William Shakespeare's 55th Sonnet and John Donne's "The Canonization" are both poems that possess the same themes, anxieties and cultural practices, illuminating thus the two experiences of poets in early modern Britain. Sasha Roberts, “'wit' in the early modern period denoted ingenuity, intelligence, imagination and verbal ability and was probably the most valued in the literary faculty, more than originality or authenticity. Shakespeare's Sonnets demonstrate wit in abundance, not least in [their] deft use of paradox, conceit (an ingenious comparison often addressing unexpected or contrary states), of imagery and wordplay” (Roberts 179), these two poets used paradox, conceit, imagery, and wordplay to create provocative poems that ask profound questions – just to show the ridiculousness of (or lack of) any response. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Sonnet 55 is a famous Shakespearean poem that considers artistic identity, love, and the passage of time in search of answers that only lead to paradoxical conclusions and more questions. The poem's superficial narrative suggests that the speaker simply wants to immortalize his beloved friend in verse, rather than immortalize himself as a poet (which is common in poems of this type). Upon closer inspection, however, there is more to the poem than this superficial narrative. According to the last couplet, which in a sonnet is responsible for the conclusion of a poem, the subject will continue to live on through lovers who read the poem for centuries to come. The poem claims to preserve the living memory of the subject, but does not actually explain what is worth immortalizing in the subject. The images in the poem have nothing to do with the description of the physicality of the subject. Instead, the imagery in this sonnet invokes destruction, war, and impending doom. The speaker states that even when war rages, even if Mars, the god of war, waves his sword, nothing can destroy the subject's memory. The 14-line poem also explores notions of class and wealth. Shakespeare contrasts “golden monuments of princes” with “mighty rhyme,” which refers to the poem itself. The speaker believes that the war, fought by kings, is a waste, but considers his poetry a "living record" of memory. Instead of immortalizing the poet or his beloved subject, this sonnet immortalizes the poem above all. There is no mention of the speaker's role in the creative process; what is important in this poem is the very idea of ​​the poem. Similar to the way the speaker fights against time and cultural conventions to preserve the memory of his beloved friend, the poem itself could be seen as destructive. Time tries to sully the subject of the poem, but because it is the written word, it will be preserved better than any man-made monument, so that when future generations are able to read the subject of the poem, they will keep it alive. and good. After a careful reading of the poem, some wordplay sheds light on the gender dynamics present in this sonnet. The words “smeared” and “slut” both imply that devouring Time is feminine. While smeared can mean to soil or soil, it can also mean to contaminate or pollute. The double meanings continue with the word “slut,” which could mean messy and disorderly, implying that Time cannot keep the world a well-organized place, and also connoting immoral and whorish overtones, which are normally used to describe a fallen woman. Alsoif the speaker claims to immortalize his beloved through his verse, it seems that he is really immortalizing her through his verse, because the poem gives the reader no indication of the subject's identity. What survives in this sonnet is the speaker's witty, compelling tone and the idea that poetry can protect humans from the ever-malignant hands of time, although Shakespeare (ironically) fails to achieve this as much because of the subject matter as for his own art. “The Canonization” addresses the same issues as Sonnet 55 and relies heavily on the devices Roberts uses to denote wit, but Donne makes some small developments on Shakespeare's new habit of “infusing [his poetry] with unexpected skepticism and satire , obscenity and bitterness" (Roberts 172). The titles of Donne's poems are often as important to understanding the poems as the lines themselves. “The Canonization” is not only the title of the poem, but also the overarching idea that propels the poem toward its climactic invocation of lovers as saints and muses of lovers everywhere. Not only are the lovers in the poem literally canonized, or transformed into saints of love, but they are canonized in the sense of the word "canon" as law or decree, general rule or fundamental principle (they are the law of love - the example of how to love the right way). The very form of the poem is rendered with particular attention to the conceit of the canon. The poem is composed of 5 stanzas, the first and last lines of which end with the word "love". The uniformity present in the rhyme scheme (ABBACCCDD) and the hymn-like repetitions at the beginning and end of each stanza make this poem a canonization in itself by its list-like quality, dating back to religious lists or canonizations of saints . Since the lovers were saints in love, they are an example and inspiration for God to encourage other couples to fall in love. Through the imagery and wordplay in the poem, it is clear that the gender dynamics in "The Canonization" are very different than in Sonnet 55 and Donne's other poems. The poem begins declaratively, with the speaker scolding his opponent for interfering with true love. He offers a handful of other qualities for his companion to comment on, consisting of ironically repugnant things: his ruined fortune, his five gray hairs (which may allude to the poem's five stanzas), and his paralysis or gout. In the fourth line, Donne begins to differentiate the speaker from his peers and the rest of society, a cliché that will continue throughout the poem. He lists a handful of useless things that his rich friends would be better off doing rather than worrying about his love, which may allude to Donne's bitterness over his own lost fortune and fall from social status. In the second stanza the speaker seems to get quite defensive. He justifies his relationship with himself and his adversary, coming to the logical conclusion that even when he and his beloved are madly in love in an ecstatic world of their own, the rest of the universe continues to spin and carry on with its daily life . Commercial activity. The third and fourth stanzas of the poem are filled with wordplay and imagery that continue to separate the speaker from his society and begin to include his beloved in that distinction as well. The speaker asks his critic to "call them what [he] wants" because they are defined by their love, not by the values ​​that exist in normal everyday life. The phrase "call it one, I'll call it another fly" could allude to some kind of bird or insect, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "fly" could also be understood as something insignificant, which fits in well with the rest.