SONNETS

“the social media of the Renaissance”

English Literature from the Middle Ages to the 18C
Professor Goodwin
2 29 2024
 POP QUIZ!
VERSES WRITTEN WITH A
DIAMOND (1563)
Much suspected by me,
Nothing proved can be.

Quod* Elizabeth the prisoner

 POP QUIZ!
• What is sprezzatura? Is it better than rizz?
• What is a courtier?
• Who is Petrarch and what is he famous for?
• What is the format/design/style of the Petrarchan sonnet?
• What are some rhetorical devices found in Petrarchan sonnets?
 English (Shakespearean) Sonnet
vs Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet
• English:
• 14 lines, iambic pentameter
• u/u/u/u/u/
• 3 quartets and a heroic (rhyming) couplet
at end
• Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF
GG.
• Themes may be the passage of time, love,
infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality.
• Italian:
• 14 lines
• 8-line octave + 6-line sestet
• ‘Volta’ at around line 8, showing a turn or
change of mood
• Rhyme scheme: octave rhyming
ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet)
rhyming CDCDCD or CDECDE.
• The sonnet is full of oxymora and the themes
are usually love, faith, beauty.
 Sonnet Cycle (or Sequence)
• The sonnet cycle is a series of sonnets usually on a given theme,
dedicated to a particular individual, or both. It is usually designed to be
read as a whole, and love is the most common theme.
• Sonnet cycles have the primary advantage of allowing the poet to explore
many different aspects of the given theme, thereby expanding the depth
and complexity of its treatment.
• Source: https://www.languageisavirus.com/poetry-guide/sonnet-cycle.php
 Surrey, “Love, that doth reign…”
trans. Petrarch’s Rima 140
• Love that doth reign and live within my
thought
And built his seat within my captive breast,
Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.
But she that taught me love and suffer pain,
My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,
• Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.
And coward Love then to the heart apace
Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and
plain
His purpose lost, and dare not show his
face.
For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I
pain;
Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:
Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586)
Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is
remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan
age, ‘Castiglione’s perfect courtier come to life.’ His works include
a sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of
Poesy, and a pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
Like the best of the Elizabethans, Sidney was successful in more than
one branch of literature, but none of his work was published during
his lifetime. However, it circulated in manuscript. His finest
achievement was a sequence of 108 love sonnets. These owe much
to Petrarch in tone and style, and Sidney is considered the greatest
Elizabethan sonneteer after Shakespeare.
 Astrophil and Stella
The sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella – (star lover and star) –
was the first of the famous English sonnet sequences,
comprising 108 sonnets and 11 songs, composed in the 1580s
and published in 1591. It is believed that the sequence is largely autobiographical
and inspired by his relationship with Penelope Devereaux, later Lady Rich, whom
he was supposed to marry but the deal fell through. Lady Rich, considered a great
beauty at court, with golden hair and dark eyes, had a very colorful love life apart
from Sidney. Sidney used key features of his Italian model, Petrarch, with variation
of emotion, musings on the act of poetic creation, and experiments with rhyme
that freed the English sonnet from the strict rhyming requirements of the Italian
form.
 The Paradox of Love, for the sonnet
writer
• Anthony Low in The Reinvention of Love writes, “If a
man is faithful to the worthy object of his desire, even
to the end, he wins victory from apparent defeat.”

• https://thefablesoup.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/englishization-of-petrarchan-convention-sidneys-
sonnets/
 Comparing Petrarch and Sidney
“The love poetry of Petrarch is a primary theme running throughout the Sidney’s
sonnet sequence. Petrarch’s love and description of Laura in the 366 poems of
Canzoniere are closely mirrored in Astrophil’s love and description of Stella.
Petrarch’s preoccupation with Laura causes his overwhelming joy as well as
tormenting desires, the same conflict that Astrophil experiences for Stella. Both the
poets follow the traditional male-dominant discourse and as a consequence, the
beloved is portrayed as a meek character expected to submit to the desires of the
poets (and patriarchy).”
https://thefablesoup.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/englishization-of-petrarchan-convention-sidneys-sonnets/
 Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 1
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;

That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;

Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,

Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
 Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 7
• When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes, • Or would she her miraculous power show,
• In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?
• That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary,
• Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
• She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
• Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?

• Or did she else that sober hue devise,

• Both so, and thus, she, minding Love should be

• In object best to knit and strength our sight; • Plac'd ever there, gave him this mourning weed
• Lest, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
• To honour all their deaths who for her bleed.
• They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)
Spenser came from a more humble background than Sidney’s. ,

was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an

epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the
Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the
premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and he is
considered one of the great poets in the English language.
 Birth of the Individual
“The most fascinating problems of Renaissance lyric poetry is, What does it mean to be an individual? Is there
such thing as a fixed notion of sincerity? Sidney`s Astrophil and Stella and Spenser`s Amoretti provide fertile
ground for the exploration of these issues in the context of Renaissance sonnets.
The period during which Sidney and Spenser were writing saw the birth of the individual, as we know it. Jacob
Burckhardt argued in his passage on `the development of the individual` in Renaissance Europe that the typical
Renaissance man is “the first-born among the sons of Europe.” More recently, Stephen Greenblatt has extended
this idea in Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare that “there is in the early modern period an
increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.”
In the context of Renaissance sonnets, the movement toward self-expression as a unique individual, as opposed
to as a member of a class in feudal society, can be articulated in Anne Ferry`s carefully argued statement that
there is a `remarkable shift in the characterization of inward states` during this period.
https://www.tutorhunt.com/resource/14204/
 Stephen Greenblatt,
Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare

• “In the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness

about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process
• Self-fashioning acquires a new range of meanings: it· describes the practice of
parents and teachers; it is linked to manners or demeanor, particularly that of
the elite; it may suggest hypocrisy or deception, an adherence to mere outward
ceremony; it suggests representation of one's nature or intention in speech or
actions. .. self-fashioning derives its interest precisely from the fact that it
functions without regard for a sharp distinction between literature and social
life.”
 Sonnet Cycle: Amoretti
• Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti is a sonnet cycle written in the 16th century.
The cycle describes his courtship and eventual marriage to Elizabeth
Boyle.
• Amoretti was first published in 1595 in London as part of a volume
entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion. The volume included the sequence of
89 sonnets, along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics
and Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage.
 Amoretti, Sonnet 37
• Like as a huntsman after weary chase, • There she beholding me with milder look,

• Seeing the game from him escap'd away,

• Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:
• Sits down to rest him in some shady place,
• Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
• With panting hounds beguiled of their prey:
• And with her own goodwill her firmly tied.
• So after long pursuit and vain assay,
• Strange thing, me seem'd, to see a beast so wild,
• When I all weary had the chase forsook,
• So goodly won, with her own will beguil'd.
• The gentle deer return'd the self-same way,

• Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.

 Amoretti, Sonnet 75
• One day I wrote her name upon the strand, • "Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
• But came the waves and washed it away:
• To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
• Again I wrote it with a second hand,

• My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

• But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

• "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay, • And in the heavens write your glorious name:
• A mortal thing so to immortalize;
• Where whenas death shall all the world
• For I myself shall like to this decay, subdue,

• And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

• Our love shall live, and later life renew."