Textuality » 4BLS Interacting

ETolloi_Romeo and Juliet
by ETolloi - (2014-03-10)
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The poetry that I'm going to analyse is an extract from the play "Romeo and Juliet" , written by Shakespeare. The text is addressed to all people, and consists of the dialogue between the two star-crossed lovers .
1)The tytle introduces the intelligent reader that the scene takes places in the capulet's garden, near an ochard. In addition, it unvales the names of the two lovers.
2)In considering the layout, the poetry consists of three stanzas:
-The first stanza is characterized by the development of Romeo's soliloquy
-In the second stanza, Juliet declaire her love for Romeo,  believing that she was alone
 -The third stanza consists of the dialogue between the two lovers.
3)DENOTATIVE ANALYSIS
Romeo felt in love with Juliet at first sight, during the Capulet's masquerade ball. Now he is hidden outside Juliet's balcony, hoping to see her again. The scene strats with Romeo's soliloquy, which deals with his appreciation of Juliet. Then, without warning, Juliet appears at the balcony ,although believing to be by herself and professed her love for him and her sorrow that he was a Montague. She sais that if he would refuse his Montague's name, she would give herself to him or, if he would swear that he loved her,she would refuse her Capulet's name. Anyway, Romeo and Juliet couldn't love each other because they belonged to enemies families, as long as one of them would give up his name.Besides, she sais that his name wasn't part of his body, and even if without his name he remained the same person.Listening to the declaration of  julie, romeo understands to be reciprocated and decide to openly decleares to Juliet his love .
->These are the features that allow the reader to understand the period in which the text was written:
First of all, Romeo compares Juliet to the morning sun. This metaphor has a double sense:
-As the sun was at the center of the university, in line with copernicus, Juliet was the center of Romeo's world.
- Romeo compares the window to the eastern horizont : like dim light appearing before sunrise Romeo asks Juliet to appear at her window.
The reference to the cardinal points is a trace which allowed the reader to understand that the period was rinascimental, in which people tried to establish a position. In addition, there is the reference to the view of the universe of the time, created by Copernicus, in which the sun was at the centre of the universe and all planets turned around it.
Second, Romeo makes a parallelism between the moon and Juliet. The reference to the envious moon has double snese:
-First, the rising sun of day signifies the end of the night, killing the envious moon.
-Second, the reference alludes to  the God "Diana", the moon personified, and her virgins servants. The pale of the moon was dued to the belief that women who maintained their virginity were subject to green-sikness (a form of anemies)
As the sun outshines the moon light, the beauty of Diana is overshadowed by that of Julie.
The reader must read on to find out that envious moon is a cataphoric referement.
Third Juliet's apparition creates the effect of something of divine.
-> This feature remined the belief of the Middle Ages that  perfect woman had to be angelic  and look like the Virgin Mary.
Finally, Shakespeare plays on contrast:sun-moon,est-ovest, beauty and health. He underlines the binary opposition of the Manichean vision of society in the Middle Ages.

4)CONNOTATIVE ANALYSIS
-there is a frequent use of punctuation, to be more precise, of the exclamation marks.
-The semantical choice contribuites to make Juliet the object of desire and to create a climax, during the development of the poetry. Shakespeare uses a material language which plays on double sense, and which is suitable to convay the burning passion of Romeo .                         There are archaic words like "thou" or "art", meaning respectively "you" and "are".
As regards the rhetorical figures, Shakespeare uses a lot of metaphores to drow the reader's attenction to uniqueness of Juliet, who is describes from the point of view of Romeo. Finally, there is also a frequent use of personification and anthropomorphize.