The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets Paperback – November 1, 1999

There are lots of great shakespeare books. This is one of them. For a director or an actor, its a complete explication of sound, meaning and verse structure in Shakespeare. Very few books get this close to the text. The sonnets are always surprising and this books is not going to get rid of those jolts of recongnition that seem to happen year after year for me. This book gives one an easy familiarity with those details of rhetoric, purpose and voice that flow so smoothly together in Shakespeare. Vendler is famous for very close readings of poetry. For performance, such elucidation is invaluable. It goes into the back of your head and comes back to save your ass when you are swimming in a pool of HIS words.

I have just finished a research project for my Masters class. The project was about the Philosophies found in Shakespeare's Sonnets. Vendler's book was an extremely important tool in helping me learn to understand the Sonnets. First, this book contains all 154 sonnets, with each sonnet appearing on its own page with the sonnet number appearing in the upper right hand corner. This makes finding each sonnet simple and easy - very important when typing research papers. Vendler's description and analysis that follows each sonnet is highly detailed and exact, containing diagrams, links between words and puns, meanings behind the quatrains and the couplets, and even linking the connections between the groups of sonnets (such as the "young patron" and the "dark lady" sonnets). I was very glad to have this book at my finger tips for my project - in fact, every quote I used from the sonnets came from this book. Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets is a fantastic book and something that will enhance anyone's desire to know more about Shakespeare's Sonnets. For anyone that has studied Shakespeare or wants to know more about the sonnets, I highly recommend this book.

This is a thoughtful, original and interesting analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets based on a careful reading of the texts. Her approach - memorize each one, read out loud, identify key words, images, even the visuals of the facsimiles, whatever stands out, and point them out in the notes. The notes are well structured, and excellent; she seems to notice so much that I have not seen anywhere else. This is also a beautiful text, with facsimile of the original followed by a translation into modern English.

Professor Vendler's unique gift here to all readers is not an attempt to produce the be all and end all of sonnet studies and should not be evaluated against such a (an impossible) standard. More significantly, it has blessed us with a thorough exploration of the poetic process to which Shakespeare dedicated his passion and genius -- an exploration by a foremost scholar of poetry, an extremely respectful reader of these intimate versifications, and a scholar-student who has been immersed in The Sonnets' bounty for a lifetime.As the author acknowledges, this volume is meant to be absorbed gradually over an extended time and with an edition such as Stephen Booth's thoroughly annotated version at one's side. This is not a deficit in this work but an appropriate and practical strategy that keeps this volume a thoughtful and manageable edition to enjoy, digest, and redigest many times. It will contribute immensely to even the most advanced student's appreciation of these works and their creator's mind.

This is a very useful edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. Helen Vendler's careful reading of each sonnet and her ideas on sonnet structure were quite helpful to me .

This is a work of scholarship of the highest order. Vendler appreciates, for our benefit, each of Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets in mini-essays of three to six pages. Before each essay is the original 1609 quarto text and Vendler's own modernization of it, since the spelling and printing conventions of Shakespeare's day can be obscure to us now.But this is not all. In a lengthy introduction, Vendler surveys critical reception of The Sonnets through the present day and argues persuasively for her own methods of interpretation. Her interpretations examine the poems on a multitude of lingiustic levels, from the phonological (sound) to the semantic (meaning, content). She avoids detailed analysis of imagery and socio/psychological implications, for the most part, since they can be had elsewhere.Her aim is to show Shakespeare's poetic choices and illuminate the thought patterns that structure the poems. Sometimes she goes as far as to show possible lines Shakespeare could have written, but didn't. The effect of this analysis is that I finally feel I can approach these poems on a level that truly respects them. Thanks to Vendler, I understand why such lines as--- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day- My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun- When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes--and so so many more stick in my head, and have been so memorable to previous generations.As accessible as it is for modern criticism, THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS is not an entry-level work. Vendler assumes not only familiarity with The Sonnets, but also with certain linguistic concepts such as "speech acts" and "deixis". It's nothing a bright person with a good dictionary can't get through.Those who order the hardback edition will get the added bonus of an audio CD (which Amazon mistakenly lists as a CD-ROM) of Vendler reading several of the Sonnets. Unsurprisingly, her readings stress what she says should be stressed in the essays and are in the American accent of a Harvard professor, not in the phonologically reconstructed accent of Shakespeare's day (to hear this, try  Accents by Robert Blumenfeld , which features a reading of Sonnet 29).For English majors, poets, and people who love poetry (I hope the categories overlap) I cannot recommend this book highly enough. People turned off by Harold Bloom, Vendler's esteemed Yale counterpart, would do well to look at Vendler's less self-important and more textual approach to literary criticism. As far as I'm concerned, this is the definitive edition of The Sonnets, not likely to be surpassed in the near and not-so-near future.

I’m not capable of reviewing this work. It’s simply staggering in its critical vision and perceptiveness. The greatest experience is to read a sonnet and see if you can anticipate what Professor Vendler ‘is up to’. Your failures mean you are learning something new each time.

A wonderful companion to Shakespeare’s sonnets and an indispensable teaching aid too - my used volume was in excellent condition

Study

The best book on the Sonnets I have ever read

Als Liebhaber suchte ich schon lange nach einer seriösen Analyse der Sonette, hatte aber auf Ähnliches ehrlich gesagt nicht gehofft. Vorliegend findet sich eine Kommentierung sämtlicher Sonette in Einzelportraits mit einem inhaltsreichen Vorwort, und was mehr zählt: Die Verf. hat wirklich etwas zum Thema zu sagen. Bereits in der Einleitung überzeugt, dass die Autorin nicht wie viele auf der Suche nach den großen Geheimnissen oder Botschaften herangeht, sondern in einer philologisch unaufgeregteren Weise. Sie erklärt dem Leser, dass sie sämtliche Sonette erst einmal auswendig gelernt und auch vom Sprachklang her verstanden hat. Dies macht sich im Detail bezahlt. Bei der berühmten Nr. 116, die stets als Preislied auf die Liebe gehandelt wird, zeigt die Autorin, dass die jambische Betonung auf dem zweiten Wort "me" eigentlich einen ganz anderen Sinn nahelegt. Das Sonett versteht sich als eine persönlich gefasste Entgegnung auf den untreuen Liebespartner. Sie macht dem Leser dies auch anhand der zahlreichen not, non usw. im Text plausibel. Als Leser fand ich, dass dieser sperrig-sarkastische Charakter viel eher zu Shakespeare passt, als die "säuselnde Bedeutung", die man dem Werk heute meistens unterlegt.Ich will hier nicht zu sehr ins Detail gehen, sondern nur verdeutlichen, dass die Autorin aufgrund sehr fundierter und nicht voreingenommener Analysen jedem dieser Werke sein eigenes "Gesicht" gibt und so dem Leser die Freude mit diesen Werken vergrößert. Der Text der Sonette ist jeweils in der Original-Quartoverstion und daneben in der überall zu findenden sprachlich sanft bereinigten Form wiedergegeben. So lädt das Werk den Leser auf eine sehr fantasievolle und überraschende Reise ein; ich konnte es gar nicht aus der Hand legen. Es handelt sich um eines der Bücher, in die der Lyrik-Freund immer wieder hineinsieht. Gäbe es ähnliches nur für den Canzoniere von Petrarca; man bräuchte dann nur noch eine einsame Insel!