The Renaissance & the Sonnet
Love, Death and Time
The Renaissance: Historical Events
(See pp 250 & f in text)
• Ancient Greece & Rome
• Renaissance means rebirth
• Age of Exploration
• Italian influences
• Humanism
• Printing Technology
• The Reformation
• Henry VIII and his heirs
• The Spanish Armada
Best, Michael. Shakespeare's Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria: Victoria, BC, 20012005. <http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/>. Visited [October 3, 2007].
The Glass House of Fashion
• Read Literary focus, pp 266270.
• Discuss Analyzing an
Illumination, p 269 (small
group activity)
• Whole group discussion:
“How do our hearts and
minds influence our
actions?”
“Whoso List to Hunt”
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, courtier
of Henry VIII; (p 272)
• Wrote poems & songs as
part of his position;
• Quickwrite: What do you
think of the idea of love as a
“hunt”?
• Wyatt was attracted to Anne
Boleyn who later became
Henry’s second wife.
The Sonnet Form
• Read and discuss Wyatt’s
poem. What makes it a
sonnet?
• Rhyme scheme
• Octave & sestet
• Petrarch’s poetry (Laura and
the laurel); conceits—see
definition p 1456
Poetic Meter: Giving Form to Feeling
• Metrical feet:
–
–
–
–
iamb (‫ ﮞ‬/)
Trochee (/ ‫)ﮞ‬
Anapest (‫ ﮞ ﮞ‬/)
Dactyl (/ ‫)ﮞ ﮞ‬
• Spondee, Caesura
• Dimeter, Trimeter, Tetrameter,
Pentameter, etc.
• Practice using handout on meter
Edmund Spenser
• The Power of paradox (an
apparent contradiction that is
somehow true)
• Quickwrite: How would you
describe these two feelings—
intense desire and loss of interest?
• Read Sonnet 30 & 75—What’s
different about the form?
Spencer’s Sonnet 30
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 entreat?
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.
Spenser’s Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Out love shall live, and later life renew.
Two Sonnet Forms
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Petrarchan & Shakespearean
Rhyme Scheme
The Volta
Also known as Italian & English
Form (couplets, quatrains, etc.)
Analyzing sonnets, p. 220
The Sonnets’ Forms, p. 224
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Literary Devices Used In Sonnets
• Complaint: the laments and pleas of
unrequited lovers;
• Simile: comparison using like or as
to connect two dissimilar items;
• Parallel structure: repeating words,
lines, or phrases
• Synecdoche: part of something
stands for the whole
• Allusion: An image from literature
or history that is familiar to all
Assignment
• Answer question 1-12 on p 275.
• Mid-term test will have at least two sonnets
for you to answer questions about, so please
learn this material!