Art Of Shakespeare’s Sonnets With Reference To Shklovsky’s Theory Of Defamiliarization

People have been struggling with the art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.It takes almost 200 years before people widely accept it as a work of art.However,people still have highly diversified opinions on its art.Some think it is a masterpiece of autobiography.Some think it is a wonderful fiction in following the convention of love-poetry.This essay explores its art from the perspective of Shklovsky’s theory of defamiliarization.In his essay “Art as Technique”,Shklovsky points out that habitualization takes away our sensations of life,making us live an unconscious life.Art is a way to make us perceive our lives again because it creates defamiliarization.He talks about two elements of defamiliarization,which are the effects of defamiliarization and the techniques to produce these effects.Based on the theory above,this thesis explores the following two questions:(1)What effects are produced by art in Shakespeare’s Sonnets?(2)How does Shakespeare use poetic devices to produce these effects?The analysis finds that art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets produces the effects of the defamiliarization of beauty,gender and love.Love-poetry convention presents objects of beauty,gender and love in similar forms.The high repetition makes people grow numb to these three objects.However,beauty,gender and love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets are presented in difficult forms.The renewed forms on one hand,make people again perceive beauty,gender and love.As a result,people’s sensations of life,especially of beauty,gender and love come back to them again.On the other hand,the renewed forms are produced by poetic devices,which concerns the second question.Various poetic devices including poetic imagery,metaphor and so on are used in a way to change the stock and stale form into a new and effective form.Shklovsky’s theory of defamiliarization gives us a new perspective to approach the art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.This thesis reveals that Shakespeare’s Sonnets takes advantage of the convention to go against the convention,which also,to some extent,explains why people are controversial in its art.The wandering between autobiography and sonnet convention,between familiarity and unfamiliarity makes Shakespeare’s Sonnets a piece of art.