Poem His Profound Love For His Son example essay topic

In several of the literary works of the English Renaissance Period, we can identify love as the main theme. Apparently, love influenced and inspired many authors and poets to create intense pieces of literature that are full of overwhelming emotions. These emotions (specifically love-related emotions) can be represented either by a man who has just fallen in love, or also by the loss of a loved one. In any case, being capable to use love as a theme was a great advantage for writers of English Renaissance that wanted to capture audiences by their sensitivity.

Analyzing the Shakespearean sonnets lead me to comprehend that one of the reasons why Renaissance poets wrote about love, was because they needed to immortalize, in some way, their love. To prove the before mentioned we can take for example the Sonnet LV, were Shakespeare tells that his love will endure the harshest physical adversities as well as outliving history and time. He presents a type of praise to his love, a praise that, like her, will never die because they live in his poem. Likewise, in Sonnet XV, Shakespeare dedicates the sonnet to a mortal person that he loves emphasizing that, on the contrary, his poem will be immortal. Shakespeare expounds another class of love in the Sonnet C, a class of love that I consider as true love for another person. This love consists in not only falling in love with the physical part of a person, but also falling in love with the personality and moral part.

Besides, a man or woman does not have to conceive his or her loved one as "the most beautiful person in the world" just because that is what is expected. Shakespeare reminds us that there are many reasons to admire and love somebody apart from the physical attribute. Nonetheless, in the play The Duchess of Malfi, love plays a very important part in the storyline. When John Webster presents the lector a couple very much in love, we cannot imagine that there could be a tragic ending to their story. First Webster issues a forbidden passion that captivates lectors and indulges them to identify with the characters.

Some may identify with the Duchess in the sense that her capacity to love does not discriminate and has no conditions; she is capable to act on the passion that she feels for Antonio by uniting with him. She will also confront and do anything for the sake of her love, to the point were it seems that she is blinded by this love. Others could identify with Antonio's character because he demonstrates his courage and his deep love for the Duchess in many parts of the play. For example, when he declares that he will not die with anger or sadness because he knows that he will not leave his wife and children deserted. At this point, the evolution from passion to love is evident between Antonio and the Duchess.

The use of love as one of the themes in this play helps attract and stimulate emotions in those lectors that are willing to see the characters as real people. Another form of love manifested in The Duchess of Malfi is the infamous "controlling" love. In this case, we find Ferdinand expressing an intense and fierce emotion, seen as a form of love, towards his sister the Duchess. As a product of his love for his sister, and his desire to control her life as he pleased, Ferdinand reaches the point of drastic measures.

In this desperation he finds himself plotting even against her life, achieving finally the death of the Duchess and her children and the lose of his own sanity. It is compelling to see how a supposedly cult leader slowly decays into an jealous, envious, and obsessed man by trying to disguise as love his need for control. Finally, in the poem "On My First Son" by Jonson, the lector can witness a sort of regret for feeling intense love for anything that can depart. The poet captures attention by creating a sense of pity for himself, using his love for his deceased son as a negative element in his life. As the poet recounts the tragic death of his young son, he declares that you should never "love to much" anything, specially a mortal person. This obsessive love can become a sin, and the experience of lose is far too painful.

It is obvious, even besides his regrets, that he definitely expresses in this poem his profound love for his son. I would like to bring to an end this short essay by stating, that the emergence of love as a strong theme in many of the poems, dramas, and sonnets brought many advantages for the future literature. Although many times the theme love is abused and commercialized in modern literature, it is possible to find a good novel that tells the story of "a pair of star-crossed lovers" willing to risk anything for love.