Petrified Petrarch
Two hundred years had passed between the sonnets of Petrarch and the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As a form and structure for poetic life, the sonnet had grown hard. Fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter remained pregnant with possibilities and vitality, but must the sense turn after the octave and resolve in the sestet? Love remained in some ways inexpressible without this basic verse form, but something wasn’t right. Too many rose red lips and too much snow white skin belonging to unattainable lovers did not communicate the prevailing amorous imagination. The conventions were a little too conventional. The metaphors were gone somewhat stale.
The Reformation had intervened between the Italian Renaissance and
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One reads in Wyatt’s sonnets about some justice in love; there is more than unrequited love and enduring adoration and misery. His male lover expresses a desire to break out of his amorous prison. This is an anti-Petrarchan theme. This is the opposite of the hopelessly adoring pose of the enslaved Petrarchan lover.
The opening sonnet in Astrophel and Stella begins Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,/ That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain- (Longman 987). Sidney begins in imitation of Petrarch in three ways. The poet’s beloved is unkind; so he is plunged into despair. Sidney has also adopted Petrarch’s habit of self-scrutiny. Thirdly the thought changes at the end of the eighth line. The octave tells of the poet’s futile efforts to write a poem; the sestet discloses why he had been unsuccessful. The poet looks to the Petrarchan tradition for inspiration to cure his writer’s block. Oft turning other’s leaves, to see if thence would flow/ Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain (7-8). But this method is unproductive because it lacks the support of imagination. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay (9).
Sidney is employing the new English sonnet form developed by Surrey. This new structural scheme divides the poem into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg, is easier and more obvious to the ear. This structure is more
12. A Petrarchan Sonnet has two parts, one stanza that contains 8 lines and another containing 6. It “uses a rhyme scheme that ties the first eight lines (the octave) together, followed by a rhyme scheme that unifies the last six (the sestet)” (Foster
The main theme within Clarke’s Sonnet is his distance and inability to communicate with a lover. This poem is written for his lover as an attempt to connect with her, although within the poem, he is continuing to communicate poorly. The way in which he copes with this broken relationship drives the tone of the poem.
Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.
Written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, one could hardly mistake it for anything so pleasant. Sonnets being traditionally used for beautiful, appealing topics, already there is contradiction between
Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, ‘Sonnet’ bears little resemblance to its namesake at first glance. Bishop plays with our expectations, molding the well-known sonnet form into something new. She transforms the meter and rhyme scheme of the sonnet to the point of metamorphosis, but she retains the skeletal structure of the form; fourteen lines broken down into the customary octave and sestet. Her invocation and subsequent subversion of the anticipated poetic form provide her with a baseline to branch off from and without that context, the structure would not have the same effect on the poem’s meaning.
The couplet of this sonnet renews the speaker's wish for their love, urging her to "love well" which he must soon leave. But after the third quatrain, the speaker applauds his lover for having courage and adoration to remain faithful to him. The rhyme couplet suggests the unconditional love between the speaker and his
A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.
First, the poet uses metre, a style that emphasizes the use of a specific structure, which is an appropriate way of presenting poems with positive themes such as love. In this case, the poet achieves metre through the use of a uniform number of syllables in every line of the first stanza (10 syllables per line). This approach not only makes the poem memorable in recitation and listening but also relaxes the listener which is important in understanding the subject matter. Petrach uses a qualitative metre, which concentrates on the use of uniform syllabic arrangement. As a result, he creates an aesthetic euphony thus making the listener and the reciter to enjoy the presentation of the poem. The technique is appropriate in the presentation of a love sonnet. Equally, the first two stanzas have four lines each, but the last two stanzas have three lines each. This aspect aligns with the two perspectives presented in the poem, the first being his great affection for Laura, and the second is an expression of the pain he experiences as a result of the unreciprocated love. Furthermore, he has been unable to express his feelings to her, which compounds his pain evident in the words “I had love's tinder in my breast unburned, was it a wonder if it kindled there?” (Lines 8 – 9).
In 1573, George Gascoigne published “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” a poem in which his careful and methodical approach to the sonnet form is evident. Two years later, he published “Certayne Notes of Instruction on Making of Verse,” which only further served to cement his reputation as meticulous and deliberate with his choice of language and form—every choice Gascoigne makes is made with a purpose in mind. This is especially evident in “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” wherein Gascoigne utilizes both the intentionally-chosen sonnet form and vivid imagery to develop his criticism of the classic sonnet in which the beloved’s refusal of the author only serves to make him more determined to pursue her.
This sonnet serves to invoke a strong sense of realism in love, arguing that as strong an intensity of emotion as may be held, may be held, without the need for delusions of grandeur, taking the view that trying to reconcile two essentially different and diverse things as equal is to do true justice to neither. The beloved in this case thus represents more the need for a character developed to challenge stereotype than an actual real-life woman,
In Wyatt 's translation of Petrarch 's Rima 140, love has no authority over the poet but instead seems to be a visitor, who has only been allowed at the poet 's invitation. His translation is truer to the original than Surrey 's translation of the sonnet, except there is no image of the conquering knight. In the first stanza, he writes: "The long love that in my thought doth harbor, and in mine heart doth keep his residence, into my face presseth with bold pretense and therein campeth, spreading his banner." Wyatt shelters Love in his thought and allows it to stay temporarily in his heart, but the poet remains in control. For Wyatt, Love does not "live" or "reign" nor is
The title of the poem “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” suggests that the speaker is not in love with his ‘mistress’. However, this is not the case. Shakespeare uses figurative language by using criticizing hyperboles to mock the traditional love sonnet. Thus, showing not only that the ideal woman is not always a ‘goddess’, but mocking the way others write about love. Shakespeare proves that love can be written about and accomplished without the artificial and exuberant. The speaker’s tone is ironic, sarcastic, and comical turning the traditional conceit around using satire. The traditional iambic pentameter rhyming scheme of the sonnet makes the diction fall into place as relaxed, truthful, and with elegance in the easy flowing verse. In turn, making this sonnet one of parody and real love.
During the Elizabethan Era, the English thrived in the ways of culture. Literature, poetry, theater, and music all saw tremendous advancement. Love sonnets became particularly popular due to the opportunity they offered their authors to express their most alluring desires, while sticking to the strict guidelines of a sonnet. One particular 16th century writer, Sir Philip Sidney, wrote love sonnets that followed the relationship of the desire-ridden Astrophil and the object of his affection, Stella. Poetry at this time often had political or religious influences, and Sidney’s work was no exception. Focusing specifically on Sonnet 69, Sidney metaphorically relates a personal experience to a political gain, suggesting that
The courtly lyric/ Petrarchan love sonnet introduced to English by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: not the only poetic genre in the Renaissance, but one of the most interesting,
MLove’s sweet nipples and voluptuous bust! Aphrodisia fruit to quell my lust! Had I the temerity and the conceit to compose a sonnet in the style of John Donne -- using circles and spheres as tropes -- such are metaphors I might use to construct my “strong lines”. And with Donne-like boldness I might even entitle my work: “Areolas of Love”. On the other hand, if I attempted the same task along Petrarchan lines, I’d meter out a couple of stanzas dedicated to a radiant but distance Laura with sapphire eyes, a head of gold diaphanous hair, encircled by halos of blue butterflies and, for good measure, I might throw in a merry-go-round of unicorns.