1 / 24

Elizabethan Poetry

Elizabethan Poetry. Poetic Genres. Pastoral: songs, dialogues, funeral elegies, romances (John Milton, ‘Lycidas’) Satires Lyric poems: hymns, odes, epithalamiums Songs: popular ballads, madrigals, airs Sonnets (Shakespeare, The Sonnets )

Faraday
Download Presentation

Elizabethan Poetry

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Elizabethan Poetry

  2. Poetic Genres • Pastoral: songs, dialogues, funeral elegies, romances (John Milton, ‘Lycidas’) • Satires • Lyric poems: hymns, odes, epithalamiums • Songs: popular ballads, madrigals, airs • Sonnets (Shakespeare, The Sonnets) • Mythological-erotic poems (Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’) • Epic poems (Spenser, The Faerie Queene)

  3. The Sonnet • Def.: a lyric poem of fixed form (14 lines of iambic pentameter) • Typology: love, political, personal, religious, occasional • Sonnet sequence: a series of 14-line sonnets exploring the contrary states of love; addressed to a central figure (often a woman with a symbolic name); about conventional themes

  4. The Italian Sonnet • Also called ‘Petrarchan’ sonnet • Octave (2 quatrains): abba abba; it expresses the first half of an idea or poses a question • Sestet (2 terzets): cde cde / cdc dcd ; etc.; it develops the idea expressed in the octave, or gives the answer to the question • Volta: a pause between the octave and the sestet.

  5. The English Sonnet • Also called ‘Shakespearean’ sonnet • 3 quatrains: abab cdcd efef; it contains the development of an idea • Couplet: gg; an epigrammatic conclusion

  6. The Spenserian sonnet • Invented by Edmund Spenser • Also called ‘Linked’ sonnet • 3 quatrains + 1 couplet • Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee

  7. The Miltonic sonnet • Invented by John Milton • Structure: octave + sestet • But: no major pause between the two units • Also: extends the sonnet to include political, religious and occasional themes • The major source for further development

  8. Holbein’s drawing of Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1532-42)

  9. Wyatt, ‘Forget Not Yet’ MS page and letter to Henry VIII

  10. Wyatt’s innovations • First sonnets in English • Adaptations of Petrarch • Italian 11-syllable lines - > 10-syllable lines • But: not yet iambic pentameters

  11. Portrait and signature of the Earl of Surrey

  12. Surrey’s innovations • First use of blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid • 15 sonnets, 10 of which are English sonnets • Structure: alternating rhymes, quatrains + couplet (but not epigrammatic conclusion)

  13. Sir Philip Sidney

  14. Sidney’s poetic theory • A Defence of Poesie (1582) • Poetry should teach and delight; art imitates nature • But: imitation of an ideal nature • The poet as ‘vates’ and ‘maker’

  15. Sidney’s innovations • The first full sonnet sequence: Astrophel and Stella (1581), 108 sonnets and 11 songs; is based on an autobiographical situation (Penelope Devereux) • 6 sonnets in alexandrines (12-syllable lines adapted from the French) • Epigrammatic conclusion in the last line

  16. Edmund Spenser

  17. Spenser’s poetics • Renaissance Neoplatonism • Puritanism • Patriotism • Conscious preparation for the task of an epic poem: The Shepherd’s Calendar, Amoretti, ‘Prothalamion’, ‘Epithalamion’, The Faerie Queene

  18. Spenser’s innovations • Amoretti (early 1590s): a sonnet sequence (89); puritan / humanist adaptation of the Petrarchan sonnet sequence • Spenserian sonnets: linked quatrains • Epigrammatic couplet • ‘Yoking together the spiritual and the fleshy’

  19. The Sonnets

  20. Shakespeare’s sonnets I • The Sonnets (1609): the climax and the end of the Elizabethan sonnet tradition • Innovations: dramatic story (love triangle, rival poet); ironic treatment of Petrarchan concepts; balance of quatrains and couplet • But: no structural innovation; the simplest rhyme scheme

  21. Shakespeare’s sonnets II • Conventional Petrarchan topics: • Unity and diversity of lovers • Immortalising the beloved in poetry • Contest btween passion and virtue • Unification in love • Love’s constancy and transitoriness

  22. Shakespeare’s sonnets III • Order of the sonnets: • 1-126: addressed to a young man (W.H.), urning him to marry and beget children • 127-152: addressed to a ‘Dark Lady’, describing a love triangle betwen two men and a woman • 153-154: free adaptations of two classic poems

  23. Shakespeare’s sonnets IV • Characters: • Poet (Shakespeare) • Rival Poet (?) • Fair Youth (the Earl of Southampton?) • Dark Lady (?) . . .

More Related