The sonnet tradition
in
England
UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI SALERNO
Letteratura Inglese III
a.a. 2016/2017
Prof.ssa Antonella Piazza
The sonnet tradition in England
Renaissance (16th century): beginning of the sonnet tradition
in England
Italian long-lasting tradition:
Provençal poetry (12th century: courtly love poems)
Sicilian school: Iacopo da Lentini (1210-1260): 1st sonneteer
Guido Guinizelli (1235-1276)
Guittone d’Arezzo (1235-1294)
“dolce stil nuovo” poets
Dante (1265-1321)
Petrarch (1304-1374)
The sonnet tradition in England
3 crucial moments:
1. first experiments by Court poets (Henry VIII’s reign)
2. Sonnet sequences of the 1590s
3. the (“metaphysical”) love songs
The sonnet tradition in England
1. first experiments by Court poets (Henry VIII’s reign):
Wyatt and Surrey ‘translations’ of Petrarch’s poems
1557: Richard Tottel published
Songs and Sonnets, Written by the Right Honorable
Lorde Henry Howard Late Earle of Surrey, and Other
known as Tottel’s Miscellany
from manuscripts to printed editions
forging of a poetical tradition in English that could
compete with classical models
positive effect on the following generations of poets
The sonnet tradition in England
2. Sonnet sequences of the 1590s:
Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591)
Spenser’s Amoretti (1595)
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1593-99, pubbl. 1609)
Italian models are exploited in
a different context and with
different motifs
The sonnet tradition in England
3. the (“metaphysical”) love songs:
Donne’s Songs and Sonnets (1590-1610, pub. 1633 posthumously)
new departures: verse style, imagery, metaphysical conceit
influence on the following generation of poets: “metaphysical”
school of poetry
term “metaphysical”: J. Dryden and S. Johnson (18th century)
reference to exhibition of learning, difficult and clever style
style characterized by wit: skill with words, unusual and
unexpected images joined in complex chains of thought
The sonnet tradition in England:
first experiments with sonnet writing
influence of Petrarch’s Canzoniere in Europe:
ambitious and prominent model for poets
Thomas Wyatt: first introduction of the Italian
sonnet in England in the 16th century
Wyatt and Surrey translated/adapted Petrarch’s
Rime Sparse
creation of a new pattern Elizabethan sonnet
The sonnet tradition in England:
first experiments with sonnet writing
PETRARCHAN SONNET ELIZABETHAN SONNET
p
structure rhyme scheme structure rhyme scheme
r
o 1. A 1. A
2. 1st B enclosing 2. 1st B alternate
b
3. quatrain B rhyme 3. quatrain A rhyme
l 4. A 4. B
e
5. A 5. C
m 6. 2nd B 6. 2nd D
7. quatrain B 7. quatrain C
s 8. A 8. D
o 9. (turning point) C 9. E
l 10. 1st D 10. 3rd F
u 11. tercet C 11. quatrain E
t 12. C 12. F
i 13. 2nd D 13. G rhyming
o 14. tercet C 14. couplet G
n
The sonnet tradition in England:
first experiments with sonnet writing
SUMMING UP...
WHAT ARE EXACTLY THE DIFFERENCES?
Differences in
The structure
the rhyme scheme
BUT ALSO some variations in themes
The sonnet tradition in England:
first experiments with sonnet writing
THOMAS WYATT
He transforms the model formally and thematically
new perception of the beloved physical presence of the Lady
THEMES: Love, Power, Court politics
Whoso List to Hunt (translation of Una candida cerva by Petrarch)
They Flee From Me (rhyme royal)
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Writing sonnet during Elizabeth’s reign:
Sign of social belonging
Way to show off creativity and linguistic skills
Means to gain the attention of the Queen
Means to find a relevant place at Court
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Sonnet collections were named after a woman
(Petrarchan tradition)
The Lady is both real and ideal
She embodies all the highest physical and spiritual
qualities
ENGLISH CONTEXT
Veneration for a woman = veneration for Elizabeth I
the ‘Virgin Queen’
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Sonnet sequences from 1591 to 1597:
Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591) 1st
Spenser’s Amoretti (1595)
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)
Samuel Daniel, Delia (1592)
Michael Drayton, Idea Mirrour (1594)
Fulke Greville, Caelica (1633 posthumously)
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Each collection has its peculiarities but common elements are:
Courtly love idea
Neoplatonism
physical beauty = spiritual beauty
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Courtly love:
Veneration for a woman who is sublime, idealised,
and unattainable
The man is inferior to the woman: he is her humble
servant
Love is chaste and perpetually unsatisfied
Love is pain but also joy
Adulterous love
Love vs Religion: Veneration for a woman =
veneration for God
The sonnet tradition in England:
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Symbol of the Elizabethan court, after his death
cult of his memory: Fulke Greville, Life of the Renowned Sir
Philip Sidney (1610, pub. 1652)
1579: he retired from Court because of his Letter to the
Queen (he opposed Queen Elizabeth’s intended marriage to
the Duke of Aleçon)
HIS WORKS:
Astrophil and Stella, a sonnet sequence
The Arcadia (The Old Arcadia and The New Arcadia), a
prose romance
A Defense of Poetry
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Sidney = English Petrarch
Astrophil and Stella:
108 sonnets + 11 songs
Story of the unrequited love of Astrophil for Stella
Astrophil = star-lover (Greek); Sidney’s name: Phil
Stella = star (Latin)
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Petrarchan convention he uses:
Addressing the moon and the world of sleep and dream
Mourning the lady’s absence
Praising her unique beauty
Bemoaning her coldness
Highlighting the lover’s frustrated longings
Sidney offers his own model: his personal voice is in
the foreground
The sonnet tradition in England:
sonnet sequences of the 1590s
Stella = Laura unattainable
Astrophil = captive to Love
Love = slavery, hell, poison
Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
SONNET I
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay:
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows,
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”
The sonnet tradition in England:
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Ambitious poet
Poetic career inspired by Virgil:
from humble genre (pastoral tradition) to the highest
genre (epic)
The Shepherd’s Calendar (1579)
The Fairie Queen (1590-96)
The sonnet tradition in England:
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Differences:
SPENSER SIDNEY
Lower social class aristocracy
Cambridge University: Oxford University: no
degree degree
Poetry as a profession Poetry as a gift
English Medieval poetry No English models
as a model
The sonnet tradition in England:
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Amoretti : 89 sonnets
Dedication: Elizabeth Boyle, his wife
The lady in the poems is anonymous: 3rd person to
address her
Love story with a happy ending
Epithalamion: marriage song
sonnet as a private genre: ‘low and meane’ in
comparison with epic
Edmund Spenser, Amoretti
SONNET 55
So oft as I her beauty do behold,
And therewith do her cruelty compare,
I marvel of what substance was the mould
The which her made at once so cruel-fair.
Not earth; for her high thoughts more heavenly are:
Not water; for her love doth burn like fire:
Not air; for she is not so light or rare:
Not fire; for she doth freeze with faint desire.
Then needs another element inquire
Whereof she might be made; that is, the sky.
For to the heaven her haughty looks aspire,
And eke her mind is pure immortal high.
Then, sith to heaven ye likened are the best,
Be like in mercy as in all the rest.
The sonnet tradition in England:
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Amoretti
Relationship between the poetic word and the object
which is represented
Sonnet 2-3: he would like to praise her through his
speech and pen but he cannot because he is stopped by
her huge brightness. literary paralysis
Sonnet 75: immortality achieved through poetry and
art
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shakespeare as a poet:
Venus and Adonis (1592) Henry Wriothesley,
The Rape of Lucrece (1594) Earl of Southampton
(dedication by W. Shakespeare)
Sonnets (1609)
Was it an authorised publication?
Dedication by the printer: T.T. = Thomas Thorpe
Dedicatee: Mr W.H.
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Francis Mere, Palladis Tamia (1598)
“sugared Sonnets among his private friends”
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnets :
two sections:
1) sonnets 1-126: Fair Youth
2) sonnets 127-152: Dark Lady
sonnets 153-154: Cupid
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnets :
Italian and classical tradition influence
Originality:
1) two mysterious characters: Fair Youth and Dark Lady
2) a man is the addressee of most of the poems
3) the woman is ‘dark’ not ‘fair’
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
First section:
1) sonnets 1-17: (‘marriage sonnets’) theme of ‘increase’
2) sonnets 18-126: destructive power of time,
Art vs Time,
immortality through poetry
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET I
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
Influences: Plato, Simposium (Marsilio Ficino, Sopra lo Amore):
Love is a desire to join beauty
union beauty – utility
Two types of love:
1) Earthly Love: man-woman physical pleasure and
reproduction
2) Divine Love: man-man cultural reproduction
Two types of births:
1) natural birth
2) intellectual birth
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
First section (sonnets 18-126):
Themes:
Art outlives death
Art can immortalize both poet and beloved’s beauty
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 20
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
The sonnet tradition in England:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Second section (sonnets 127-152): The Dark Lady
new perception of a woman: no longer ‘fair’ and ‘angel’
Dark lady:
physically unattractive but desirable
flesh-and-blood woman, sensual and unfaithful
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNETS
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir
(Sonnet 127)
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
Dichotomy: white/black ; light/dark = Good and Evil
Shakespeare elaborates a new paradigm: he subverts
the tradition
His cromatic revolution is similar to Caravaggio and
Bruno (Camilla Caporicci)
From idealisation to imperfect reality
From chaste and unattainable love to sexual
gratification
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 129
Theme: LUST
I part: negative description of lust
(Puritanism, Humanism and St. Augustine)
Lust = dangerous vice, no balance between Reason and
Passion (line 10)
St. Augustine:
- ‘fangosa concupiscienza della carne’
- ‘tenebra infernale della libidine’
- ‘quell’ebbrezza per la quale presto mondo ha
dimenticato te, suo creatore, per amare al tuo posto le
tue creature’
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 129
Theme: LUST
I part: negative description of lust
II part: turning point line 11: ‘a bliss in proof’
Sensual love is a grief (‘a very woe’) yet a bliss
line 12: at the end lust leaves a void (‘a dream’) but
people seek it as it were a ‘joy’
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
SONNET 129
Final couplet: key to interpretation
Despite pain and regret, lust is a dark side all men
have and this can’t be denied
Bond between ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’:
Man is a mixture of Reason and Passion = World is Hell
and Heaven
Authenticity of the Lark Lady in comparison with
Petrarchan ladies
