Sonnet 43 - Language, Structure, and Context

Question 1

No name in title

Answer 1

She was a prolific sonnet writer and this is one of her many

Question 2

Religious imagery/Semantic field of religion

Answer 2

Connects love to a spiritual feeling

Question 3

Tight Structure

Answer 3

As well as iambic pentameter

Question 4

Spatial Metaphors

Answer 4

Uses them to express that her love is only contained by the limits of reality.
However she later surpasses it, mentioning love after death, bypassing physicality with spirituality

Question 5

Traditional Sonnet Structure - Petrarchan Sonnet

Answer 5

E.B.B is intentionally following a traditional sonnet structure
This suggests that her love is solid, dependable, traditional.

Question 6

Octet - ABBA ABBA

Answer 6

How she loves him in the present

Question 7

Sestet - CDCDCD

Answer 7

Broadens it out by reaching into the past and the future
Demonstrating that love will be ever-lasting

Question 8

Enjambment

Answer 8

Creates a sense of overflowing/uncontained love

Question 9

Caesura

Answer 9

Punctuation in middle of line

Question 10

E.B.B’s father

Answer 10

Didn’t approve of the marriage to Robert - therefore she writes her poems in a very personal way.
A lot of her poems have a sense of ‘us against the world’

Question 11

Private Poems

Answer 11

These were private poems for her husband, not intended fo public consumption, and were published after her death.

Question 12

E.B.B’s childhood

Answer 12

She lost a brother when she was young - Love for her husband helped her with her grief