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Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
- courtier of Henry VIII
- brought the Petrarchan sonnet (or love sonnet) to England
- rhyme scheme: abba abba cde cde
- 14 lines iambic pentameter
- octet (problem/situation) + sestet (answer/comment)
- had a �thing� for Anne Bolyn (who was beheaded by Henry VIII)
- published by Tottle in Tottle�s Miscellany
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�Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind��
- Wyatt
- pun on deer/dear
- use of hyperbole in line 8: �Since in a net I seek to hold the wind�
- archaic language
- extended metaphor/conceit: love = hunt
- noli me tangere = don�t touch me
- volta or shift beginning with �since�
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�They flee from me that Sometime did me Seek�
- Wyatt
- not a sonnet, about a strong woman + weak man
- has animal imagery
- bitter tone
- funny poem passed around the court
- inversion in title draws attention
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Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
- courtier of Henry VIII
- beheaded by Henry at 30 because he was a rival to the throne (royal blood)
- introduced blank verse in English poetry (unrhymed iambic pentameter)
- gave sonnet rhyme scheme that became the English/Shakespearean sonnet
- 3 quatrains and a couplet
- rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
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�Love that doth reign and live within my thought�
- Surrey
- 1st quatrain is about battle words, male's thoughts
- 2nd about female reaction (anger)
- 3rd about love�s retreat
- 4th is like a punchline: �I will love her no matter what�
- published in Tottle�s Miscellany
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Sir Walter Raleigh
- Queen Elizabeth�s confidential secretary, captain of her guard, her lover
- had passion for being a soldier, colonization, tobacco (1st Englishman to smoke it)
- convicted by James I of treason, put him in Tower of London in 1603
- executed in 1618
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�Nature, that washed her hands�
- Raleigh
- personification of nature, love, time
- mother nature = woman
- time = man
- theme is that time destroys everything
- caustic
- cynical, not typical of a Petrarchan lover
- has an apostrophe: "Oh, cruel time," addressing something not there, can't respond
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"What Is Our Life"
- Raleigh
- life is a play ("short comedy"/"play of passion")
- microcosm (little world) of macrocosm (big world)
- laughter is music, wombs are dressing rooms, heaven is an audience/judge, graves are curtains
- light hearted during quatrains
- shift occurs in final couplet, becomes serious
- no curtain call
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"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
- Raleigh
- 1600
- Philomel is an allusion to a mythical character who turned into a nightingale
- reply to Marlowe's pastoral lyric: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
- tempus fugit doesn't allow for carpe diem as short time allows few mistakes
- says that the world is not young
- reverses Marlowe's positive words into negative images
- woman says to man the his promises will not last
- winter inevitably follows spring
- "nymphs grow old and shepherds grow cold"
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Sir Philip Sidney
- soldier of the queen
- fought in battle, led 600 Englishmen against 4,500 Spaniards
- wounded in thigh, died of gangrene
- wrote first substantial critical essay defending imaginative literature
- wrote first sonnet sequence/cycle, Astrophel and Stella
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Astrophel and Stella
- Sidney
- star-lover and star)
- 1st sonnet sequence/cycle
- 108 poems to Penelope Devereux
- Petrarchan lover = modest, unrequited love
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"Loving in truth"
- Sidney
- about writer's block, how he loves but doesn't know how to say it
- looked at other writer's poems
- "fresh and fruitful showers" = ideas, productivity
- metaphor of being pregnant, wanting to give birth to thought
- Muse = allusion in shift where he decides to think for himself
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"With how sad steps"
- Sidney
- asks the moon about how bad women are, if they're the same in heaven
- concerns love and women
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Edmund Spenser
- "poet's poet"
- wrote the Faerie Queene (longest poem in English language, even though he didn't even finish it)
- wrote Amoretti ("little love") sonnet cycle/sequence to Elizabeth Boyle (2nd wife)
- buried in poet's corner
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"the Faerie Queene"
- Spenser
- Canto 8, the one we read in the book, is an allegory: a Christian beguiled by falsehood loses his purity, falling to pride can can only be restored by truth
- Prince Arthur and Una (one/truth/purity) go to Orgolio's Castle (Orgolio = pride)
- Arthur kills the 7-headed beast and disrobes Duessa (two/falsehood) who has the (starving) Redcrosse Knight
- when Duessa's ugliness is known, she retreats to the wilderness
- Duessa = Mary Queen of Scots; calls herself "Fidessa," or faithfulness
- Orgolio = Pope of Rome
- Gloriane = Queen Elizabeth
- Redcrosse Knight = knight of holiness/country of England
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the 7 deadly sins
- idleness (sloth)
- gluttony
- lechery (lust)
- avarice (greed)
- envy
- wrath
- pride (worst of the sins, leads to all the rest)
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"Sonnet 30"
- Spenser
- about unreciprocated love
- very paradoxical (ice is kindling to fire, fire freezes ice)
- metaphorical (his love his fire, her hate is ice)
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"Sonnet 75"
- Spenser
- about immortality of love
- his lover's name written in the sand may wash away, but love will live forever in his poetry about her
- name in the sand = archetypal
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Christopher Marlowe
"spy who died with a dagger in his eye"
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"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
- Marlowe
- 1599
- pastoral lyric
- - expresses emotions in an idyllic setting
- - related to "pasture," as in shepherds writing songs to their flocks
- themes are carpe diem and immediate gratification of sexual passion
- "free love" movement of the 1960's
- love in the springtime, a "roll in the grass," would be like returning to the Garden of Eden
- passed around like a joke, supposedly
- replied to by Raleigh from the nymph's perspective (shoots him down)
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Shakespeare
- wrote a lot of poems to a boy (possibly to his son, right?)
- obviously wrote in Shakespearean/English sonnets
- pretty famous guy
- married Anne Hathaway in a shotgun wedding (he was 18, she was 26)
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"Sonnet 46"
- Shakespeare
- eye beauty/love vs. heart beauty/love
- court/law conceit throughout
- ends by giving outward love to his eyes and inward love to his heart
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"Sonnet 29"
- Shakespeare
- man pities himself and is jealous of other man's hope, looks, friends, talents
- metaphor to being a lark who sings to the heavens
- heaven changes from being deaf to hymnal
- "when I'm with you, I don't wanna be anybody else"
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"Sonnet 73
- Shakespeare
- fall = old age * winter = death
- spring = birth * summer = youth
- seasons as metaphors/conceits are archetypal
- boughs = limbs
- metaphors of time of day: night is death, obviously
- west is death, sunset
- paradox: "consumed with that which it was nourished by"
- couplet at end: "you see how I'm growing old, but it makes our love stronger"
- carpe diem: "ceize the day"
- tempus fugit: "time flies"
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"Sonnet 116"
- Shakespeare
- personification of love
- love is permanent
- love>time
- "edge of doom" = end of time
- last couplet: if this poem isn't true, than I'm not a writer, and no man has ever loved!
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"Sonnet 130"
- Shakespeare
- not typical, basically calls his lady ugly
- but he loves her anyway
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*Petrarchan conventions:
- devotion by lover (man)
- rejection by loved (woman)
- complaining persona
- unrequited love (sonnet sequence/cycle)
- use of paradox and metaphor
- physical vs. spiritual love
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