Assignment 205 - Media Culture and Cultural Studies

 Welcome readers! This blog is written as a part of my third semester assignment in Paper No. - 205 Cultural Studies. In this blog, I will explore the topic 'Media Culture and Cultural Studies.'

● Name :- Hetal Pathak

● Roll No. :- 09 

● Semester  :- 3 ( Batch 2022 - 2024)

● Enrollment No.- 4069206420220022

● Paper No. :- 205 

● Paper Name :-  Cultural Studies

● Topic :- Media Culture and Cultural Studies 

● Submitted to :- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  Bhavnagar University 

● Email Address:- hetalpathak28@gmail.com 

● Date of Submission:- 1st December, 2023

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Media Culture and Cultural Studies:-

□ Table of Contents :- 

‍- Introduction 

● What is Cultural Studies

● Overview of Media Culture 

-Theoretical Framework

 ● Media and Cultural identity 

● Audience Reception and use of Media Culture

● Conclusion

Introduction :-

Media culture and cultural studies explore the intricate relationship between media and society. In this dynamic field, we investigate how media shapes and reflects our culture, influencing the way we think, communicate, and perceive the world around us. Cultural studies delve into the meanings embedded in media messages, considering how they impact individuals and communities. 

Media or social media world nowadays is a reflection or we can say an imitation of the real world. Media reports each and everything which is happening around the world.it helps to understand what is happening around, right and wrong. And that's why Media is holding power. Media is able to affect people's thoughts as well as their emotions. And shape their mentality good or bad, just the way they want. Towards any particular area or person. Media has control over mass.

And that's why it is their humble responsibility to provide facts and information which is tested twice. But if we see nowadays the media also is in control of the government or politicians. So the media never dare to speak against them and provide information which is beneficial for them. For them it does not matter whether it is correct information or false. We can easily interpret that nowadays the media is not working for the audience but it is working for the people who are in power. Media itself is a power and works for power. And hide the news which are important to be seen. 

Cultural studies is interested in the ways in which communication and community are linked. Communication is about language, discourse and representation. Advertising, Marketing and critique - are all features associated with Media. Media are technologies of communication, and therefore of meaning production and meaning - dissemination. 

 Media Studies and its role in construction of cultural values, its circulation of symbolic values, and its production of desire is central to cultural studies. 

"Studying Media culture is not only to focus on the cultural aspects of any media but also paying attention to the economics of media."

What is Cultural Studies ? :- 

Cultural studies, interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. Cultural studies emerged in Britain in the late 1950s and subsequently spread internationally, notably to the United States and Australia. Originally identified with the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (founded 1964) and with such scholars as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams, cultural studies later became a well-established field in many academic institutions, and it has since had broad influence in sociology, anthropology, historiography, literary criticism, philosophy, and art criticism. Among its central concerns are the place of race or ethnicity, class, and gender in the production of cultural knowledge.

The word Culture is derived from the Latin word 'Colere' which means 'To cultivate', 'to honour' or 'to protect'. Culture is the mode of generating meaning and ideas which are valid within the culture. These meanings are governed by power, which means the culture is controlled by the elite class whereas non-elite's views are rejected. It denotes that in society, certain components of culture get more significant than others. As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out that ; 

 Cultural studies is not "a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda," but a "loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions." 

Cultural studies read between these gaps of the culture. As Derrida points out binary oppositions in the theory of Deconstruction. Similarly cultural studies do the same. It looks at the mass culture.  Cultural Studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, Feminism, Gender Studies, anthropology, Sociology, race and ethnic Studies, film theory, urban studies , Public policy, Popular culture studies and Postcolonial Studies.  Those fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. Cultural Studies was Influenced by Structuralism and Poststructuralism.  

Cultural studies takes as its force the whole Complex of changing ideas, beliefs, Feelings, Values and Symbols that define a community's organisation and sense of itself. It is important to note here that ; 

'When we study culture, we are studying the world we live in and how we function in it.'

Cultural Studies later became a well -  established field in many academic Institutions, and it has since had broad influence in Other Fields like - Sociology , anthropology, literary Criticism and Philosophy. Among its Central Concerns are the Place of race or ethnicity , class and gender in the Production of Cultural Knowledge. 

Media Culture :- 

Media culture refers to the culture created under the influence of mass media. The concept of media culture infers its impact on society’s information consumption and intellectual guidance. Media culture tends to be a major factor in the formation of mainstream culture since it affects society’s opinions, values, tastes, attitudes and informational availability. 

In today's world, Media becomes as essential as our daily needs. Media of today is playing an important and outstanding role in creating and shaping public opinion and strengthening society.  Media influences society in a large way. It influences so many people's behaviour nowadays. The media can manipulate, influence, persuade and pressurise society, along with even controlling the world at times in both positive and negative ways. 

Overview of Media Culture :- 

Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of

which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatise and legitimise the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or to be oppressed. 

We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society and thus it is important to learn how to understand, interpret and criticise its meaning and message. 

'The media are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy.'

Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment. Learning how to read, criticise, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment. 

Through a set of internal debates, and responding to social struggles and movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Birmingham group came to focus on the interplay of representations and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture. They were among the first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, television, film, and other popular cultural forms on audiences.They also focused on how various audiences interpreted and used media culture differently, analysing the factors that made different audiences respond in contrasting ways to various media texts. 

'For cultural studies, media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behaviour, and even identities. Those who uncritically follow the dictates of media culture tend to "mainstream" themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behaviour. Yet cultural studies is also interested in how subcultural groups and individuals resist dominant forms of culture and identity, creating their own style and identities.'

Cultural studies show how media culture articulates the dominant values, political ideologies, and social developments and novelties of the era. It conceives of U.S. culture and society as a contested terrain with various groups and ideologies struggling for dominance (Kellner 1995). Television, film, music, and other popular cultural forms are thus often liberal or conservative, or occasionally express more radical or oppositional views. 

A critical cultural studies- embodied in many of the articles collected in this reader thus develops concepts and analyses that will enable readers to analytically dissect the artefacts of contemporary media culture and to gain power over their cultural environment. 

Media and Cultural identity :- 

Media plays a big role in shaping how we see ourselves and others. Imagine it like a mirror reflecting our culture. When we watch movies, TV shows, or read news, it influences our beliefs and values. For example, if a certain group is always shown in a certain way, it can create stereotypes.

Media can also bring cultures together by sharing traditions and stories. But sometimes, it might overshadow smaller cultures with dominant ones, leading to a loss of identity. So, the media is like a storyteller that can either celebrate diversity or unintentionally blur it. It's important to be aware of this impact on cultural identity.

Mass media are media of communication such as the printed press, cinema, radio, and television that address large and diverse audiences. Cultural identity refers to a set of qualities attributed to given populations, often thought of as static but which change through time. Mass media have played a key historical role in shaping national cultures and therefore a range of cultural identities. 

Cultural identity is not an only collection of thoughts, beliefs, traditions, languages and behaviours accumulated through time. Rather it is a cultural selection on how to respond to  an outside stimulant in various time frames. Both printed and electronic media without a doubt has had a significant influence on the individuals and cultural identity. Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) argues that ; 

                            

   'The media contributes to social change by being the missing link between culture and personality.'

The fact is evident that cultural identity and Media are correlated and interconnected phenomena these days, where Media are a source of transformation of new and modern ideas, development of human capital and information, but on the other side they are a threat to the socio - cultural environment in the context of identity. 

Media culture clearly reflects the multiple sides of contemporary debates and problems. It is for this reason that any reading of the media must always be a political reading. Media culture helps reinforce the hegemony and power of specific political, cultural and economic groups. The representation in the media are :- 

1. Suggestive 

2. Provocative

This means they suggest ideologies that the audience, if not alert, imbibes. Media culture does not need to declare its position or ideology openly : it only needs to suggest.  Showing a film star guzzling coke in a film, or using particular brands of clothing is not necessarily a marketing strategy for the product. But what it does is to suggest that stars wear certain kinds of clothes, and that their glamour is in part the effect of the clothes.

Media Culture is provocative because it sometimes asks us to rethink what we know, or reinforce what we believe in. Thus the portrayal of Pakistan as a 'Terrorist state' in Hindi films reinforces the political and social image of Pakistan by raising our anger levels at the injustices of Pakistan's army ( but remains silent on any human and civil rights violation by the Indian army in Kashmir). 

Audience Reception and use of Media Culture :-

Cultural Studies is interested in the ways in which audience receive the message , how they respond to it, and the effects that the message generates. That is why A major component of cultural studies is the audience or reception studies. Reception is the use of mediated cultural texts by the audience. 

All texts are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and subject

positions of the reader. Members of distinct genders, classes, races, nations, regions,sexual

preferences, and political ideologies are going to read texts differently, and cultural studies can illuminate why diverse audiences interpret texts in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. It is indeed one of the merits of cultural studies to have focused on audience reception in recent years and this focus provides one of its major contributions, though there are also some limitations and problems with the standard cultural studies approaches to the audience. A standard way to discover how audiences read texts is to engage in ethnographic research, in an attempt to determine how texts effect audiences and shape their beliefs and behavior. Enthnographic cultural studies have indicated some of the various ways that audiences use and appropriate texts, often to empower themselves. 

Media culture provides materials for individuals to create identities and meanings and cultural studies detects uses of cultural forms. Teenagers use video games and music television as an escape from the demands of a disciplinary society. Males use sports as a terrain of fantasy identification, in which they feel empowered as "their" team or star triumphs. Such sports events also generate a form of community, currently being lost in the privatized media and consumer culture of our time. 

This emphasis on audience reception and appropriation helps cultural studies overcome the previous one-sided textualist orientations to culture. It also directs focus on the actual political effects that texts have and how audiences use texts. Audience research can reveal how people are actually using cultural texts and what sort of effects they are having on everyday life. Combining quantitative and qualitative research, new reception studies, including some of the essays in this reader, are providing important contributions into how audiences actually interact with cultural texts. 

Thus, while emphasis on the audience and reception was an excellent correction to the

one-sidedness of purely textual analysis. But, in recent years cultural studies has overemphasised reception and textual analysis, while underemphasizing the production of culture and its political economy. To sum up, Media effects are complex and controversial and it is the merit of cultural studies to make their study an important part of its agenda. 

Conclusion :- 

To Conclude, Cultural Studies focuses on media culture because it assumes that Media are very significant contributors to ideologies and political culture. Media and culture are in correlation. Media culture makes oppressive conditions of class and gender and often the economic angle to cultural ideologies of the family or the law. 

References :- 

“Cultural Studies: Interdisciplinary Field.” Encyclopedia Britannica, web.archive.org/web/20170801182053/https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-studies. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.

Kellner, Douglas. Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture , pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalstudiesmulticulturalism.pdf. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.

Khan, Salman. “Media Impacts on Culture Identity.” Academia.Edu, 15 Oct. 2016, www.academia.edu/29167165/Media_Impacts_on_Culture_Identity.

Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to Cultural Studies. Viva Books, 2011.

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Thank you! 

Assignment 204 - Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18

 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

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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.

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Thank you!