Black is Beautiful in Shakespeares Sonnets and Astrophil and Stella Es

Black is Beautiful in Shakespeares Sonnets and Sidneys Astrophil and Stella Germinating in anonymous Middle English lyrics, the degeneracy of the classical poetic representation of feminine beauty as fair- whiskered and blue-eyed took on new meaning in the age of exploration to a lower place sonneteers Sidney and Shakespeare. No longer did the brown hair of Alison only serve to distinguish her from the pack the features of the new Dark Lady became more pronounced and sullied, and her eroticized associations with the foreignness of the saucily World grew more explicit through conceits of colonization. However, the evolving dichotomy between fairness and gruesomeness was not quite so revolutionary in fact, Sidney and Shakespeare lauded the virtues of fairness with the analogous degree of passion as their predecessors, albeit in a cloaked form. To counter their mistresses exterior darkness, the poets locate an interior lightness that radiates beyond the funereal veil of hair or ey esraven-hair or jet-eyes is acceptable only if there is an innate brightness that illuminates the sensuality of the superficial. Most of the poems addressing the light/dark antithesis choose at roughly point to make an open declaration that embraces or undermines the dichotomy and lays the groundwork for the rest of the poem. The dichotomous lines tend not to be as straightforward as they suggest. I can love both fair and brown, from John Donnes The Indifferent, seems to blur the line between the colors, but by revealing the gracious equanimity of his desire, Donne implicitly reinforces browns aesthetic inferiority. Shakespeare parodies the antiquated contrarieties, which he acknowledges in Sonnet 127 In the old age, black was not counted fair (1). In... ...line But organism both from me as the couples being away from the speaker, the line can also imply that the two inhabit his mind (11). With this reading, To win me soon to hell, my female evil/ Tempteth my better angel from m y typeface means not that the Dark Lady will cast Shakespeare into misery through her upsetting the triangle, but that her power will shift Shakespeares mind to the dark side. Her temptation is filled with reference to dirtiness of sin And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,/ Wooing his purity with her foul pride (7-8). Proud chassis is the swollen flesh surrounding a wound thus her foul pride may be a pun on her genitalia. The eroticization of her darkness is a salient pointer towards the fascination the poets hold toward darkness beneath that impure exterior lies a devilish promiscuity unlike that of all the other blue-eyed(prenominal) maidens.