Introduction to Renaissance Poetry

Lecture notes of Prof. Sacaria Joseph

St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.
 Anglo-Saxon Period
450 – 1066 (i.e., over Six centuries)

English literature is set to begin with the arrival of Anglo Saxons

in Britain in the 5th century soon after the departure of the Romans. The
Romans left Britain in 410.

The term, Anglo-Saxon,

refers to any member of the Germanic peoples
(especially, Angles, Saxons and Jutes) also called the Teutonic Peoples
of the North European origin.
 The Anglo-Saxons
were hardy warriors and see rovers.

Their life was a perennial struggle against Savage nature and Savage men.

Behind them was a savage world that they left behind — a world of gloomy
forests inhabited by wild beasts and wilder men.

In front of them
was the thundering, treacherous, foggy, stormy icy North Sea.

Their imaginations
were pregnant with dragons, giants, evil beings etc.
 The language they spoke was called the Anglo-Saxon language.
Today what we refer to as the Old English is the Anglo-Saxon Language.

Their poetry reflects a marvellous mixture of savagery and sentiments of

rough life, splendid courage, and intense melancholy of men who know their
limitations and have faced the unanswered problems of death.

Their poetry reflects the principles around which their lives revolved, namely,
their love for personal freedom, their responsiveness to nature, their religion,
their reverence for womanhood, their desire and struggle for glory etc.

The subject matter of their poetry

was the surging sea, the plunging boats, adventurous journeys, heroic deeds,
formidable battles, glory of the warriors and love for home.
The Vikings, also known as Norsemen
attacked Britain in AD 793. The Vikings
were a group of seafaring warring people
from Scandinavia (that comprises the
present-day Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden).

They attacked Britain several times over

the centuries. They attacked Britain last
in 1066. The Anglos Saxons fought the
Vikings fiercely though not always
successfully. Hence, four Viking kings
ruled England between 1013 and 1042.

The encounter of the Anglo-Saxons with

the Vikings also becomes the subject
matter for the Anglo-Saxon poetry
In general, the Anglo-Saxon poetry / the Old English poetry is sombre in
nature. It is pervaded with fatalism and religious sentiments.

Some of the notable poems of this period are:

Beowulf
Widsith
Deor’s Lament
The Seafarer
The Fight at Finnsburh
The Battle of Burnanburh
The Battle of Maldon
The Ruin
These poems were probably brought by the Anglo-Saxons along with them in
the form of oral sagas — the crude material out of which the English literature
evolved over the years on the English soil.

These poems fall in the category of the ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan poems.’

Christianity arrived in Britain in 596. Under the influence of the Christian

monks, poetry based on Christian religious themes began to find a significant
place in Britain.

Cædmon (pronounced CAD-mun), a Christian monk, in the 7th century wrote

several Anglo-Saxon poems on biblical narratives. Unfortunately, his poems
are lost.
 Cynewulf
is the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poets.

The following are some of the poems of Cynewulf:

The Christ
Juliana
Phoenix
The Fate of the Apostles
Elena
Dream of the Rood
Descent into Hell
Guthlac

Old English poetry was merely alliterative. It had no meter or rhyme.

 Middle English Period
1066-1500

The Middle English Period is divided into the following three periods

Anglo—Norman Period 1066-1350

The Age of Chaucer 1350-1400

Period of the English & the Scottish Chaucerians 1400-1500

 Anglo—Norman Period (1066-1350)

The Normans conquered Britain in 1066

Normans were an ethnic group from Normandy, a northern region of France,

who spoke an early form of French.

With the Norman conquest of England, the Normans’ early form of French
became the ‘official’ language of Britain. During this time. alongside French
and English, Latin was also used for purposes such as the official works of
government, for education and for religious worship in church.
 The Normans brought to England,
the wealth of a new language — French and French literature.

For three centuries after the Norman conquest, French will remain as the
official language of the upper-class people in Britain. The ruling and the clergy
class spoke French. However, the large majority of the population (especially,
the ordinary masses) continued to speak the Old English.

Romance Literature of 12th and 13th century

The literature of the 12th and 13th century Britain was written in French and
was addressed and catered to the ruling class. Ordinary people had nothing to
do with them. It was not addressed to them, nor did they feature in them. The
great bulk of the literature of this period are Romances, dealing with French,
English and Celtic Heroes.
A Romance is a long narrative poem or a series of poems dealing with love or
knightly adventure or both. Its hero is a knight, its characters are fair ladies in
distress, warriors in armour, giants, dragons, monsters, enchanters and various
enemies of the church and the state. Supernatural occurrences are common
phenomena in Romance literature.

Romances
are medieval in spirit, French in language, style and expression.

These literary works were later translated into English. Therefore, this
literature is not actually part of English Literature.
Chivalry: The manners and morals depicted in these Romances belong to a
system called Chivalry.

The center of the chivalrous society was a knight, a man of noble birth skilled
in the use of weapons. He commonly represented either as riding forth alone
or with his attendant Squire seeking adventures rescuing wronged maidens,
killing monsters, overthrowing tyrants, or taking part in tournaments. Though
a man of the world, he is devoted to the church.

Women / Ladies occupied the central place in the world of chivalry. Women
were not equal to men. They were regarded as belonging to another order to
whose protection a knight was bound to devote himself.
Chivalry was a system, an ideal and a profession. An aspirant to knighthood
served as an apprentice— a squire. During this period, he learnt manners as
well as mastery of arms. He was admitted to the order with a solemn
ceremony and swearing of oaths; and if he betrayed the ideal through
cowardice or impiety, he was liable to be degraded.

The great majority of the Romances fall into groups or cycles called
Matter of Britain,
Matter of France,
Matter of Rome.

Mater of Britain deals chiefly with the legendary king of Britain, King Arthur
and the Knights of the Round Table.
Matter of France deals with the Emperor Charlemagne and his peers.
(Charlemagne who united the majority of western and central Europe was the
King of the Franks from 768, the King of the Lombards from 774, and the
Emperor of the Romans from 800).

Matter of Rome deals with adaptations of themes from Greek and Roman
mythology, especially, the themes first found in Virgil’s Aeneid about the
adventures of knights who fled the fall of Troy and founded Rome.

It also deals with episodes from the history of classical antiquity, focusing on
military heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.

All these Romances may be called Metrical Romances. Because, they are
stories in verse form. It is during this period that rhymed meters begin to mark
English poetry. Old English was merely alliterative. It had no meter or rhyme).
Love, chivalry, and religion were the three great ideals which found expression
in these Romances — Metrical Romances.

To the English reader, the most interesting of these Romances are those that
deal with the exploits of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table – The
Matter of Britain.

Some of the chief cycles of Arthurian Romances are those of Gawain,

Launcelot, Merlin, The Quest of the Holy Grail and Death of Arthur.

These legends are Celtic in Origin, but French in their literary form (for the
French originated Metrical Romances).

Celtic = Celtic is that which related to the people and the culture of Scotland,
Wales, Ireland, and some other areas such as Brittany.
 During the Norman period,
Old English and French existed side by side.

Consequently,
over the years, English absorbed a great number of French words into the it.

The blending of the Anglo-Saxon language (Old English), French and Latin
is the base of the modern English.
 Middle English Period
1066-1500

The Middle English Period is divided into the following three periods

Anglo—Norman Period 1066-1350

The Age of Chaucer 1350-1400

Period of the English & the Scottish Chaucerians 1400-1500

 The Age of Chaucer
1350-1400

It was only in the 14th century, in 1362, that English was used at the opening of
the English Parliament for the first time. During the same year, a law called
the ‘Statute of Pleading’ was passed, making English the official language of
the courts and the Parliament.

In 1399, King Henry IV became the king of England. Since the Norman
Conquest, he was the first king of England whose mother tongue was English.
 Italy
produced great poets like

Dante Alighieri 91265-1321); Francesco Petrarch (1304- 1374);

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)

France
produced great poets like

Guillaume de Machaut (1300 –1377), Eustache Deschamps (1346 – 1406),

François Villon (1431–1465)

Britain,
had no such great writers.
At this point of time, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 -1400) took the language of the
common man in Britain and began writing poetry. It was the age of verse
tales. Chaucer’s masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, is a verse tale.

The influence of French writing continued to hold sway on the literature of

this time. For example, the dream poem – poem in which the poet transcribes
what he is supposed to have seen in a vision in sleep – which is basically of
French origin continued to be written.

Some of Chaucer’s dream poems are:

The Book of the Duchess
The Legend of Good Women
The Parliament of Fowls
Troilus and Criseyde
William Langland (1330-1400) is another important poet of this period. His
poem, Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, is an allegory of life. It
deals with the most import of all Christian questions—how can a person
achieve salvation? It is an enquiry into the nature of the good life judged by
Christian criteria.

John Gower (1330-1408) is known for his poem, Confessio Amantis

(Confession of a Lover) which is a confession made by an ageing lover. The
lover tells more than a hundred tales to illustrate the evils of love.

John Barbour (1316 – 1395) is known for his poem, The Brus, also known as
The Bruce. It describes the revolt of Robert Bruce (later King Robert I of the
Scotland) against King Edward II which resulted in the freedom of Scotland
from England from English Rule for a long time to come. The poem comprises
20 books.
The English of Chaucer’s time varied from place to palace and from region to
region. The English dialect of one place would be almost incomprehensible in
another place. The Canterbury Tales was written in the English spoken by the
Londoners at the time of Chaucer.

There were no real rules about spelling for the Middle English. Therefore,
writers used different spelling for the same word. Sometimes the same word
would appear twice in the same poem spelled in two different ways.

Chaucer turned the Old English into what might be called the Middle English.
 English and Scottish Chaucerians
1400-1500

The 15th century was a disturbed century for England with international as
well as national wars.

The country was plagued by its wars with France for the first half of the 15th
century. (The Hundred Years’ War — a series of wars between Britain and
from 1337 to 1453). And then by the War of the Roses in the second half of
the century for the succession of the British throne.

(The Wars of the Roses fought between 1455 and 1485 were a series of civil wars in England. They were
fought between the supporters of two rival factions of the royal House of Plantagenet for the control of
the throne of England. While red rose was the symbol of one of the warring factions, the House of Lancaster,
white rose was the symbol of the other faction, the House of York. The Lancastarians won the war; and Henry
Tudor become the king of King of England taking the name, Henry VII in 1485. With him began the reign of
the Tudor dynasty).
The 15th century was a barren period for England as far as poetry is concerned.
Whatever poetry was produced in England was in mere imitation of Chaucer.
The imitations were second rate imitations lacking in originality. These
Chaucerians could not pick up the spirit of Chaucer.

The Chaucerians may be divided into English Chaucerians and Scottish

Chaucerians. They were all versifiers rather than poets.

English Chaucerians Scotish Chaucerians

Thomas Occleve James (I)
John Lydgate Robert Henryson
John Skelton William Dunbar
Stephen Hawes Gavin Duglas
Alexander Barclay Sir David Lindsay
 European Renaissance
14th – 17th Century

The English Renaissance The English Literature

16th – 17th Century
 The English Renaissance

The cultural and artistic movement in England that began at the end of the
first quarter of the 16th century and carried on till the end of the first quarter
of the 17th century is known as the English Renaissance.

It was an integral part of the European Renaissance that began in Italy in the
14th century and spread to the rest of Europe and continuing till 17th century.

Like in most of Northern Europe, the impact of European Renaissance was felt
in England only after over a century.
 The Renaissance
in
England
began during the reign of Henry VII,
the first Tudor king of England.

He
ruled England from 1485 to 1509

The Tudor kings and queens to follow him

are the following:
Henry VII
Henry VIII (reigned: 1509-1547) Edward VI (reigned: 1547-1553)
Mary I (reigned: 1553-1558) Elizabeth I (reigned: 1558-1603)
The Tudor dynasty ends with Queen Elizabeth’s death
 Among the Tudors

Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I

played important roles in taking England out of Middle Ages leading it into an
influential Renaissance state that gain global significance in the centuries to
come.
 Henry VII

✓Surrounded himself with men who promoted

the Renaissance’s ‘New Learning.’

✓Promoted and patronised English writers and

poets.

Henry VII
 Though inaugurated at the time of
Henry VII, the English Renaissance is
said to have actually begun during
the reign of Henry VIII roughly in the
1520s.
the English Renaissance was
continued until perhaps 1620.
Under the reign of Henry VIII the
Court became a centre of learning
and writers and artists turned to him
for patronage.
The king himself aspired to make his
court the best in Europe.
Henry VIII (reigned: 1509-1547)
 Some factors that helped the spread of English Renaissance

1) Intoduction of the Printing Press Technology into England:

The printing press technology invented by the Johannes Gutenberg in
Germany in 1439 was introduced into England by an English merchant,
diplomat, and writer called William Caxton in 1476.
The easy availability of the printing press in Engalnd gave a strong impetus
to English literature in England.
The printing press made it possible to make written works available in large
quantities; and it strengthened society’s ability to create a literary culture.
Therefore, one of the two dominant art forms of the English Renaissance
was literature, the other being music.
 2) The Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation:

The Protestant Reformation was the 16th century revival movement within
Western Christianity in Europe was considered to have started with the
publication of the Ninety-five Thesis by the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther
in 1517 in Germany.

The Reformation tried to cleanse the church of its institutionalised

authoritarian and vile practices.

Luther’s teachings that later came to be called, Lutheranism, rejected five of

the traditional seven sacraments affirmed by the Catholic Church.
It insisted that salvation is solely by divine grace (sola gratia), which is
appropriated solely by faith (sola fide), as opposed to the traditional notion
that salvation is by human effort and divine grace.

It also insisted that the Bible and not the Pope or tradition should be the sole
source of spiritual authority.

Therefore, Luther called for the translation of the Bible into other languages in
view of inviting lay people to interpret the Bible for themselves instead of
blindly accepting the interpretation of the Catholic Church.

Martin Luther translated the bible into the commonly spoken dialect of the
German people and in the process, invested this spoken dialect an official
recognition and a new spurt of life.
His translation completed in 1534 was more appealing than previous several
German Biblical translations.

It was the first translation from the original Hebrew unlike the previous
translation that were from the late 4th century Latin Vulgate translation by St.
Jerome.

William Tyndale, an English scholar translated the Bible into English in 1526.
This bible came to be known as Tyndale’s Bible is credited with being the first
English translation based directly on the original Hebrew texts and the 3rd
century BCE Greek translation of the Bible called the Septuagint Bible.

Tyndale’s Bible turned out to be the English predecessor to the King James
Version of the Bible sometimes referred to as the ‘Authorized Version.’
In fact, the bible had been translated into English earlier. In the 1380s,
John Wycliffe, an Oxford scholar, theologian and priest who challenged
the church to give up its worldly possessions challenge the beliefs and
practices of the church produced the first hand-written English
translation of the Bible based on the late 4th century Latin Vulgate
translation by St Jerome.
Vulgate translation was a revision of the existing Vetus Latina (Old Latin)
translation. The Latin Vulgate was the only source text available to
Wycliffe. His is the first English translation of the bible.
Wycliffe undertook the task of translating the bible into English as he realised
that reaching the truth in the Bible to the people is important in freeing them
from the control of the discredited authority of the institutionalised church
and the clergy, and to make the word of God available to every person who
could read the Bible.
Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the
scriptures. The Pope was furious with Wycliffe for what he did. The church
declared the Wycliffe Bible illegal. Anyone possessing a Wycliffe Bible was
declared a heretic. Punishment for herecy is death by fire.

John Hus, one of Wycliffe’s followers, who promoted Wycliffe’s ideas and his
translation of the Bible was burned at the stake in 1415. The fire at the stake
was kindled with Wycliffe’s English manuscripts of the Bible.

The last words of John Hus were that “in 100 years, God will raise up a man
whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.”

Almost exactly 100 years later, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95
Theses of Contention (a list of 95 issues of heretical theology and crimes of the
Roman Catholic Church) into the church door at Wittenberg.
Ulrich Zwingli, who led the Reformation in Switzerland began his teachings
along the line of Luther’s teaching in 1519. His teachings sometimes referred
to by the term, Zwinglianism.

Zwinglianism too upheld the sovereignty of the Scriptures against all other
teaching authorities.

As opposed to the theory of transubstantiation, he developed the symbolic

view of the Eucharist — a theory that Luther could not agree with. Zwingli
denied that during the eucharist the bread and wine literally become the body
and blood of Jesus Christ. In other words, he denied the corporeal presence of
Christ's body in the bread and wine.

Lutheranism believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

John Calvin a French theologian, pastor based in Geneva, Switzerland,
developed the system of Christian theology that later called Calvinism.

His seminal work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, is one of the most
important works of protestant theology. Calvinism too emphasized the
sovereignty of the scriptures.

It advocated the doctrine of divine predestination that holds that “All are not
created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to
eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or
other of these ends, we say that he has been pre-destinated to life or to
death.”

When it came to the eucharist, Calvinism also denies the corporeal presence
of Christ, but recognized Christ’s spiritual presence in the bread and wine.
Reformation in England began with the Church of England breaking away from the
Roman Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope in the 16th century.

It all began with King Henry VIII who ruled England from 1509 to 1547 got into to
conflict with the Pope when he wanted to get his marriage to his first wife Catherine
of Aragon annulled and marry Anne Boleyn.

Henry wanted the marriage to be annulled because, Catherine had not been able to
give Henry a son who would become his heir. When Pope Clement VII refused to
annul the marriage, defying the Pope but with the approval of the clergy in England,
Henry declared his marriage invalid on the ground that he had married Catherine,
the widow of his late brother, Arthur, and hence his marriage was cursed. He sought
confirmation for his claim in biblical verse in Leviticus 20:21, which says, “If a man
marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity. He has violated his brother, and
the guilty couple will remain childless.”
After having declared their marriage invalid, in 1533, Henry married Anne
Boleyn.

He assumed supremacy over religious matters in England. A number of Acts

were passed in the in English parliament to this effect. Among them, the
1534 Act of Supremacy, made the English King the Supreme Head on earth of
the Church of England’

With the formation of England as an independent Church, it went on to

develop views on matters of theology and faith that are significantly
different from those of the Roman Catholic Church.

The church of England would essentially become Protestant in its theological

outlook.
 Renaissance Humanismistc Ideals
One of the Renaissance humanist visions was the creation a citizenry capable
of speaking and writing with eloquence and clarity, a citizenry capable of
engaging in the civic life of their communities, a citizenry capable of
persuading othersto virtuous and prudent actions.

The renaissance humanists believed that this vison could be achieved through
studia humanitatis, (study of the humanities): grammar, rhetoric,
history, poetry, and moral philosophy – all based on the Greek and Latin
classics.

A Renaissance humanist was an expert in the studia humanitatis.

Grammar: Study of Grammar meant a thorough study of Latin language,
enabling a student to read the historians, rhetoricians, poets, and moral
philosophers, even church fathers of classical Latin antiquity.

Rhetoric: Rhetoric is the art and science of public speaking. The renaissance
insistence on rhetoric advocates the Greek and Latin Rhetoric.

Moral Philosophy: Ethics (ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with what
is right and wrong and how people should live their lives in relation to others.

The basis of Studia humanitatis, humanist education were the classical texts of
Greece and Rome.
The Renaissance Humanists believed that studia humanitatis is capable of
creating

✓ a spirit of free enquiry resulting reason replacing blind faith

✓ the notion of the dignity of the human person replacing the traditional
‘worm theology’ of Christianity;

✓ the concern for the life here on earth replacing the concern for the life
to come.
The Renaissance Humanism
1) The Universal Man

(Individual
of
Many
Accomplishments)
 Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72),
Italian architect, painter, poet, scientist, and mathematician,

said:
‘man is the centre of the universe, limitless
in his capacities for development.’

This idea led to the notion that men should

try to embrace all knowledge and develop
their capacities as fully as possible.

‘Man can do all things if he will.’ -- Alberti

2 - Education of the Total Person

The only way of forming

a well-rounded person
is the education of the total person

as

seen in the case of

the best known polymath –
 Leonardo Da Vinci –

Italian painter, sculptor, historian,

scientist, mathematician, architect,
inventor, musician, writer,
cartographer, philosopher etc.

Da Vinci’s genius
epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.
 3 - Classicism

Classicism entails
the cultivation of
the Greek and Latin Classics.

With Classicism came

the Renaissance taste
for
Literary Elegance, Neatness
& Clarity of Form.
 4 - An Active Life of Civic Virtue

Civic Virtue
entails in being skilled in
practical & cognitive virtues,
especially, with good
memory, oratory, eloquence, ability to persuade,
skill in shaping public opinion etc.

and thereby,
fulfilling the Civic Duties of a Statesman.
 5 - Individualism

Individual talents,
personality, genius, uniqueness etc.
were highly valued
as opposed to the hitherto highly valued
Christian humility that gave
no importance to the individual person.

Michelangelo's David, a symbol of

strength, resolve and youthful beauty is
the
example of
Renaissance Individualism in Art.
 6 - Human Dignity and Freedom

The Medieval European thought under the influence of St. Augustine,

emphasised the fallen or sinful nature of humanity.

Renaissance Humanists emphasised human dignity, limitless human

possibilities, and the human ability and responsibility to shape
their own destinies.

‘To be human is to face a moral choice: to lead a life of virtue or depravity,

to become God-like or beast-like.’

Ref. Pico’s 1486 Oration on the Dignity of Man

7) Unity & Universality of Truth

In line with the thinking of the medieval

philosopher, Thomas Aquinas,
Renaissance Humanism believed that

God who is the author of all truth,

ensures the unity of truth.

It believed in the importance of

embracing truth whenever or wherever it
is found
 7 Characteristics
of
the Renaissance Humanism
1) The Universal Man (Individual of many accomplishments)
2) Education of the Total Person
3) Classicism
4) An Active Life of Civic Virtue
5) Individualism
6) Human Dignity and Freedom
7) Unity and Universality of Truth
The the english gave little importance
to viusual art until the time of Queen
Elizabeth.

With Queen Elizabeth developing a

personal cult around her, portrait-
painting (a form of visual art) got a
new impetus.

We have several (censored)

representations of the Queen
Elizabeth.

Thus, with her, the hitherto neglected Elizabeth I (reigned: 1558-1603)

realm of art received a life of its own.
The period of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) known as the
Elizabethan period, saw the height of the English Renaissance.

England witnessed great prosperity during the second half of her reign. Apart
from learning in general, art, poetry and drama flourished on account of the
confidence and nationalism Elizabeth breatheed into the people.

Undoubtedly, the Elizabethan Period was the golden period of english

literature. Many writers and artists of the day enjoyed the patronage of the
queen.

Since she had been a patron of the stage right from the beginning of her reign,
drama flourished under her support.
 The Literary Landscape of the English Renaissance

The literary landscape

of English Renaissance can be divided into the following three periods:

1) The Early English Renaissance (1516 – 1558)

2) The Peak of English Renaissance (1558 – 1603): The Age of Elizabeth.

3) The Decline of Renaissance (1603 – 1625). The Jacobean Age.

 1) The Early English Renaissance (1516 – 1558)

The Early English Renaissance was dominated by two poets:

Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 1542)

Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey) (1517 – 1547)

2) The Peak of English Renaissance (1558 – 1603):The Age of Elizabeth.
Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586) Poet
Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599) Poet
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) Poet
Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) Poet
Thomas Campion (1567-1620) Poet
John Hoskins (?-1638) Poet
Henry Constable (1562-1613) Poet

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) Dramatist

Ben Jonson 1572 –1637 Poet & Dramatist
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Poet & Dramatist
John Lyly (1554-1606)
 3) The Decline of Renaissance (1603 – 1625):
The Jacobean Age.

Ben Jonson 1572 –1637 Poet & Dramatist

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Poet & Dramatist

John Donne (1572 – 1631) Poet

Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631) Poet
Henry Wotton (1568-1630) Poet
Thomas Lodge (1557-1625) Poet

John Webster (1580 – 1634) Dramatist

Francis Beaumont (1584 – 1616) Dramatist
John Fletcher (1579–1625) Dramatist
 In our syllabus
we study two Metaphysical poets who were born during the Renaissance but
do not fall into the category of the Renaissance poets.

George Herbert 1593— 1633

Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
Age of Shakespeare: Both the Elizabethan Period and the Jacobean Period put
together is known as The Age of Shakespeare (1558-1625).

It was not only an era of peace, of economic prosperity, stability, liberty and
great explorations, but also the golden period of English literature with
unprecedented development in art, literature and drama.

Population and Literacy in the 16th Century

The 16th century England had a very low literacy rate. Between 1551 and 1602,
the population grew roughly from 3 million in 1551 to 4.1 million by 1601.
However, only a couple of hundred were literate enough to write elaborately.
More could in fact read.
 Revolutionary Changes of the 16th Century & their impact on literature:

Unlike in the poetry of other periods, the extra-literary influences such as the
historical and social factors of the 16th century played no role in the shaping
of poetic themes of the period.
For instance,
1) The Copernicus’s theory of a heliocentric universe known by the middle of
the 16th century

2) The constant political and religious turbulence of 16th century

3) The official religion in England changing 4 times between 1530 and 1560.

Interestingly, none of these events hand any impact on the content and theme
of the literature, especially, the poetry of the period.
 Characteristics of the 16th Century Tudor Poetry

1) Tudor Poetry was Court Poetry:

Poetry during Tudor period was basically courtly. In fact, it was not until
the 18th century that poetry moved completely out from the court.

Characteristics of Court Poetry:

Much of courtly poetry was praise-poetry, immortalizing the monarch,

the baron or the patron, following the patterns of the Italian capitali
genre.
Who could be a court Poet?

Only poets born into aristocratic families and thus having substantial
financial means like for example, Wyatt, Surrey, Raleigh or Sidney could
afford to write poetry to entertain and not for money.

Therefore, poets were in a schizophrenic state: having to praise and

flatter whilst seeing what was going on around them.

Patience and forgiveness were not among the virtues of the average
Renaissance monarch, let alone the Tudors. Probably this is the reason
why English poets would frequently turn to the stoic Roman philosopher,
Seneca who was in a similar situation in the court of Emperor Nero and
whose wittily put stoicism they liked.
Let us consider Wyatt’s translation of Sneca’s tragic play, Thyestes (lines 391-403)

The poem declares that the life of those

Stand Whoso list standing on the grounds of political power
(slipper top / Of court’s estate) is very
uncertain.
Stand, whoso list, upon the slipper top
Of court’s estate, and let me here rejoice The joy that the courts provide are brackish
(salty, in the sense that they only partially
And use my quiet without lett or stop, reduce the intensity of dangers.)
Unknown in court, that hath such brakish joys.
The speaker prefers to live quietly away form
In hidden place so let my days forth pass such brackish joys of the court; he prefers to die
That, when my years be done, withouten noise in his old age anonymously.
I may die aged after the common trace.
He who prefers to live in the court, with his
For him death grippeth right hard by the crop popularity among others, lives in the grip of
That is much known of other, and of himself, alas, death that comes when least expected— a
Doth die unknown, dazed, with dreadful face. death that is bewildering and dreadful.
 2) Poetic Genres:

The main literary genre of the period are the following:

✓Narrative poetry ✓Satirical poetry

✓Beast fables
✓Praise poetry
✓Songs
✓Elegiac poetry
✓Ballads
✓Love poetry
✓Dream visions (a dream vision is a literary
✓Descriptive poetry device in which a dream or vision is
recounted as having revealed knowledge or a
truth that is not available to the dreamer or
✓discursive poetry (poetry that is essayistic or visionary in a normal waking state).
discourse-like in nature)
 During this period,
poetry was not meant to be published. Poems circulated among the chosen
few in manuscripts rarely got into print during their authors’ lifetime.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets,
published in 1609, were an exception.
 Obscurity in Language

If the purpose of language is to communicate, it can also be used to obscuse

what is being communicted. Tudor poets often made good use of this capacity
of language to obscure.

John donne exploited the power of language to obscure in order to stimulate

his fit readers, to increase the pleasure and impact of his communication, and
to discourage the unfit readers by making the labour of appreciation too
strenuous.
 European Influence

English literature, namely poetry, in the 16th century is a result of an

amalgamation of European influences.

Wyatt and Surrey began not merely translating, but ‘Englishing’ Latin and
Italian and poetry.’ They considered themselves as importers and imitators.

‘Nota bene,’ meaning, ‘imitation, is a key notion of the age. It is not aping, nor
mere translation. It is rather measuring yourself to other poets, absorbing and
appropriating their moods, topics and forms. As Petrarch puts it, the imitator
‘like a busy bee, flies from flower to flower and collects the sweetest nectar of
each.’
 Adherence to Petrarchan Poetic Conventions

In the 16th century, poetry that adhered to Petrarchan poetic conventions was
regarded as “good” poetry and poetry that did not do so was considered “bad”
poetry.

20th century American poet and literary critic, Yvor Winters in his 1939 essay,
“The Sixteenth Century Lyric in England: A Critical and Historical
Reinterpretation” (that focused on some of the less notable poets of the 16th
century, namely, Barnabe Googe, George Turberville, and George Gascoigne)
highlighted the merits of their poetry.

Until the publication of this essay, they had been dismissed simply because
they were not Petrarchan in convention.
In addition to Winters’ essay, Douglas L. Peterson’s book, The English Lyric
from Wyatt to Donne: A History of the Plain and Eloquent Styles (1967), taking
up from where Winters left off, identified two major poetic trends in the
sixteenth century: the plain style and the eloquent style.

The “plain” style was used by the practitioners of the non-Petrarchan poetic
conventions. They were very skilled in tailoring their verse to fit the needs of
the poem’s message. Their style is rhetorical, aphoristic and proverbial. It is a
style often unappreciated by modern readers because its obvious simplicity is
often mistaken for simplemindedness.
The “eloquent” style, was almost the total antithesis of the plain style. Not
particularly concerned with expressing universal truths, the eloquent style,
sought embellishment, rather than pithy restraint, and a profusion of images,
rather than minimal, tight expression.

Thus, Winters’s and Peterson’s efforts were helpful in destroying the damaging
stereotypes about the “bad” poets of the mid-century.
 Decorum

Renaissance literature was very strict about ‘decorum,’ the appropriateness of

style to subject.

Aristotle (in, for example, his Poetics) and Horace (in his Ars Poetica) discussed
the importance of appropriate style in epic, tragedy, comedy, etc.

Horace says, for example: "A comic subject is not susceptible of treatment in a
tragic style, and similarly the banquet of Thyestes cannot be fitly described in
the strains of everyday life or in those that approach the tone of comedy. Let
each of these styles be kept to the role properly allotted to it.”

The literary genres were not to be mixed with each other. The mixture of high
and low levels as often found in Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays was
considered unorthodox.
Devotion to Poetic Craftsmanship: the Unifying Thread in 16th century Poetry:

Devotion to poetic craftsmanship is perhaps the unifying thread among the

poets of the period. How did it come about?

As part of the national consciousness, the English in the 16th century were
trying to weed out the influence of both Latin and French on the English
language. They had to perfect the English language itself.

The poets had to evolve the English language to fit the requirements of their
poetry devoid of foreign influences. Words in the 16th century poetry that
often strike the modern reader as outdated, and stodgy are, in fact, the result
of innovative experimentation.
Working with new words meant changes in the old classical syntax, and, in
turn, changes in the syntax meant changes in the old classical versifications.

The result of all this experimentation could mean new rhyme schemes, new
meters, and new stanzaic structures.

No wonder they paid more attention to style and less to content. The primary
consideration of the poetic pursuit was not who or what to write about, but
rather how to write. They laid emphasis on style over content.

The poets of the 16th century were constantly aware of themselves as poetic
craftsmen. Therefore, every poet of the century would have tried hard to find
himself in agreement with Philip Sidney’s evaluation of the poet in his Defence
of Poesie (1595) as prophet or seer, whose craft is suffused with divine
inspiration.
This poetic self-consciousness resulted in a dazzling variety of metrical,
stanzaic, and prosodic experimentation by the poets in a variety of genres.

For example, they experimented with the following:

A. Poulter’s Measure which is a metrical pattern employing couplets in

which the first line is in iambic hexameter (six feet) and the second is in
iambic heptameter (seven feet).

(‘Poulter’ is an obsolete variant of poulterer (poultry dealer); poulterers

traditionally gave one or two extra eggs when selling by the dozen).
B. Fourteener (a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are
usually made up of seven iambic feet, technically called, iambic
heptameter. It is most commonly found in English poetry produced in
the 16th and 17th centuries).

C. Blank Verse (unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter).

D. Heroic Couplet (rhyming pair of verse lines in iambic pentameter).

E. Rime Royal (stanza consisting of seven lines, usually in iambic

pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABABBCC. In practice, the stanza can
be constructed either as a tercet (three-line stanza) and two couplets
(ABA BB CC) or a quatrain (four-line stanza) and a tercet (ABAB BCC).
F. Ottava Rima, (eight-line stanza with ten or eleven syllables in each line,
rhyming ABABABCC. It is an italian form).

G. Terza Rima (Italian for ‘third rhyme’) is a three-line stana (tercet),

usually in iambic pentameter. It follows an interlocking rhyme scheme,
or chain rhyme in the pattern ABA BCB CDC DED. It is a form used
by Dante Alighieri).

H. Spenserian Stanza (eight-line stanza of iambic pentametre followed by a

ninth line of six iambic feet (an alexandrine).

I. Douzain: Douzain, meaning, a dozen in French consists in 12-line stana

in iambic pentameter. The most famous example of a ‘douzaine’ in
English is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 126, his farewell poem to the ‘fair
youth.’ Unlike other Sonnets, it has only 12 lines.
 Poetry Considered as a Superior form of Literature

Renaissance critical theory, Sidney’s Defence of Poesie (1595), argues for the
superiority of poetry over any other aesthetic pursuit.

In general, poetry in the 16th century was considered suprerior to other forms
of literature.

Poets were educated people; they closely associated themselves with the
educated, the cultured, the influential of the times; they lived in very close
proximity with the court.
 Trajectory of a successful poet’s career

As per the unwritten convention of the 16th century, starting with the
pastoral, continuing with sonnets and going on to write great narratives was
the career pattern for many poets, including Spenser, Drayton, Marlowe and
Milton.

The blank verse play and the sonnet sequence were the two important
accomplishments of the English Renaissance.

The sonnets of Samuel Daniel, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Michael
Drayton and William Shakespeare produced during the last two decades of the
16th century constitute a major peak in the history of English lyric verse.
 The Early English Renaissance (1516 – 1558)

Two
noteworthy poets
of the early English Renaissance are

Thomas Wyatt Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey)

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), was an English poet who held the office of
diplomatic missions to France and Italy under the reign of King Henry VIII.

After Chaucer, English poetry was nothign more than ordinary. None could
either match or imporve upon the imaginative vigour and technical brilliance
of Chaucer.

Wyatt’s visits to Italy as royal emissary had exposed him to Italian literature,
especially the poetry of Petrarch (1304-74) who inspired Wyatt in his career as
a poet.
Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet form to English poetry with all its
courtly and humanistic conventions.

Being close to the throne, he accompanied Sir John Russell, 1st Earl of
Bedford to Rome to petition Pope Clement VII to annul King Henry VIII’s
marriage to Catherine of Aragon, freeing him to marry Anne Boleyn.

In May 1536, Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower of London for his alleged
adulterous relationship with Anne Boleyn.

He may very well have witnessed the executions of Boleyn and several of her
alleged lovers from his cell window.
Wyatt was released later that year thanks to his father’s friendship
with Thomas Cromwell, (1st Earl of Essex as well as English lawyer and
statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII of England who was
beheaded on orders of the king for supposed treason and heresy).

Henry spared the life of Wyatt probabbly because he may have thought that
Wyatt was politically useful to him.

Wyatt took upon himself the mission of experimenting with the English
language, in order to civilise it, to raise its powers to equal those of other
European languages. Much of his literary output consists in translations and
imitations of sonnets by Italian poet Petrarch; at the same time, he also wrote
sonnets of his own.
 Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey)
Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey) was an English soldier, nobleman, politician,
and poet.
(An earl is a member of the nobility. The title, ‘earl’ means a ‘chieftain’, particularly a chieftain set to rule a
territory in a king’s stead).

Like his father and grandfather, Henry Howard was loyal to the Tudors. He was
one of the most flamboyant and controversial court poets during the reign of
Henry VIII.
He was known for his chivalrous deeds both on and off the battlefield; and no
wonder that at only twenty-eight, he became the King’s Lieutenant General in
France. He became the Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his grandfather died and
his father became Duke of Norfolk.

He was the first cousin to two of Henry VIII’s wives — Anne Boleyn and
Katherine Howard. He was also the best friend and brother-in-law to the Kings
illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy.

He was repeatedly imprisoned for rash behavior, on one occasion for striking a
courtier, on another for wandering through the streets of London breaking the
windows of sleeping people. He was executed (beheaded) at a very young age
on a trumped-up charge of treason some days before the death of an aging
Henry VIII
 Antecedents at Home

1. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 - 400) and his East Midland dialect, his five-foot
line, many peculiarities of his spelling, grammar, accentuation and
phraseology.

2. The Bible and the English Bible translations.

 Antecedents at Abroad

1. Works of classical Latin authors like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Ovid,

Virgil.

2. 16th century French poet, Clement Marot’s Psalms:

Clement Marot put Psalms into verse and rhythms and organised them
into stanzas so that they could be easily memorised in view of
replacing the worldly and coarse songs by the singing of the Psalms.

3. Authors of the Italian Renaissance like Francesco Petrarch, Dante

Alighieri, Pietro Bembo, Lodovico Ariosto, Serafino Aquilano, Baldassare
Castiglione.
 Commonality in Wyatt and Surrey

1. Both Wyatt and Surrey were well-educated; they read Greek, Latin and
Italian; they were well-travelled; they belonged to the company of people
who inhabited the world of high culture from classical times to their own.

2. Wyatt and Surrey were close friends and lived working under the infamous
Henry VIII. Both were imprisoned multiple times by Henry and in some
cases got each other out.

3. They introduced into England the styles and meters of the Italian humanist
poets, especially Petrarch, and so laid the foundation of English poetry.
Surrey acknowledged Wyatt as a master and followed him in adapting
Italian forms to English verse. He translated a number of Petrarch’s
sonnets already translated by Wyatt.

None of their songs and sonnets during their life-time. Their songs and
sonnets were published for the first time in 1458, in Tuttle’s Miscellany.

Their poetry would be recognized and appreciated not until the

Elizabethan era (1558–1603).
4. Both were influenced by Petrarchism: Imitation of the writings of Petrarch,
following his poetic technique and style.

5. Both, were influenced by amour courtois /əˌmʊə kɔːˈtwʌ/, courtly

love, the conventional medieval European literary conception of love as
depicted in the poetry of the High Middle Ages (1000-1300). Courtly love
that was all about romance, had nothing to do with marriage, nor had it
any sexual dimension.

Courtly love poetry featured a dazzlingly beautiful and angelic lady, usually
married but always in some way inaccessible, and hence loved and adored
from far. She is the object of unrequitted lover’s devotion, service, and
self-sacrifice.
One could trace the origin of courtly love to Platonic Ideal. While exploring
the topic, Vulgar Eros or earthly love, and Divine Eros or divine love, Plato
in his Symposium, explains that Vulgar Eros or earthly love is the mere
attraction towards beautiful form or body for physical pleasure and
reproduction.

Divine Eros or divine love, though begins its journey from physical
attraction, it transcends gradually to the love for Supreme Beauty. This
notion of Divine Eros, later came to be known as ‘Platonic love.’

Code of courtly love prescribed the behaviour of ladies and their lovers.
The Roman poet Ovid was the father of the concept of courtly love. His 1
BCE Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), are three books of mock-
didactic elegiacs on the art of seduction and intrigue.
In Ars amatorial, Ovid depicts a lover as the slave of passion — sighing,
trembling, growing pale and sleepless, even dying for love. The nature of this
love was essentially adultrous. And the lover existed primarity for his lady.

His Amores (‘Loves’ or ‘Amours’) is a collection of 49 love elegies which talks of

illicit love and methods of seduction. It shocked Romans even in their day.
Ovid’s Amores remained popular throughout medieval Europe and are the
most often cited source for the emerging courtly love.

The the concept of the love and adoration for the distant and unattaible lady
whom the poet must serve was quite prevalant in the arabic poetry of the
Arabian peninsula during the reign of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) of
the Umayyad dynasty.
Courtly love was found again in the work of the troubadours /ˈtruːbədɔːr/, a
class of lyric poets and poet-musicians often of knightly rank who flourished
during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350) chiefly in the south of France and
the north of Italy. In fact, their major theme was courtly love. Troubadours
travelled from town to town. Some of them were retained in the courts.

The passionately pursued courtly love found in the poetry of the troubadours
was extramarital or premarital in nature. In the Middle ages, an upper-class
marriage had little to do with love. It used to be a social contract in which a
woman was given to a man to further some agenda of the couple’s parents
and involved the conveyance of , land. Land equalied power, political prestige,
and wealth.
It used to be about political and financial gain, rather than how the couple felt
about each other. The woman, therefore, was little more than a bargaining chip
in financial and political transactions.

Therefore, it was both likely and common that both noble men and women
would look for romantic gratification outside their marriage.

Once such a strategic marriage was arranged and consummated, courtly love
brought romance into the courts and people’s lives without vows of fidelity being
broken. However, the christian moral consciousness came in the way of courtly
love.

Therofre, this illicit love was idolized, idealized, sublimated and transcended
towards love for Virgin Mary. In Elizabethan age the presence of a virgin queen
on the throne only accentuated the cultivation of this paradoxical love in poetry,
especially in sonnets.
Italian author and courtier, Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (1528) was
translated into english as The Book of the Courtier in 1561. The book is a
definitive account of Renaissancea court lifend it dealt with questions of the
etiquette and morality of the courtier and the perfect lady.

The courtier is described as having a cool mind, a good voice (with beautiful,
elegant and brave words) along with proper bearing and gestures. He is
expected to have a warrior spirit, to be athletic, and have good knowledge of
the humanities, Classics and fine arts.

He should be markedly humble. His humility should be manifested in his

subservience to monarchy. Humility also meant expressing his inability to
complete a task that is beyond his powers. In poetry the courtier poet offered
apologies for his poems, confessing that their poetic talent was insufficient for
their ambitions. Moderation in everythign is one of his defining virtues.
A perfect lady should restrain herslf from praising hersel indiscreetly, should
be gentle and pleasant in talk, should be mindful and prudent, dress up to
enhance her elegance and so on. The book was very influential in 16th-century
European court circles.

Since moderation was the greatest virtue of a Courtier, sonnet became the
most popular form of poem for the expression of love in Italian poetry and it
quickly spread all over Europe and in England.

The shortness of the sonnet form could hold the overwhelming passion of the
courtier in check and yet he had to think out of the box with images and
innovative rhythm to express that sincerity of love. Besides, the movement of
his feelings could be replicated in the movement in the verse as he moved
from one set of four lines to another. It helped the writer to at once convey
the intensity of courtly love and paradoxically and tragically its illusory and
elusive nature.
Chivalry being a important dimension of Medieval literature, it is filled with
examples of knights mitten by courtly love setting out on adventures and
performing various deeds or services for their ladies because of their love for
them.

The Cult of the Virgin Mary which held Mary as a symbol of love and adoration
also contributed to the development of the concept of courtly love.

Poetry depicting courtly love was written for the entertainment of the nobility,
but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger
audience.
Wyatt and Surrey approached courtly love differently. Though Wyatt
incorporated many of the common Petrarchan themes derived from the
conventions of courtly love such as an obsessed lover who must endure great
hardship in the service of love and a fickle beloved whose indifference causes
severe pain to her noble lover, he was also frustrated and repelled by the
‘courtly code.’

He was critical of this canon. He reagarded love not as transcendental

experience, but as an experience that is obsessive, confrontative, embittering
and cruel. He looed upon the the lover as the victim of both an intemperate
passion and an ideal but cruelly indifferent mistress. In his poetry lover and
lady are often almost enemies, but at any rate, confront each other as equals.
His renderings of Petrarch, therefore, are a mixture of imitation and
individualism. His translations of Petrarchan poems are often harsh and
resentful, conspicuously untrue to their originals.
During his time, sonnets, were often written not for publication but for public
performance at court and / or private circulation. Hence, his sonnets reflect
the tensions and anxieties of the courtier's life in the court of Henry VIII, who
was a ruthless and unpredictable ruler. They reflect the sophisticated
stratagems for self-display and self-concealment that were so necessary at
court.

Surrey felt comfortable in the Petrarchan conventional role of the self-effacing

lover who gives all and expects nothing in return. However, Surrey continues
his master Wyatt’s efforts ‘towards a definition of Englishness.’

Their respective styles are also manifestations of their difference: Wyatt’s is

ragged, down-to-the-point and common sensical; Surrey’s is more elaborate,
smooth, conventionally elegant.
6. The Petrarchan sonnets consisted of an ‘octave’ rhyming ABBAABBA,
followed, after a turn (volta) by a ‘sestet’ with various rhyme schemes such
as, CDC CDC or CDC DCD or: CDE CDE.

However, Wyatt employed the Petrarchan octave, but his most common
sestet scheme is CDDC EE. This marks the beginnings of an exclusively
‘English’ contribution to sonnet structure, that is three quatrains and a
closing couplet.

Instead of the traditional division into Octave and Sestet, Surrey divided
the sonnet into three quatrains (4 lines each) and a closing couplet, with a
rhyme scheme: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. This form later became known as
the Shakespearean sonnet, named after its greatest practitioner.

Though he and Thomas Wyatt imported the Petrarchan sonnet form from
Italy to English, Surry gave the sonnet its purely English form.
7. Both were committed to Englishness. As a manifestation of their
commitment, in their poetry, they tried to recreate Italian Renaissance
models and Latin Classical models into their own culture.

While Wyatt turned mostly to Italian models, Surrey turned to classical

Roman models like Ovid.

Wyatt tried his hands oon stanza forms such as 1) ottava rima (eight-line
stanza, rhyming abababcc); 2) terza rima (three-line stanzas, rhyming aba
bcb cdc introduced by Dante in the Divina Commedia).
Wyatt imprted the Sonnet into England. With him, the sestet in the sonnet
sometimes ends in a couplet, beginning to show the ‘English’ sonnet
structure. He also used many other kinds of verse forms such as:

Ballade: The ballade (/bəˈlɑːd/; not to be confused with the ballad) is a

form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry as well as the
corresponding musical chanson form. (A chanson is in general any lyric-
driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular.)

Rondeau: Rondeau is a form of medieval and Renaissance French

poetry consisting of either 10 or 15 lines and three stanzas consisting of
only two rhymes and the opening words used twice as an unrhyming
refrain at the end of the second and third stanzas. Its plural form is
rondeaux.
 Canzone: Canzone is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad) etc.

Surrey developed the Poulter’s measure; In his translations from Virgil’s

Aeneid, Surrey introduces blank verse (unrhymed lines of iambic
pentametre, later to be found in Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’ Paradise Lost
eg.);

He modified the Italian sonnet (his version being abab cdcd efef gg: three
quatrains and a closing couplet.)
Despite their great achievement in poetry, neither of them was a
professional. Aristocrats had no profession, since having one was out of
class, and had to be left for the servants. They were diplomats, courtiers
who wrote poetry in the intervals, often as part of the demonstration of
expected courtly skills.

Their poems were first published posthumously by the printer, Tottel in his
Miscellany (the first published anthology of English poems) in 1557. The 96
poems by Wyatt and the 40 by Surrey are given titles, putting all of them in
the category of love poems. (The anthology has another 40 poems by
Nicholas Grimald and 95 by ‘uncertain authors’ as well.)
 The Peak of English Renaissance (1558 – 1603)

Sonnet Sequence

A series of thematically linked sonnets forming a long literary work is called a

sonnet sequence. Though logically and connected each of the sonnets could
be read as separate sonnet with a meaning of its own. Drawing inspiration
from Petrarch, the Elizabethan poets worte sonnet sequences.

In the tradition of the the courtly love found in the poem of troubadours, the
subject of the sonnet sequences are usually unrequitted love of the poet
narrator for a beloved who is married, or, moves in a world and social realm
far above the poet, and hence, is unreachable and unattainable.
However, Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, where the poet narrator’s wooing
culminates in his marriage with his beloved, Elizabeth Boyle; and hence, the
sequence results in Epithalamion, a marriage song.

Sonnet sequences at least pretend to be autobiographical. The following are

some the famous sonnet sequences.

Samuel Daniel’s Delia (1592)

contains 50 sonnets.

Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (1591),

contains 108 sonnets and 11 songs.
 Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti (1594),
contain 88 sonnets.

Michael Drayton’s Idea's Mirror (1594)

contains 51 sonnets

Fulke Greville’s Caelica (1633)

contains 109 sonnets.
 Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)
contains 154 sonnets.

Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621)

contains 48 sonnets