"True Loves Power": An Explication of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
This text is one that I composed for my first British Literature class. This assignment helped me realize many things about myself as a writer. The basis for the assignment was to pick a sonnet from any of the poets we had read about that semester, and go into detail about what we thought the poem was about. The prompt had guidelines for our writing such as "What is the point you think the author is trying to get across to his/her audience?" and "What do you feel the lines truly mean?"
Something that I struggled with during this assignment was finding my own voice. At this time in my college career I was so used to creating papers such as this that were more research based where I would have to cite other peoples ideas and adding on my own ideas and comments as merely a side note. In turn then I felt that most things I had written were never truly my own. So, as I was writing this I constantly had to push myself to say with confidence what I truly thought Shakespeare was trying to convey, not what other scholars thought. Like I state in my annotations to this text, I feel that the scholar we had talked about, Fan Shen, would relate to my struggle of finding my own voice because that is one of his major problems that he had with English composition upon coming to America. I feel that as a someone who is used to the English composition, and still struggles with this, that this subject would be helpful to discuss in a classroom setting. I believe that I would have benefited from having a discussion or a workshop on this subject. That is something which this assignment taught me; that as a future teacher I will understand my students needs and help them concur these hurdles in their writing.
Something that I struggled with during this assignment was finding my own voice. At this time in my college career I was so used to creating papers such as this that were more research based where I would have to cite other peoples ideas and adding on my own ideas and comments as merely a side note. In turn then I felt that most things I had written were never truly my own. So, as I was writing this I constantly had to push myself to say with confidence what I truly thought Shakespeare was trying to convey, not what other scholars thought. Like I state in my annotations to this text, I feel that the scholar we had talked about, Fan Shen, would relate to my struggle of finding my own voice because that is one of his major problems that he had with English composition upon coming to America. I feel that as a someone who is used to the English composition, and still struggles with this, that this subject would be helpful to discuss in a classroom setting. I believe that I would have benefited from having a discussion or a workshop on this subject. That is something which this assignment taught me; that as a future teacher I will understand my students needs and help them concur these hurdles in their writing.
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