The Tradition of the Sonnet: A Comparison of Shakespeare, Yeats, and Wordsworth Anonymous College

The sonnet is unique among poetic forms. Its appeal has spanned five centuries and has managed to keep up with dramatic shifts in literary and philosophical movements during this time. There is a common perception that the sonnet has a requirement to focus on romance, however, in his Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare subverts the themes of Platonic love typically displayed in the sonnet through his subversion of Petrarchan blazon in order to show that the sonnet can be used as a comic tool. William Wordsworth’s sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge similarly shows rebellion from the human romance in traditional sonnets by placing his romantic focus on the cityscape. His adoption of a romantic form enables the poet to beautify a traditionally degraded image. One of the sonnet’s real achievements its ability to be manipulated, as displayed by modernist poet W.B. Yeats, in his poem Leda and the Swan. Yeats presents a fragmented sonnet that ‘fails to appear as an incomparable…poetic entity’, whilst also challenging the romantic traditions of the sonnet by using his poem as political allegory.

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, the speaker attempts to display an emotional and intellectual superiority through his rejection of the...