what is the diction (word choice) of the sonnet 30 by edmund spenser?

Answer 1

Homework alert!

Answer 2

My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so-hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her intreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold;
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
That fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
And ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.


Ice, fire, cold, ice, cold, melts, congealed.... Don't tell me you don't know what this is about!

Answer 3

The diction, the word choice, is the thesis and antithesis, fire and ice, or in this case, a metaphor for passion and frigidity. We're talking back in a time when women were told that sex was for procreation and that submitting to carnal desire was a sin. So, the speaker is asking why it is that his "fire", passion, is incapable of melting her "ice", frigidity or unwillingness to melt under the intense flames of his passionate heart. Not only that, but that it seems that only "love" is perverse in this matter, that in all else fire "will" melt ice and ice "will" subdue fire; he asks why her frigidity makes him want her more instead of dousing the flames of his passion, in contrast to nature's laws. So, the word choice was for contrast, but it also used common metaphor for passion and restraint (frigidity).