Welcome readers! This blog is written as a part of my third semester assignment in Paper No. 204 - Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies. In this blog, I will explore the topic 'Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare.
● Name :- Hetal Pathak
● Roll No. :- 09
● Semester :- 3 ( Batch 2022 - 2024)
● Enrollment No.- 4069206420220022
● Paper No. :- 204
● Paper Name :- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies
● Topic :- Deconstructive Reading of
Sonnet 18
● Submitted to :- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
● Email Address:- hetalpathak28@gmail.com
● Date of Submission:- 1st December, 2023
DECONSTRUCTIVE READING OF SONNET 18
□ Table of Contents :-
● Introduction
● About Jacques Derrida
● Deconstruction Approach
● Analysis of Sonnet 18
● Applying Deconstructive Criticism
● Conclusion
Introduction :-
Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher wrote, such famed works as Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and On Grammatology, has made important contributions to both post-structuralism and post-modern philosophy, and indeed has challenged some of the unquestioned assumptions of our philosophical tradition. But he is most renowned - or condemned - for his critical technique known as "deconstruction." In this Very Short Introduction, Simon Glendinning explores both the difficulty and significance of the work of Derrida. He argues that Derrida's challenging ideas make a significant contribution to, and provide a powerful reading of, our philosophical heritage. Defending Derrida against many of the attacks from the analytical philosophical community, he attempts to show why Derrida's work causes such extreme reactions. The author explains Derrida's distinctive mode of engagement with our philosophical tradition, and contends that this is not a merely negative thing. By exploring his most famous and influential texts, Glendinning shows how and why Derrida's work of deconstruction is inspired not by a "critical frenzy," but by a loving respect for philosophy.
Deconstruction is an approach to Understanding the relationship between a text and its meaning. It was Originated by the Philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined the term Variously throughout his career.
Deconstruction is a philosophical and literary theory and it involves analysing texts, ideas, and concepts to reveal hidden assumptions and contradictions. It challenges traditional interpretations and emphasises the instability of language and meaning. In essence, deconstruction aims to show that any given text or concept can have multiple interpretations, often subverting conventional notions of truth and certainty. Deconstruction is a post-structuralist movement that critiques the stability and authority of language. The method of deconstruction involves a contextual and free play of meaning. Post - Structuralists question everything.
Meaning is always attributed to the object or idea by the human mind, Constructed and expressed through language. It is not Contained Within the thing. In Deconstruction there will be drifting away from the centre. Derrida says that ;
"There will always be free play of meaning. One will never be able to reach the Centre."
While discussing about the theory of Deconstruction it is also very important to remember that We all have to be very careful about Words because ;
"Words give us World Views."
This philosophical approach aims to challenge and subvert traditional assumptions about language and its meaning. Deconstruction is a theory and its aims to reveal the Complexities and Contradictions in language and texts. I will explore the interpretation/s by applying deconstructive reading / criticism on William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, one of the best among the 154 sonnets,
"Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day?"
With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist and reader - response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the often - problematic relation between his philosophical writings and the work of literary critics.
About Jacques Derrida :-
Jacques Derrida, an Algerian-born French philosopher, left an indelible mark on the late 20th-century intellectual world with his controversial and influential critiques of Western philosophy. Born on July 15, 1930, in El Biar, Algeria, he passed away on October 8, 2004, in Paris, France.
At the core of his philosophical contributions lies the concept of deconstruction, a method he employed in numerous texts. Derrida's deconstruction emerged from meticulous examinations of Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics and the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. This approach made him a prominent figure in post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. However, it's worth noting that Derrida distanced himself from the post-structuralist movement and explicitly disowned the term "postmodernity."
Jacques Derrida is surely one of the most influential and complex thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century. Although he published his first book in the late 1960s, he is still considered a difficult philosopher. In his book "Of Grammatology '' - Derrida developed the literary theory which contributed a new breath in literary criticism. As he tells us in this book, we can only make use of language by allowing the system to control us in a certain way and to a certain extent. In studying literary theory, Derrida's thoughts suggest how our reading of literary texts should be done. Derrida points to a certain complexity between writing and reading, in that a text needs to be read in order to be or become a text. This implies that writing and human communication more generally entail the risk of misunderstandings.
In Derrida's viewpoint, any structure whether in social studies, science or literature needs rethinking from a new position to leave demonstrativeness to interpretation. Ultimately, Derrida's aim is to undermine an independent thinking of the reader. By doing this, the reader can observe the text how he wishes, putting in it his own experience and modifying his understanding.
Deconstruction Approach :-
It is a form of textual analysis. The theory of Deconstruction was introduced by the French Philosopher Jacques Derrida along with Paul de Man and his fellow Yale Deconstructionists; Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller. Deconstruction is one of the important strings in Post Structuralism. Deconstruction had an immense influence on Literary studies (though this is more marked in the English- speaking world than in France) philosophy and Historiography. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak was Derrida’s translator and had a major impact on Postcolonial theory and also became an important element in Queer theory.
Deconstruction is a very difficult term to be defined; many of its practitioners insist that it is not a theory or philosophy that can be applied or can be defined in a set of propositions But its number of general principles can be identified.
Deconstruction relies upon extremely close reading of the texts under analysis and tends to refrain from introducing external evaluative criteria. Deconstruction can be called as an extreme form of Immanent critique. De Man states that it is not something that is added to the text. Derrida says that ;
"Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique."
Deconstruction recognized the inherent complexities and biases present in language and thought. It involves critically analysing texts to expose and challenge underlying assumptions and hierarchies. It demonstrates that concepts gain significance by relying on their opposites. Derrida's deconstruction dismantles the notion of singular, stable meaning and emphasises the infinite play of signifiers, leading to a chain of references without an ultimate truth.
Derrida's deconstruction has profound implications across disciplines, including literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, and philosophy. It challenges prevailing power structures and opens up new possibilities for interpretation and understanding.
Deconstruction is a poststructuralist theory, based largely but not exclusively on the writings of Derrida. It is in the first instance a philosophical theory and a theory directed towards the (re)reading of philosophical writings.
Analysis of Sonnet 18 :-
"Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day?" - The Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare is one of Shakespeare's most known sonnets.
In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth to a Summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's day, which is one of the themes of the Poem. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish. The speaker then states that the Fair Youth will live forever in the lines of the poem, as long as it can be read. There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: It is not the actual young man who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no descriptions of the young man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summer day, which the young man is supposed to outlive.
From the first two lines of the sonnet, we get an idea that a kind of extended metaphor is used to describe a beloved -
"And Summer's lease hath
all too short a date ; "
These lines from Sonnet 18, Shakespeare laments the transient nature of summer, metaphorically referring to it as a lease with an all-too-brief expiration. The phrase "summer's lease" suggests a temporary tenure, emphasising the ephemeral beauty of the season. The remark that it "hath all too short a date" underscores the brevity of summer, conveying a sense of longing for its continuation. Shakespeare poetically captures the fleeting essence of this vivid and vibrant season, highlighting the inevitability of its passing.
"And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;"
In these lines, the speaker reflects on the transient nature of beauty. The phrase "every fair from fair sometime declines" suggests that beauty fades over time, either due to chance or the natural course of change. "Nature’s changing course untrimm'd" implies that the altering course of nature is not always gentle or preserving, leading to the eventual decline of beauty.
"When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this. and this gives life to thee."
These closing lines of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare suggest that the beauty and vitality expressed in the poem will endure through time, as long as there are people alive to read or hear the words. The poet implies that the poem itself becomes a timeless vessel, preserving the essence of the subject's beauty and granting them a form of immortality through the art of poetry.
Applying Deconstructive Criticism:-
The goal of deconstructing sonnet 18 is to uncover Binary opposition to the poem and to find the poem's blind spot. This analysis also demonstrates a reader's comprehension of a text and its meaning by dissecting the text to decipher the poem's meaning. Through this analysis it will reveal the poem's true subject, as well as the author's intended message to his readers, and will attempt to decipher the poem's conflicting and true meaning. The goal of this sonnet 18 to study by using deconstruction approach, is to determine the poem's undecidability of meaning, Binary opposition, and finally subjectivity and hegemony.
Shakespeare dedicates sonnet 18 to his lover's beauty and praises her as beautiful as a summer day, particularly in the opening two lines from the sonnet, where he asks a rhetorical question on the first line, "Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day?" and then charactetizes his beloved as beautiful in the second line. However, the persona compared his beloved to a summer day. While interpreting the poetry, the beauty of his beloved as compared to a summer day was not the true meaning of tge poem. After giving this poetry a close reading, the actual meaning of the poem takes on a new interpretation.
Shakespeare utilizes the poem's theme as his beloved's beauty like a summer's day. But the summer's day refers to the nature or environment. If the literary interpretation of persona in the poem is that his beloved's beauty like summer's day. The close reading interpretation was that we humans are inferior to nature.
Furthermore, the fifth and sixth lines contradict each other because it is stated that the sun makes it too hot at times and that it is often cloudy, however, a close reading of those lines also shows that we humans take care of nature at times, but as time passes, we humans are the ones who destroy it.
To summarize, the persona tells how his beloved's beauty is similar to the beauty of a summer day, but by examining the poetry, the persona's message into human people as her beloved and the connection of it to nature as a summer day is also conveyed.
In this sonnet, by applying Deconstructive approach the centre keeps on changing.
In this sonnet, the initial focus on the beloved shifts upon closer examination, revealing a subtle self-centered narrative that places the beloved in a diminished role.
Critical Reading :-
In Catherine Belsey's work titled : 'Post-structuralism - A very short Introduction. She tried to read Shakespeare's sonnet 18 from Deconstructive approach. Sonnet 18 - 'Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day', is one of the most popular poems. People read it out at weddings in lyrical celebration of an ideal romance.
The poem seems to turn on a binary comparison between the beloved and the summer’s day, in which the beloved is always
the privileged term: Thou art more lovely and more temperate’. By contrast with the loved one, the weather is never quite right: ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’; the
temperature is either too hot or too cold. Besides, the products of the season are perfect only for a moment, while Thy eternal summer shall not fade'.
The beloved is immune to decline and death only When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st’. The poem itself, it turns out, is what endows the mortal human bring with immortality: ‘So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee’. Sonnet 18, in other words, celebrates its own power to confer eternity.
The binary opposition, then, is not quite as simple as it first appeared. Thou’ and the summer day, distinguished as antithetical, now appear on the same side of a line that divides mortality from poetry. All that lives is transitory, including the beloved: ‘Every fair from fair sometime declines’. Just like the summer day, the living object of the poet’s desire will, after all, fade and die: eternity belongs only to the poem and the poem’s inscription of love.
Catherine Belsey further explains that ;
"If love and summer resemble one another after all, in contrast to writing, which alone has immortal powers, what are we to make of the excess heat and cold of the summer day? Are they also properties the season shares with human love? Does the Sonnet imply that love too is very rarely, in practice, just right? And the rough winds that shake the darling buds? Are they, perhaps, sexy? Or at least tempestuous, the element of passion that makes love itself anything but ‘temperate’?"
This poem is mainly about someone the poet really cares about. At first, it seems like the poem is all about this person. But then, the poet starts talking about nature and later mentions his own writing. In the end, it feels like the poet is showing who he is through his creative work.
Conclusion :-
In conclusion, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 celebrates the timelessness of love through vivid imagery and flattering comparisons. The poet uses the beauty of nature to emphasize the eternal quality of the beloved's beauty. Despite the inevitable passage of time, the poem suggests that the lover's beauty will be preserved forever through the enduring power of poetry. This sonnet showcases Shakespeare's skill in capturing the essence of love and immortalizing it through his words.
Still, The sonnet remains open to various interpretations.
References :-
Ajda Güney, and Kaan Güney. “A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION AND HERMENEUTICS .” E-Journal of New World Sciences Academy, vol. 3, Mar. 2008, pp. 1–7.
Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Culler, Jonathan D. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Routledge, 2015.
“Deconstruction Approach of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare - ‘Sonnet 18’ by William Shakespeare I.” Studocu, www.studocu.com/ph/document/don-honorio-ventura-technological-state-university/bsed-english/deconstruction-approach-of-sonnet-18-by-william-shakespeare/20873611. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.
Glendinning, Simon. Derrida: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2011.
[ Word count :- 2,566]
[ Images :- 08]
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