Song (Love What Art Thou? A Vain Thought) Literary Elements

Song (Love What Art Thou? A Vain Thought) Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

Speaker of the poem: someone deeply hurt by being in love, presumably the poet herself; Point of view: first person

Form and Meter

five stanza quintet

Metaphors and Similes

The first four stanzas contain metaphors and similes for love:
-First stanza-love is a wrought net
-Second stanza-love is like a fresh morning and cold evening
-Third stanza-love is a dead sweet flower
-Fourth stanza-love is like a child

Alliteration and Assonance

Alliteration: "These foul faults thy virtues hide-"

Irony

"But thy law I once obeyed,
Therefore say no more at first."
-This two lines end the poem which criticizes the whole idea of romantic love

Genre

lyric poetry

Setting

Poem is a part of "The Countess of Montgomery's Urania", a prose work by Mary Wroth

Tone

gloomy, hopeless

Protagonist and Antagonist

protagonist is the speaker of the poem; antagonist is the love that he/she was hurt by

Major Conflict

The speaker of the poem got deeply hurt by love therefore he/she questions it in a cynical way.

Climax

The speaker of the poem realizes that he/she shouldn't be talking about love in that way because he/she was once a follower of its rules.

Foreshadowing

"Yet alas these not the worst:
Much more of thee may be said."
-foreshadows the end of comparing love to everything that is negative

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

"But thy law I once obeyed"-the word "law" is used as metonymy for being in love

Personification

Personification of love

Hyperbole

The effect of pain caused by love is exaggerated throughout the poem: "Love what art thou? Causeless, cursed"

Onomatopoeia

N/A

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