 Shakespearean scholar Joel Fineman offers a criticism of Shakespeare's sonnets in a broader context that is evident in Sonnet 53.Fineman writes, "from Aristotle on the conventional understanding of rhetoric of praise as all the rhetoricians uniformly say, energetically, 'heightens its effect," (Fineman).In this sense, the praise of the young man is meant to highlight his features and bring them to a literal understanding.