Theses

Metrical Analysis: By examining Shakespeare’s use of trochaic and spondaic substitutions, caesura, and the clever gendering of both meter and word choice, the reader discerns that Hamlet’s internal conflict is not only a question of life or death, to be or not to be, but also of gender, to be a man or to be a woman. And a battle of masculine versus feminine emerges.
Poetry Comparison (Donne & Piercy): Both poems use paradox, expressed through diction, metaphor and imagery, to uncover and praise their central figures—for Donne his female mistress and for Piercy everyday, inanimate objects. However, Donne uses paradoxical language and imagery in his treatment of secular love as sacred love to seduce and coax his object of desire and, in doing so, seeks to gain power and agency over her. In contrast, Piercy uses paradox to praise inanimate objects and, in the final strophe, a female figure as well. Through her chosen diction, she employs them both with power and agency—rendering them the subjects not objects of her poem.
OED: Through the interplay of definitions of the word legend as both “the story of the life of a Saint” and “an un-authentic or non-historical story,” (OED) Donne further pushes his paradoxical conceit. However even more interestingly, by also examining a third definition of the word legend as something that is written a new reading of Donne’s poem emerges—that it is about not only the canonization or of profane love but also the canonization of the poem (the written verse) itself.
Criticism Review: In her introduction to Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Sedgwick presents two central arguments or claims upon which the forthcoming chapters of the book are hinged. The first is that “concomitant changes in the structure of the continuum of male ‘homosocial desire’ were tightly bound up with other more visible changes” (1); that is to say that patterns of male friendship, mentorship, rivalry, and hetero and homosexuality, which all fall within the continuum of male homosocial desire, were in an “intimate” and changing relation to the more visible structure of class (1). The second is that “no element of that pattern can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole” (1). Sedgwick asserts that there is an undeniable link between the socially constructed, subjective gender system and male homosociality and that the role of women cannot be taken out of the equation when examining male homosocial and homosexual relationships.
*Decided to post my entire intro paragraph because I'm not sure there's a clear thesis in my criticism review
-Devon