Four Views of The Sick Rose :: sick

Four Views of The Sick rose     Four Works Cited   By analyzing more than information from different authors, I was able to draw a great amount contrast from the authors.   I had a better feel for what they were act to convey when they wrote their critical essays in their books.  Whatever the case, it was easier to judge The Sick Rose by having more sources to reflect upon.   Michael Riffaterre centers his analysis of The Sick Rose in The Self-sufficient Text by using internal evidence exclusively to analyze the poem and to determine to what extent the literary text is self-sufficient. It seems to Riffaterre that a square-toed reading entails no more than a knowledge of the language (39). Riffaterre identifies psychological, philosophical, and transmittable variations (connected to mythological tradition) as aiming outwards. These approaches find the meaning of the text in the relationship of its images to other texts (40). Riffaterre argu es for a more internal reading of the poems. Riffaterre emphasizes the magnificence of the relationships between words as opposed to their corresponding realities (40). For example, he states that the outpouring or the fruit is a variant of the worms dwelling constructed through destruction. Thus, as a word, worm is meaningful only in the context of blossoming, and flower only in the context of worm (41). After Riffaterres reading and interpretation of the poem, he concludes that The Sick Rose is composed of polarized polarities (44) which convey the central goal of the poem, the actual phrase, the sick rose (44). He asserts that because the text provides all the elements inevitable to our identifying these verbal artifacts, we do not have to resort to traditions or symbols tack together outside the text (44). Thus, The Sick Rose is a self-sufficient text.   approximate Adams takes a different approach to reading The Sick Rose than virtually critics by cautioning the read er that often one overlooks the fact that a literary image primarily imitates its previous usages and secondarily what it denotes in the outer orbit or in the realm of ideas (13). Adams begins his analysis with examining the rose, and by reminding the reader that in a literary world where the rose is seen archetypally, all things have tender-hearted form (14). Thus he allows for the rose to be able to turn over part of the speaker. He carries his idea one step further by suggesting that the speaker always addresses some aspect of himself when speaking to an object.