English lyric poetry, 1250 - 1600

1. English lyric poetry, 1250 - 1600

2. Middle English poems (c. 1300 � 1500) Speakers? Most are simple lyrics (e.g., �The Cuckoo Song� (p. 436) with speaker and poet identical, but not always. How to characterize the poetry generally? Great simplicity (with some exceptions) Impersonal (Alison has a name, but she�s seen in generic terms) Interesting theologically: Jesus is seen as a man, a son, a lover, and a knight.

3. ME poems, cont. Representation of women? Audience? What makes these poems moving and effective (when they are)?

4. Our focus the next few classes The evolution from ME to early Renaissance poetry, which (among other things) will help us see where Shakespeare came from. Two specific interconnected areas of emphasis: The development of the sonnet form and the sonnet sequence The courtly love tradition

5. Petrarch (1304 � 1374): the first great writer of the sonnet (and the sonnet sequence)

6. Some biography Forty years younger than Dante and like him, an Italian who was exiled with his family to France for political reasons. Traveled widely in Europe on diplomatic missions and as a man of letters. Met his muse Laura in Avignon on 6 April 1327. She died 21 years later. They never married (or had a �relationship�). He wrote more poems about her after death than before.

7. Petrarch and the sonnet He established the conventions of the sonnet as a 14-line poem with a regular rhyme scheme and metrical pattern. Invented the Italian sonnet, in which there is a sharp break between the first eight lines (the octave) and the last six (the sestet), and a rhyme scheme abba / abba � cdcdee. Also pretty much invented the sonnet sequence�his called the Canzoniere.

8. Petrarch and courtly love Petrarch is also responsible for �Petrarchanism,� an adaptation of the Twelfth-century courtly love tradition for sonnet-writing purposes.

9. Courtly love as (perhaps) practiced in Medieval Europe According to some historians, it�s the beginning of what we now think of as �romantic� love, not purely sexual or social, but a fusion of the erotic and the idealized (and the secular and sacred). Generally unrequited (married people are not courtly lovers): the courtly lover (male)�s sudden and intense passion for an unavailable woman, for whom he longs, feels alternating states of joy and despair (mostly the latter), but who enobles him because his passion is so pure and virtuous.

10. �Petrarchanism� as a form of courtly love Petrarch explores the contrary states of feeling a lover experiences as he desires and idolizes an unattainable lady. Conventions of the Petrarchan sonnet sequence: Her beauty Her virtue Her power over him (including to improve him) His misery at her absence Rhetorical figures or tropes like paradox, hyperbole, etc. Love seen as a trap or snare, a sickness, an injury

11. It Was the Morning It was the morning of the blessed day Whereon the Sun in pity veiled his glare For the Lord�s agony, that, unaware, I fell a captive, Lady, to the sway Of your swift eyes: that seemed no time to stay The strokes of Love: I stepped into the snare Secure, with no suspicion: then, and there I found my cue in man�s most tragic play. Love caught me naked to his shaft, his sheaf The entrance for his ambush and surprise Against the heart wide open through the eyes, The constant gate and fountain of my grief: How craven so to strike me stricken so, Yet from you fully armed conceal his blow.

12. Poets who introduced the sonnet into English literature Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 � 1542) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 � 1547)

13. Thomas Wyatt (1503 � 1542) Introduced the sonnet (and sonnet sequence) into England If love for Petrarch is enobling, what is it for Wyatt? How would you compare him stylistically to Petrarch and the ME lyric poets?

14. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 � 1547) �Invented� the English sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg (rather than abba abba cdecde) Based on an very small sample, how would you compare him as poet to his friend Wyatt?

15. And two poets who developed it further Sir Philip Sidney (1554 � 1586) William Shakespeare (1554 � 1616)

16. Sir Philip Sidney (1554 � 1586) Ten years older than Shakespeare (whom he almost certainly never met or knew about) The greatest writer we study this semester you hadn�t heard of until this week. In a short life, wrote the greatest work of literary criticism of his age and the first full Petrarchan sonnet sequence in English.

17. English 6

18. Petrarchanism and courtly love The poems represent the exhilarated yet intensely painful moods and feelings of a man whose loves an unattainable woman who does not reciprocate his love. They stress her (usually blonde) beauty, her moral perfection, her coldness. Love has been transmitted from her eyes through his to his heart by Cupid�s dart, leaving him helpless, imprisoned, burning, ill, etc.

19. Petrarchanism and courtly love, cont. This is a passionate (erotic) love, of course unfulfilled, but it is also a deeply spiritual one. The two are somehow in balance. In the Platonic tradition, earthly love leads to spiritual love. Elements of Petrarchanism, of course, in �Tristran,� �Alison,� �Whoso List to Hunt,� and Spenser�s �Lyke as a huntsman� (Though Wyatt is bitter about love and Spenser says you can GET her if you quit chasing her!)

20. Astrophil and Stella Continues but complicates the Petrarchan tradition: The poems are ALWAYS about the speaker (Astrophil), not the beloved. Often they are about the speaker trying to write poetry. The speaker is NOT the poet. Love here is corrosive, not enobling. Writes frequently about CARNAL love and its demands (as more intense than spiritual love). Massively self-conscious. Often humorous, or deeply ironic, with multiple layers of irony: e.g., Sonnet 15, which mocks Petrarchanism (one of the conventions of Petrarchanism).

21. 1 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 trewand pen, beating myself for spite, �Fool,� said my Muse to me, �look in thy heart and write.�

22. A modern paraphrase I REALLY love this girl. And I wanted to show her how much I loved her, in a poem. I hoped that when she saw how much pain she had caused me, she�d want to keep reading my poetry, which might make her know even better how I feel about her, and that might make her feel sorry for me, and be good to me. Being pretty inept with words, even suffering from writer�s block, I went to www.loveverse.com for ideas and inspiration. But it didn�t work. I began to realize a poem has to be original, natural�it doesn�t work when you force it. And no poem I read seemed quite able to express what I felt. I was just about ready to burst (and really pissed off at my computer!) when a voice inside me suddenly said, �Moron, just tell the chick how you really feel.�

23. What�s ironic here? Astrophil �discovers,� after much struggle and study, that a plain, honest style, from the �heart,� is the best way to express his love for Stella. But he tells us about this discovery in an ornate, carefully crafted, highly artificial series of lines filled with complex metaphors (e.g., �invention� as the child of . . .). He doesn�t see the irony here. Sidney does. He isn�t a great poet. But Sidney is.

24. Your turn . . . Choose either Sonnet 5, 45, or 71. Reread it carefully. Try to paraphrase it. Gathering with two or three other people, read the poem aloud, work to paraphrase it (get help from me if necessary), and write out short answers to each of the four assigned questions. Add a question of your own about the poem.

25. Sonnet 5 In this poem, Astrophil sounds conflicted between two forces (truths) he seems to find irreconcilable. What are they? Are they truly irreconcilable in your opinion? Have you found ways to harmonize them? We might call the poet who invented Astrophil as we infer him from the poem �the implied Sidney.� What is SIDNEY�S attitude toward this apparent contradiction? How do you know?

26. Sonnet 45 Astrophil is also troubled by another apparent contradiction in this poem, this time in Stella�s attitude toward him. What is it? Astrophil is not able to reconcile the contradiction, but he is able to figure out what to do about it. What? What does he mean when he says, �I am not I; pity the tale of me�? What, in a word, is this poem really about?

27. Sonnet 71 Much of this poem might be described as conventional Petrarchanism. How? How is Stella said to control her vices�not by X, but by Y? Stella is said not to be content only to perfect herself. What else does she do? The last two lines, the couplet, are shockingly subversive of what has come before. How so?

28. �Astrophil and Stella� compared to earlier English lyric poetry Much greater density and complexity Much greater self-centeredness and self-awareness More �dramatic�--and a constant sense of self-dramatization A superficial respect for convention and tradition, but an underlying radicalism, subversiveness.

29. William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) Sonnets mostly written early in Shakespeare�s career (we think), but not published until 1609. As a sequence of 154 poems, they tell a basic story of the speaker�s love for a younger, high-born, good-looking man; then later of his infatuation with a dark-haired probably married woman, whom he calls his �bad angel� (in contrast to the angel that he sees the younger man as).

30. Questions about the Sonnets To what degree are they directly confessional, autobiographical? Who is the dark lady, the fair young man, the rival poet? Why did Shakespeare write them, and when?

31. Shakespeare�s sonnets, cont. What�s the source of their greatness? What�s their relationship to the Petrarchan tradition? How are they different from Sidney�s? What are their central preoccupations or �themes�? Love (the relationship between love and lust) Related to this, the tension between body and soul Time and death Sometimes related to this, the nature and power of art

32. Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton

33. Scanning Sonnet 73 That time / of year / thou mayst / in me / behold A When yel / low leaves, / or none, / or few, / do hang B Upon / those boughs / which shake / against / the cold A Bare ru / ined choirs / where late / the sweet / birds sang B In me / thou seest / the twi / light of / such day C As af / ter sun / set fad / eth in / the west D Which by / and by / black night / doth take / away C Death�s se / cond self / that seals / up all / in rest. D In me / thou seest / the glow / ing of / such fire E That on / the ash / es of / his youth / doth lie F As the / deathbed / whereon / it must / expire E Consumed / with that / which it / was nou / rished by. F This thou / perceiv�st, / which makes / thy love / more strong G To love / that well, / which thou / must leave / ere long G

34. The Rhythm of Sonnet 73 That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon the leaves which shake against the cold, Bare ruined Choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

35. Sonnet 73: What�s It Mean? When you look at me, my beloved, you behold a man who feels old, dying--like leaves on a tree in late autumn. I�m a ruined abbey, the moment when twilight is about to give way to darkness. I�m a fire about to go out, extinguished by the very force that once gave me life (you? Sex?). And seeing this makes you love me all the more, doesn�t it?--because you know you won�t have me much longer. (So perhaps all this despair is partly a form of emotional manipulation.)

36. The Conventions of the Sonnet-Sequence, Beginning with Petrarch The poet/lover in agonized pursuit of elusive female figure (his misery is emphasized, but paradoxically this produces a weird form of happiness) She�s beautiful but cold, symbolic of everything desirable yet unattainable in life She�s blond, like the sun Her virtue is so great that it still influences the poet after death

37. Shakespeare�s Break with This Tradition The beloved is (at least through the first 126 sonnets) a man The lady is dark, not blond She�s very obtainable (he�s contracted a STD from her!), thus not conventionally virtuous Though �obtained,� this doesn�t produce any great satisfaction As with Sidney, the sonnet sequence less �about� the beloved than about . . .

38. The power of art, of poetry in particular (18, 55, 130). It triumphs over time, replaces nature, nearly replaces God. Time, decay, mortality, death (55, 73, 116, 146) Love and lust (29, 87, 94, 129, 138, 144) What else?

39. Shakespeare vs. Sidney Sidney is wittier, Shakespeare usually more serious Sidney is more detached (a large gap between him and Astrophil)--Shakespeare�s sonnets have a painful immediacy (they often read like naked autobiographical confession) Sidney has little or no interest in time, mortality Sidney usually employs the Italian rhyme scheme (abba abba cdcdcd), Shakespeare the English (abab cdcd efef gg) Both sonnet sequences, however, embody most of the central features we�ve defined as characteristic of the Renaissance