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1.a This book treats William Shakespeare's Sonnets as philosophical poetry. Shakespeare's sonnets are not philosophical poetry as didactic poetry, or a poeticized explanation of philosophy, like Lucretius's De rerum naturae. They are not mythological allegories or narrative explorations of philosophical ideas, either, as in the manner of Parmenides's verses on nature, Hölderlin's odes, or Keats's The Fall of Hyperion. They include a number of references to classical philosophy as it was known to the Renaissance, especially to Platonic and Aristotelian concepts. Yet it's not my plan to present a "history of philosophy" approach to this collection of poems, although such a task might well be taken up in another sort of study. Shakespeare's sonnets are philosophical poetry because each poem keeps fundamental questions about truth, being, and value in view—to varying extents, of course, and always poetically askance, but in view still. His sonnets are philosophical because they are verbally intricate and intellectually substantial as well. These qualities are part of the style and the logical form of the sonnet as lyric poem, through its Mediterranean roots and Tudor adaptations.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137330567_1

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