The Sea In Shakespeare’s Sonnets

As a classic work in the world literature, Shakespeare’s Sonnets still remain a hot topic today. Since the 18 th century, they have led to a large number of debates and interests and the studies about it develop deeply and profoundly until the 21 st century. However, there are limited studies involved in the Sea in the Sonnets. Hence, this article tries to analyze the Sea image in the Sonnets and its social and cultural implications in view of ocean culture in Europe.First of all, this thesis illustrates the relationship between the sea in Shakespeare’s works and the sea in pre-Shakespeare literature in detail. In the early Western literature, the sea image usually appears in the great epic and sea mythology. What’s more, the boundlessness and cruelty of the sea were perhaps the major conceptual discovery of early Western people, and they also advanced the plots in Shakespeare’s plays. And on this basis, this thesis finds that the sea image in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, except inheriting the features of boundlessness and the unpredictable, is typically characterized by its sublimity and eternity.The sublimity of the sea in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is mainly reflected in the following three factors. In the first place, the sea is the origin of life, which represents Shakespeare’s respect and awe for the sea. Then the sea is rich and it could provide endless wealth for people. However, the vastness and unpredictable of the sea just make people strange and unattainable. Besides, the sea is the embodiment of virtue. Shakespeare insists the great virtue is like the sea, and praises that the highest good is like that of water. On the other hand, the sea in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is also the incarnation of the eternity. The sea is just like the mirror, reflecting human emotions and the everlasting theme of time and fate.Furthermore, the sea in Shakespeare’s Sonnets also has social historicity, whose aesthetic features embody the history of expansion during the Renaissance and totally express Shakespeare’s sense of impending doom. The foreign flowers in the Sonnets represent the development of the oversea trade in Britain at that time. The nautical terms and the navigator, which frequently turn up in his sonnets, indirectly show the rich seafaring and the overseas colonial expansion during the Elizabethan Age. This study about the sea writing in Shakespeare’s sonnets could not only look into Shakespeare’s view of the sea, but could lead people to know more about the features of that time and the social and historical situations during the Elizabethan Age.