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’

20. The Sonnets

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

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