A Broadsheet for the Examined Mind
Dispatches, close readings, and revision notes filed under Sonnets.
A complete sonnet-by-sonnet companion to the forty-six poems on the ENGL-200A reading list: the procreation sequence, the rival poet, the constancy poems, and the Dark Lady sonnets, each with a close reading and a route into an essay.
A study of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets: the anti-Petrarchan beauty of Sonnet 127, the anatomy of lust in 129, the parody of the blazon in 130, the puns on ‘Will,’ the two loves of 144, and the soul-and-body dialogue of 146.
A study of Shakespeare’s constancy cluster: the suspicion sonnets, the poems of absence and return, the religious language of Sonnet 105, and the central definition of love in Sonnet 116.
A study of Shakespeare’s middle sonnet cluster: the ‘disgrace’ sonnets, the Rival Poet, the great time-and-monument poems, the deathbed sonnets, and the farewell of Sonnet 87.
A study of Shakespeare’s first sonnet cluster: the procreation sonnets, the assault of time, the rival claims of children and verse, the gender trouble of Sonnet 20, and the consolations of love and memory in Sonnets 23, 29, and 30.
