sonnet 29 Flashcards
Themes?
Obsession, Passionate Love, Longing
Tones?
Intense, Intimate, Joyful
Context
- Browning wrote the poem in 1845-46 about her then
lover, and future husband, Robert Browning.
-Deeply personal, and was meant to be a private poem
but he encouraged her to publish it, and so she did so
within a collection called ‘Sonnets from the
Portuguese’ – pretending that she had translated the
poems from Portuguese. Nobody fell for the story.
-There is a joyous religious undertone to the poem.
She compares him to palm tree: in Christianity, the
palm tree represents faith.
Content, Meaning and Purpose
-This sonnet is a declaration of passionate love by the
narrator to her lover.
-She tells how she obsessively thinks of him, so much
that her thoughts have begun to obscure the reality of
him.
-She then reassures him that these thoughts cannot
replace him, before urging him ‘renew’ his presence
with her and remind her that he is ‘dearer, better!’.
-Browning conveys how longing for a lover can
consume you, make you impatient and even distort
reality.
Language
-Extended metaphor of the lover as a strong tree, and
the narrator’s obsessive thoughts as vines that grow
around him. Her ‘wild vines’ ‘hides the wood’.
-‘I think of thee!’: immediate direct address of her
lover creates a personal and intimate tone.
-‘Renew they presence’, ‘Rustle thy boughs’:
imperatives reveal her longing and urgency.
-Sibilant sounds (presence; as strong as a tree
should..) create the rustling sound of her ‘thoughts’.
-‘Drop down heavily’ conveys the weight of her
obsessive thoughts, and her desire to shed them
Form and Structure
-The traditional form of a sonnet is eight lines (octave)
presenting a problem, followed by six lines (sestet)
presenting a solution. This sonnet breaks with
convention by presenting the solution, or volta, (for
him to ‘instantly’ return) in the middle of line 7: this
urgency shows the narrator’s impatience to be with
him.
-Repetition of ‘thee’ conveys her obsession with him.
