The metaphor of increase and the poetics of decrease in Skakespeare’s Sonnets

DEIDDA, ANTIOCO ANGELO

2003-01-01

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Abstract

This article discusses the melancholic “poetics of loss” that permeates the sequence, against the framework of the aristocratic models of thought and behaviour provided by Castiglione and T. Hoby. In the sonnet sequence the divine, Ficinian, image of Beauty gradually vanishes, under the assaults of “Pandemian” Venus and of Self-love.