Shakespeare Sonnet 130 Rhetorical Devices

This poem, Sonnet 130 of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, serves to show that the accepted conventions of romantic poetry did not always accurately portray the feelings of love. The use of similes, metaphors and imagery contradict, in the most extreme ways, those rhetorical devices that are most often used in love poetry. Shakespeare backhanded romantic poetry and it made quite abang. “This poem became popular among the satirical poems of traditional love”(sparknote). To begin the poem Shakespeare references his lover's eyes quoting, “my mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun”(line 1). He does not do this to be cruel to her or to offend but instead to make a bold statement. The statement being that his lover’s eyes could not be like the sun. They are not ugly or bad just not comparable to the sun. Another example of how his lady falls short of typical expectations is when, in lines 11 and 12, he says, “I grant I never saw a goddess go, my mistress, when she walks, treads the ground.” He explains here
They will describe a woman’s body with so much exaggeration it turns into lies. Skin, eyes, lips, breasts, hair, and voice cannot be perfect on anyone woman or man but that is what the romantic era said. Shakespeare, in line 3, “If snow be white, why then her breasts be dun,” and in lines 5 and 6, “I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks;”. This poem rejects all theories that romantic poetry must relate a woman’s beauty to natural allure. Shakespeare compares what is commonly considered appealing breasts with his lover’s by saying she does not bear them. He says he knows what white a red roses look like together and that is not what her complexion holds. This is quite interesting because in romantic poetry there are main things that tend to be covered. Such things are nature, music, allusion, and weather. Shakespeare takes these classical items and destroys them in their natural