muslin's pretty cool i guess @tilneytastic - Tumblr Blog

Drew @purpleshirtsandlopsidedsmirks, heavily inspired by the style of @aferova (follow her, she’s amazing!) for her twitter profile picture. I had a lot of fun doing this!

hypher-nation

Thoughts about Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee…?” In this sonnet, Shakespeare compares somebody to a summer’s day, a simile often used in sonnets to show the beauty and loveliness of the person they are writing about. However, Shakespeare is questioning this comparison – he thinks that his subject is too good to be a summer’s day, which are so impermanent and even uncomfortable, since the subject’s beauty is going to be remembered by generations to come through his sonnet. This is a theme which has continued to be relevant to poets, artists and songwriters even until today (in fact Bastille’s Poet is inspired by this sonnet). He sticks to the traditional sonnet rhyme and rhythm scheme, with alternate lines rhyming and then finishing in a couplet that acts like a ‘conclusion’ to what he’s saying, but this is done almost with irony, since he’s questioning the accuracy of the traditional summer’s day metaphor. The subject of the sonnet is “more lovely and more temperate” than summer, which Shakespeare goes on to say is “too hot”, “too short” and occasionally having “rough winds”. In fact, they are the one exception (according to Shakespeare) to the rule that “Every fair from fair sometime declines, /By chance, or Nature’s changing course, untrimm’d”. The sonnet is basically in two sections, the first describing all the bad things about summer and the second saying how the subject is different – for example while “summer’s lease hath all too short a date”, “thy eternal summer shall not fade” and in fact in a way the subject will never die, because Shakespeare has immortalised them on paper. Death will never “brag (they) wander’st in his shade, /when in eternal lines to time thou growest”. Death is personified as ‘bragging’ if he should ever manage to capture the subject of the sonnet, which tells us again how beautiful they must be if even Death would want them.

tilneytastic

Ah, Shakespeare. This exactly sums up how I feel about muslin... (and of course how I feel about you, Catherine dear. Because you are my true love. Not muslin. Of course it's you.)

#shakespeare #sonnet #northanger abbey #tilney #catherine morland #poetry

You can always rely on muslin as a reliable topic of conversation

#muslin #Jane Austen

Meeting my true love

It's almost 2 years since I met my one true love, my dearest darlingest, lovelinest (are these real words??) Catherine Morland. We met in Bath. No, not in a bath but in Bath The Place. We met when I bumped into her dear Chaperone Mrs Allen, and I accidentally tore a hole in her muslin dress with my pin. Then of course we got into a conversation about muslin, bribed someone to introduce us...one thing led to another and after some drama and a great kiss we're now married. Now I can't really remember what the point of this post was, but Mrs Tilney I know you're reading this (is the oven still on?) so I just want to say that I love ya. Even more than muslin (just about) Tilney xxx

#northanger abbey #jane austen #john tilney #love #muslin