The Art of Shakespeare’s SonnetsHelen Vendler, widely regarded as our most accomplished interpreter of poetry, here serves as an incomparable guide to some of the best-loved poems in the English language. |
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... ( octave ) and a sin of commission ( sestet ) . This theological contrast ( see the New Catholic Ency- clopedia , 1967 , s.v. " Omission " ) is foregrounded by the octave - words of negativity or absence ( issueless , makeless , no form ) ...
... octave are common , natural , agreeable objects of metaphor , to which Shakespeare has himself often resorted . One can accept the gen- eralization of such gentle and sweet - favored form [ s ] as bird or flower as metaphors for the ...
... octave . In that octave , the speaker and the woman were on different " sides " : " On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed . " But in the couplet , though we see first the I and the she rep- resenting the two sides , they are ...