1. Sonnet 30 from Amoretti by Edmund Spenser Amoretti “little love poems”
89 sonnets recording a man’s year long courtship of a woman named Elizabeth (perhaps Spenser’s own courtship of Elizabeth Boyle)
Edmund Spenser regarded himself as a poet. Graduate of Cambridge University, Secretary to the Earl of Leicester (favorite of Queen Elizabeth).
1580 married and moved to Ireland in service of England. England had invaded and occupied Ireland. Sir Walter Raleigh was proprietor of a nearby estate.
Elizabeth Boyle is his second wife (his first wife died). During an Irish uprising, Spenser’s castle was burned and his infant son died. Spenser escaped to London and died suddenly in 1599.
Buried near Chaucer in the Poet’s Corner of Westminister Abby.
Most fame from Faerie Queene though unfinished is 33,000 lined long. Language closer to Chaucer.

2. AP/H English 12
Dercher
Mini – Read
Reading Indicators
R.1.3.4
R.1.4.5
R.1.4.9 R

3. 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?
5 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
10 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.
Read twice after I read the selection.
Look for figurative language and format.
What is the story?
Write a thesis statement for an essay analyzing this sonnet.
Make a pool of terms to use within the essay to add to the quality of the writing – sonnet over poem, quatrain over section, extended metaphor, paradox…

4. 2. The image of “ice” refers to the
1. Which of the following terms best describes the device Spenser uses when he combines “fire” and “ice” in this sonnet?
a. meter
b. metaphor
c. paradox
d. allegory
2. The image of “ice” refers to the
a. suitor’s passion
b. love between two people
c. suitor’s despair
d. woman’s indifference
3. The sonnet expresses wonder at the
a. transience of human life
b. contradictory nature of some great truths
c. complicated nature of romance
d. importance of remembering experiences

5. This is an English sonnet known as the Spenserian sonnet
This is an English sonnet known as the Spenserian sonnet. What is the rhyme scheme?
Is that the only difference you note compared to the Shakespearean sonnet?

6. Rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee
(Demands four words for two of the rhymes – more demanding than the Shakespearean model in this regard)