Introduction: Laureates and beggars

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ANTI-PETRARCHAN SENTIMENTS IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE POETRY , 2023

The sonnet as a form of poetry was first introduced from Italian into English during the Elizabethan age. Poets like Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard were pioneers in translating the works of Italian sonnet master Petrarch into English. Therefore, it is not surprising that they were also first to experiment with the sonnet form. They were followed by significant poets of the era, such as Edmund Spenser. However, it was William Shakespeare that greatly contributed to maturing the sonnet form in English. As well as writing plays for the theatre, he mastered in writing sonnet. As a result, the sonnet became the prevailing form of poetry during the Elizabethan era. However, the English sonneteers did not solely copy or imitate the works of Petrarch. On the contrary, they transformed the Italian sonnet form in a way that resulted in creating a new pattern called the English sonnet. In these contexts, this study sets out to analyse various ways by which English Renaissance poets made a contribution or reacted to the Petrarchan convention of love poems. Therefore, it mainly discusses how Petrarchan traditions and conceits were used (and abused) by English poets. Particularly, the anti-Petrarchan attitudes which arose in the 1590s and later are examined in order to show the differences between Italian and English sonnet forms. To do so, first, Thomas Wyatt's poems is going to be analysed to illustrate the way how he adapted the Italian sonnet form into the English language. Then, Edmund Spenser's Amoretti (1595) is going to be examined to reflect the poetic differences that are in contrast with the Petrarchan sonnet tradition. Finally, William Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) are going to be studied to demonstrate anti-Petrarchan elements in the English sonnet form.

Literature Compass, 2008

Today we largely take it for granted that every text has an author, but what is understood by the term ‘author’ was very different in the Middle Ages. Medieval English ideas of authorship were many and varied, and show some key changes from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. In manuscript cultures, like England before the late fifteenth century, the author has little control over the repetition of his text; in many medieval vernacular texts the author is represented as a craftsman and translator rather than a visionary or virtuoso. Texts in manuscript were inherently open to rewriting and were often anonymous. The role and status of the author was interrogated by poets and scholars, often revealing a remarkably open sense of who, or what, an author could be. In the later medieval period, traditions of depicting real (Geoffrey Chaucer) and imagined (Sir John Mandeville) authors developed, signalling a growing trend of attaching an authorial identity to a text worth reading. The development of mysticism and affective religion brought further transformations in the role of the author, given the anxiety over who has the right and access to represent divine communication; this issue is raised in The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Margery Kempe, both of which play with conceits of anonymity. After Chaucer, in particular in the poetry of John Lydgate, we can identify the development of the English ‘laureate’ poet. In the early era of print, especially in the prologues of William Caxton, one discerns the emergence of an author, through the posthumous image of Chaucer, similar to that known today: not only a writer but also a creator, a celebrity and an authority.

Contemporary Chaucer across the centuries

For 700 years, Geoffrey Chaucer has spoken to scholars and amateurs alike. How does his work speak to us in the twenty-first century? This volume provides a unique vantage point for responding to this question, furnished by the pioneering scholar of medieval literary studies, Stephanie Trigg: the symptomatic long history. While Trigg's signature methodological framework acts as a springboard for the vibrant conversation that characterises this collection, each chapter offers an inspiring extension of her scholarly insights. The varied perspectives of the outstanding contributors attest to the vibrancy and the advancement of debates in Chaucer studies: thus, formerly rigid demarcations surrounding medieval literary studies, particularly those concerned with Chaucer, yield in these essays to a fluid interplay between Chaucer within his medieval context; medievalism and 'reception'; the rigours of scholarly research and the recognition of amateur engagement with the past; the significance of the history of emotions; and the relationship of textuality with subjectivity according to their social and ecological context. Each chapter produces a distinctive and often startling interpretation of Chaucer that broadens our understanding of the dynamic relationship between the medieval past and its ongoing reevaluation. The inventive strategies and methodologies employed in this volume by leading thinkers in medieval literary criticism will stimulate exciting and timely insights for researchers and students of Chaucer, medievalism, medieval studies, and the history of emotions, especially those interested in the relationship between medieval literature, the intervening centuries and contemporary cultural change.

Speculum, 2004

The story of the poet laureate has not yet been fully told, and, until it is, fifteenthcentury English poetry will continue to appear a precursor to nothing. 1 Although recently much of this long-disparaged poetry has been ably recuperated, one largely retains the sense that, as complex and well crafted as it now sometimes appears to be, it has scarce, if any, relation to the tradition that succeeds it. With the notion of the poet laureate, however, one may trace a continuous line of influence from Chaucer to the present that not only includes the fifteenth century but also finds there-apart from Chaucer's brief prompting-its English point of origin. The ideals and problems attending this notion do not die out when the fifteenth-century Chaucerians are eclipsed by the courtly makers of the next century but rather persist more or less visibly in the latter's work and in that of succeeding generations of English poets. The notion of the laureate, of course, is not static but takes a distinct form and is associated with a specific set of practices for each poet who takes it up. In addition, it possesses a long history prior to its first explicit appearance in English verse, in the prologue to Chaucer's Clerk's Tale (1390s?). To tell its story-even just that part that includes the fifteenth century-would therefore be a formidable task, one beyond my ambitions in this essay. My aim instead is to demonstrate the critical utility of this story for the reassessment of the value and interest of George Ashby, one of the most neglected poets of the tradition. Under the lens of this story, the work of this mid-fifteenth-century poet-which for the most part has been dismissed in the manner Plato dismissed all poetry, as an imitation of an imitation-appears at once historically important, formally sophisticated, and thematically profound. Other lenses could be-and in a few instances have been-Among the many individuals whose help proved essential to the completion of this article, space permits me to thank by name only the first one-Lee Patterson-and the last several: my readers in the 2002 writing group at the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame (Deborah McGrady, Lezlie Knox, Valerie Garver, and Jimmy Mixson) and the anonymous Speculum reader. I owe thanks as well to the libraries of Cambridge University and Trinity College, Cambridge, for granting me access to Ashby's manuscripts and to the Paul Mellon Centre and Yale Center for British Art for the Traveling Fellowship that made the visit to Cambridge possible. Presentations of some of this material at Yale and Rhodes College garnered important early feedback, and a leave of absence from Rhodes College facilitated the article's composition. Also, here at the outset, I should acknowledge a general debt to the ground laid by

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 2005

1994

Language Commonality and Literary Community in Early Modern England, 2022

The focus of the present chapter will be on the rewritings and translations of one specific sonnet in several European languages, especially Italian, French, and English. While much scholarship has understandably been mostly interested in the specificities of English Petrarchism, sometimes running the risk of singling out features that are in no way specific to it, we hope that considering the dynamics of rewriting in several different contexts will enable us to draw a nuanced picture in which English culture is not isolated from this large European cultural phenomenon. We will take Petrarch’s sonnet 248 as a case study, trying to show how its use as a deep source produced Petrarchism not just as a common set of tropes and topoi, but also as a process of cultural translation.

2007

In the early fifteenth century, English poets responded to a changed climate of patronage, instituted by Henry IV and successor monarchs, by inventing a new tradition of public and elite poetry. Following Chaucer and others, Hoccleve and Lydgate brought to English verse a new style and subject matter to write about their king, nation, and themselves, and their innovations influenced a continuous line of poets running through and beyond Wyatt. A crucial aspect of this new tradition is its development of ideas and practices associated with the role of poet laureate. Robert J. Meyer-Lee examines the nature and significance of this tradition as it develops from the fourteenth century to Tudor times, tracing its evolution from one author to the next. This study illuminates the relationships between poets and political power and makes plain the tremendous impact this verse has had on the shape of English literary culture.

Humanist Studies & the Digital Age, 2011

This article examines concepts such as creative imitation and the impossibility of representation in order to suggest an ethic of reading in Petrarch's Canzoniere. Such ethics illuminate possible new relationships between Renaissance and Baroque. As was the case with any poet of his time, Petrarch (1304-74) understood that Homer, Ovid, and Virgil's time was not his. The break with this community of great writers of the past, in which medieval writers had worked, implied a tripartite division of history: a glorious past forever lost, a dark time of anachronistic practices, and finally a humanistic renaissance with the consciousness of its historical circumstances. With this historical division, Petrarch created the anxiety in which the modern poet would work: revive the writer of antiquity through a new perspective to emphasize its own historical moment. However, according to Thomas Greene, the poet in the Renaissance was "not a neurotic son crippled by a Freudian family romance, which is to say he is not in Harold Bloom's terms Romantic. He is rather like the son in a classical comedy who displaces his father at the moment of reconciliation" (41). Ignacio Navarrete, following Greene's ideas of the poet in the Renaissance, has paid attention to Petrarch's need to create his own voice: "Borrowing from Cicero, Petrarch advises an imitator to be like a bee, tasting from various flowers but transforming the nectar into a honey all its own. … Petrarch stresses the transformatory aspect of imitation and the need to be true to one's personal style" (10). Thus, when Petrarch goes back to the models of antiquity it is with the aim of creating his own innovative writing. Following this line of thinking, I believe that the work that best shows us this creative process of imitation and originality is Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, better known as the Canzoniere. The main topic of this work is the inordinate love that the poet felt when he was young for Laura, a woman Petrarch met on April 6, 1327. In the Canzoniere the voice of the elder poet is constantly mentioning the "giovenile errore,/ quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono" (1, 3-4). However, the final poems of the collection present the poet's earthly passion transformed into love for the Virgin and God: "re del cielo invisibile immortale/ socorri a l'alma disviata e frale" (365, 6-7). We can consider that the conflict between the young desire and the older voice underline also the historical conscience of the poet of Renaissance. In fact, Anne Cruz has affirmed that the conflict between these voices is precisely what creates the poetic writing of the Canzoniere: "La poesía del Canzoniere, al admitir el pecado de idolatría, se vuelve una anticonfesión, ya que en ella, en vez de buscar absolución, Petrarca se obsesiona en el incesante recontar del pecado original" (5). Cruz is following John Freccero's idea about the