Abstract:With the further study of literature, literary learners no longer settle for the superficial learning of literature but pursue the deeper beauty of literature. Especially, the poem on the subject of love is the best choice to analyze the beauty of literature. This paper is based on Sonnets from the Portuguese, an anthology of 44 sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the subject of love triumphs over death. The aesthetic features, particularly the musical beauty, imagery beauty and rhetorical beauty, are studied in this paper to appreciate the beauty of poems. The aesthetic features are analyzed through carefully reading the poems firstly and then classifying and summing up the features, and finally illustrating above-mentioned features in the way of citing examples. This paper, based on the theory of stylistics, not only extracts the feature of rhyme scheme, characteristic imageries and distinctive figures of speech showed in the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by analyzing the forty-four sonnets, but renders the ability of appreciating poems scaling another new height through the process of analyzing the poems; which totally accords with the teaching aim of applying what one has learned. 

Key words: Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Sonnets from the Portuguese; aesthetic features

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Introduction-1

I. Musical Beauty-5

A. Patterns of Rhyme in Sonnets-5

B. Rhyme Reflected in Sonnets from the Portuguese-6

II. Imagery Beauty-9

A. Positive Imageries-9

B. Natural Imageries-10

C. Negative Imageries-11

III. Rhetorical Beauty-13

A. Simile and Metaphor-13

B. Repetition and Parallelism-14

C. Personification-16

Conclusion-17

Bibliography-19

Acknowledgements-21