Comparison of the Concept of Poetic Identity in Shakespeare's Sonnets ۱۸ and ۱۳۰ Based on an Intertextuality Approach

This study examines the concept of poetic identity in Shakespeare's Sonnets ۱۸ and ۱۳۰ through the lens of intertextuality, as theorised by Julia Kristeva and Gérard Genette. Moving beyond biographical or psychological readings, the article treats poetic identity as a discursive construct formed within networks of prior texts. The central research question asks how the idealistic, immortalising voice of Sonnet ۱۸ relates to the realistic, parodic voice of Sonnet ۱۳۰: are they contradictory identities or two sides of the same coin? Using a qualitative intertextual analysis method, the study identifies explicit and implicit references to the Petrarchan tradition, classical Roman poetry (Horace, Ovid), and, crucially, intra-authorial dialogues between the two sonnets. The findings reveal that Sonnet ۱۸ constructs a timeless, creator-subject through performative verbs, organic metaphors of the poem as a living body, and intertextual echoes of Horatian monumentality and Christian resurrection rhetoric. In contrast, Sonnet ۱۳۰ systematically negates Petrarchan beauty tropes via an inverted simile structure, employing parody as a friendly, not hostile, act of identity formation. The analysis further demonstrates that Sonnet ۱۳۰ engages in a line-by-line oppositional dialogue with Sonnet ۱۸, relativising the claim to immortality and substituting it with an ethics of realistic honesty. Rather than presenting a split or pathological self, the two sonnets together form a dialectical model (thesis - antithesis - synthesis) in which poetic identity emerges as a fluid, polyphonic space. The study concludes that Shakespeare's poetic identity is not a unified biographical 'I' but an intertextual and dialogic truth, continuously reconstructed through dialogue with tradition and with the poet's own prior work. Intertextuality thus proves to be a powerful analytical tool for reinterpreting Renaissance lyric poetry and uncovering the modern complexity of identity in Shakespeare's sonnets.

کلیدواژه ها:

Poetic Identity ، Sonnet ۱۸ ، Sonnet ۱۳۰ ، Shakespeare ، Intertextuality ، Parody ، Renaissance Poetry