The Eternal Eden: The Garden Imagery In Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets as a whole sequence is a brilliant treasure in the world literature.With its numerous and profound images,skillful and delicate conceits,and beautiful and precise language,the Sonnets are endowed with rich philosophical connotations as well as unique aesthetic values.Garden,a prevalent and prominent imagery in the western literature,is revisited and reinvented in Shakespeare's Sonnets.As the soul of poetry,the garden imagery in Shakespeare's Sonnets is not only a part of poetic construction,but a golden key to unlock the door of themes in the poetry.The garden imagery is closely related to such dominant themes as beauty,time and love,thus constituting three diverse dimensions of garden: the heavenly Eden: the garden of beauty;the lost Eden: the garden of time;and the Eden regained: the garden of love.The three dimensions of garden make a basically complete narrative;which mirrors the meditations of Renaissance “man” upon the motif of eternity and his longing to go back to the heavenly Eden,thus illuminating the humanistic thoughts of Shakespeare.The thesis consists of five parts: introduction,three chapters of the body part and conclusion.The introductory part briefly reviews the development of researches on Shakespeare's Sonnets and states the purpose and significance of the thesis.For over four hundred years,the criticisms of Shakespeare's Sonnets have shifted their focuses from “peripheral” biographical speculations to “ontological” thematic and linguistic studies.In regard to imagery studies,most scholars and critics concentrate on the function of imagery as a rhetoric device,ignoring the close interrelationship between imagery and thematic connotations,which spares more space to explore.Based on former studies,this thesis endeavors to relate multiple garden images to the dominant themes in the Sonnets,and to interpret the garden imagery from the following three perspectives: the garden of beauty,the garden of time and the garden of love,hoping to gain a comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare's Sonnets.Chapter One expounds the close relationship between the garden imagery and the theme of beauty.This chapter sketches out the quintessential gardens in the Classic and Christian traditions,revealing their similarities that aim at presenting an original state of perfection.With the rise of humanism,it is commonplace that Renaissance writers associate garden imagery with human body,thus constituting the “garden-human” metaphor.In Shakespeare's Sonnets,there are a large number of garden imageries,either providing a beautiful and natural setting in the poetry,or suggesting the beauty of man,which both echo the ideal state of traditional Edenic paradise.In the Sonnets,the Fair Youth is the object of Shakespeare's admiration and laudation.The young friend,as fair as “Beauty's rose”,is endowed with feminine beauty in appearance and moral virtues in spirit,thus making himself the incarnation of heavenly beauty.In this sense,the beauty of the young man coincides with that of Plato,which greatly inspires the poet to pursue beauty and to perpetuate beauty.Chapter Two explores the intricate relationship between the garden imagery and the theme of time.Owing to disobedience against God's will,Adam and Eve,the originals of human,were expelled from the heavenly Eden,bringing about the degeneration from the eternal garden to the lost one governed by the God of Time.In Shakespeare's Sonnets,Time presents itself as a scythe or a sickle,a sandglass or a mirror,or an old man,which highlights its destructiveness,swiftness and shortness.In the garden of time,all living creatures including plants,animals and human beings are hard to escape from Time's injurious hand.Besides,the young friend,the embodiment of fairness,kindness and trueness,is also threatened by time's destructive force.In order to resist against the destructiveness of Time's scythe and preserve the heavenly beauty of his young friend,the poet comes up two effective and traditional solutions,namely,procreation and his poetic microcosms.Chapter Three elaborates on the intimate relationship between the garden imagery and the theme of love.The relationship between garden and love has a long pedigree,which can trace back to the garden of Venus where the God of love was born and raised,and the eternal Eden where the first love of human beings germinated and bloomed.It is conspicuous that garden provides the shelter for the sparkling love,and more importantly,garden is the metaphor of lover's beauty and the emblem of love.In Shakespeare's Sonnets,the poet expresses two kinds of love: one is the spiritual love for the fair youth and the other is the secular love for the dark lady.According to the Neoplatonists,beauty is the divine quality that inspires love in man,and in the Sonnets only the divine beauty of the fair youth can arouse the poet's love.The poet declares that only his faithful love can enable the young friend to surpass false secular love,and only his love can enable the youth's beauty to transcend and outlive time,thus returning to the ideal state of the Eden.The conclusion sums up the whole contents and perspectives of the thesis.Garden,serving as a narrative and rhetorical technique,is a recurring imagery in Shakespeare's Sonnets,which shows its great significance in terms of the close relationships between garden and beauty,garden and time,garden and love,thereby making the Sonnets and the youth immortal and reflecting Shakespeare's unique poetic thoughts and aesthetic pursuits.