On the Poetic Crystallization of the Humanist Insights in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

Abstract

As indicated clearly in existing literatures pertaining to Shakespearean sonnets, their interpretations are characterized with the general interpretation of sequential or entire sonnets and the essential interpretation of the singular sonnet them in a single article. In at least previous 5 years, the former has been centralized while the latter cornered. Rather pitifully, Sonnet 18 failed to be interpreted in details to identify its aesthetic and artistic values and virtues. Therefore, this article aims to interpret the much richer and profounder meaning in Sonnet 18 to provide crucial evidences for the poetic crystallization of humanist insights in elaborating the actual humanity, dignity and immortal pursuit of man in connection with the close relationship between the immortalization of man and that of poem when they are faced with the fatal crisis of time and death. For the sake of the overall elaboration of the profundity and perspicacity of the aesthetic and artistic meanings in those sonnets, this study will provide an analytical sample for the overall interpretation of the undiscoverable meanings in each of them in reference to its social and cultural contexts.