1. Reading a poem academically 1. Look at the poem’s title 2. Use writing to think 3. Read the poem straight through 4. Look for patterns. 5. Identify the narrator (or speaker) 6. Read the poem again 7. Find the crucial moments. 8. Consider form and function. 9. Look at the language of the poem. 10. Go deeper or call it quits.

2. Sonnet 67 Edmond Spenser Like as a huntsman after weary chase, Seeing the game from him escap'd away, Sits down to rest him in some shady place, With panting hounds beguiled of their prey: So after long pursuit and vain assay, When I all weary had the chase forsook, The gentle deer return'd the self-same way, Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook. There she beholding me with milder look, Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide: Till I in hand her yet half trembling took, And with her own goodwill her firmly tied. Strange thing, me seem'd, to see a beast so wild, So goodly won, with her own will beguil'd.

3. Sonnets The Literary Legacy of the Renaissance

4. History Francesco Petrarch (Italian) Wrote Canzoniere 366 sonnets dedicated to Laura Invented the form Thomas Wyatt adapted it to English Shakespeare Milton

5. Form Sonnets A lyric poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines with a fixed-scheme of rhyming Italian or Petrarchan English or Shakespearean Originated in Sicily Model for Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare

6. Form Petrarchan sonnets: two parts: an octave (8 lines) rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet (6 lines) rhyming cdecde or some variant. Shakespearean sonnets: Three quatrains (four lines) abab cdcd efef And a concluding couplet (two lines) gg

7. Form Spenserian Sonnet Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee Nine line stanza in Faerie Queen: Ababbcbcc Less important historically

8. Reading a poem academically 1. Look at the poem’s title 2. Use writing to think 3. Read the poem straight through 4. Look for patterns. 5. Identify the narrator (or speaker) 6. Read the poem again 7. Find the crucial moments. 8. Consider form and function. 9. Look at the language of the poem. 10. Go deeper or call it quits.

9. Questions to consider When reading these sonnets, consider the following: How does a poet use rhymes and rhyme scheme to reinforce what the poem says? How does a poet take advantage of the turn from octave to sestet, or the shift from one quatrain to another? How does the final couplet function? How do the pasterns created by rhyme relate to other patterns created by grammar, word order, the positing or grouping of images, or the movement of logical argument?

10. Edmund Spenser “The poet’s poet” Came into service of prominent English noblemen, including Elizabeth’s favorites The Faerie Queen Uses medieval myth and legend to assess Elizabethan age

11. One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I write 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, (quod 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, Our love shall live, and later life renew.