry has been renowned for centuries, both for its cultural impact on storytelling and its lyrical beauty. Although his plays are the most well-known — in particular the love story of Romeo and Juliet — the only one of his individual sonnets that is publicly known is Sonnet 18, another themed on love and often read at weddings. However, Sonnet 18 is deeply intertwined with the context of the 153 others, and this presentation will cover that context to give more meaning to the poetry already known and revered. It will specifically be analyzing sonnets 5, 6, 12, 15, and 16, and how the first 'arc' of sonnets function as a whole. Materials will be provided for all analyzed poems with no prior reading required.
Recommended Citation
Greenblatt, Stephen, et al., editors. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Tenth edition., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Washington Square Press, 2006.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Narrative and Continuity in Shakespeare's Sonnets
PUB 323
William Shakespeare's poetry has been renowned for centuries, both for its cultural impact on storytelling and its lyrical beauty. Although his plays are the most well-known — in particular the love story of Romeo and Juliet — the only one of his individual sonnets that is publicly known is Sonnet 18, another themed on love and often read at weddings. However, Sonnet 18 is deeply intertwined with the context of the 153 others, and this presentation will cover that context to give more meaning to the poetry already known and revered. It will specifically be analyzing sonnets 5, 6, 12, 15, and 16, and how the first 'arc' of sonnets function as a whole. Materials will be provided for all analyzed poems with no prior reading required.
