1. The Renaissance & the Sonnet
Love, Death and Time

2. The Renaissance: Historical Events
(See pp 250 & f in text)
Ancient Greece & Rome
Renaissance means rebirth
Age of Exploration
Italian influences
Humanism
Printing Technology
The Reformation
Henry VIII and his heirs
The Spanish Armada
Best, Michael. Shakespeare's Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria: Victoria, BC, < Visited [October 3, 2007].

3. The Glass House of Fashion
Read Literary focus, pp
Discuss Analyzing an Illumination, p 269 (small group activity)
Whole group discussion: “How do our hearts and minds influence our actions?”

4. “Whoso List to Hunt” Sir Thomas Wyatt, courtier of Henry VIII; (p 272)
Wrote poems & songs as part of his position;
Quickwrite: What do you think of the idea of love as a “hunt”?
Wyatt was attracted to Anne Boleyn who later became Henry’s second wife.

5. The Sonnet Form Read and discuss Wyatt’s poem. What makes it a sonnet?
Rhyme scheme
Octave & sestet
Petrarch’s poetry (Laura and the laurel); conceits—see definition p 1456

6. Poetic Meter: Giving Form to Feeling
Metrical feet:
iamb (ﮞ /)
Trochee (/ ﮞ)
Anapest (ﮞ ﮞ /)
Dactyl (/ ﮞ ﮞ)
Spondee, Caesura
Dimeter, Trimeter, Tetrameter, Pentameter, etc.
Practice using handout on meter

7. Edmund Spenser
The Power of paradox (an apparent contradiction that is somehow true)
Quickwrite: How would you describe these two feelings—intense desire and loss of interest?
Read Sonnet 30 & 75—What’s different about the form?

8. Spencer’s Sonnet 30 My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so-hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold;
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
That fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
And ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

9. Spenser’s Sonnet 75 One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Out love shall live, and later life renew.

10. Two Sonnet Forms Petrarchan & Shakespearean Rhyme Scheme The Volta
Also known as Italian & English
Form (couplets, quatrains, etc.)
Analyzing sonnets, p. 220
The Sonnets’ Forms, p. 224

11. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

12. Literary Devices Used In Sonnets
Complaint: the laments and pleas of unrequited lovers;
Simile: comparison using like or as to connect two dissimilar items;
Parallel structure: repeating words, lines, or phrases
Synecdoche: part of something stands for the whole
Allusion: An image from literature or history that is familiar to all

13. Assignment Answer question 1-12 on p 275.
Mid-term test will have at least two sonnets for you to answer questions about, so please learn this material!