Renaissance
poetry and
prose
I. Poetry in the
Renaissance
"The Shepheardes Calender" (1579)
1. the theme of unrequited love: lament of Colin
Clout (= the poet) to Rosalind; combines
various conventions and traditions with
experiments with form and language
Edmund
Spenser "The Faerie Queene" (1589/96)
planned as allegotical romance in 12 books (6
the New Poet of the completed)
Renaissance stories about the adventures of particular knights
who were asked by Gloriana, the Queen of
Fairyland, to help various strangers in their struggle
the master of the
with giants, tyrants or dragons
Elizabethan lyric
allegory: moral, religious, political, historical
2. roots in the Provencal poetic tradition and in the 13th-
century Italian poetry (Dante). It became popular in the
Italian Renaissance (Petrarch 14th century. Theme: courtly
development love
of the sonnet
THE PETRARCHAN (ITALIAN SONNET)
14 lines
diveded into octave (8) - a description of sensuous
perception
and a sestet (6) - a cognitive conclusion
rhyme pattern: abba abba cde cde (variations: abba abba
cde edc, or abba abba ccd ccd)
Petrarch: sonnet XVIII
Ashamed sometimes thy beauties should remain
As yet unsung, sweet lady, in my rhyme;
When first I saw thee I recall the time,
octave
Pleasing as none shall ever please again.
But no fit polish can my verse attain,
Not mine is strength to try the task sublime:
My genius, measuring its power to climb,
From such attempt doth prudently refrain.
Full oft I open’d my lips to chant thy name;
Then in mid utterance the lay was lost:
sestet
But say what muse can dare so bold a flight?
Full oft I strove in measure to indite;
But ah, the pen, the hand, the vein I boast,
At once were vanquish'd by the mighty theme!
1557 - “Songes and Sonnettes” aka “Tottels’s Miscalleny”
anthology of 271 poems
FIRST ENGLISH SONETEERS
Sir Thomas Wyatt Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey
first follows Petrarch’s
pattern; introduces further
changes, especially
then introduces changes alternative rhyme pattern
in terms of subject (abab cdcd efef gg);
matter, tone (the turning
away from erotic topics a more distanced
and introducing new persepctive (observer
ones - personal and rather than lover)
political) and form (abba
abba cdcd ee) more descriptive poetry
development of sonnet cycles
Sir PHILIP SIDNEY - "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA" (1591) - 108 sonnets
a sequence, presenting the stages of a love affair, very personal and intimate
EDMUND SPENSER'S "AMORETTI" (1595) - 88 sonnets
poems on courtship with interlacing rhyme pattern, almost didactic: the triumph of virtuous
courtship, betrothal and marriage; the ideal pattern of Spenserian poem: abab bcbc cdcd ee
WILLIAM SHAKESPERE - “Sonnets” (1609) - 154 sonnets
The first 17 sonnets - “procreation sonnets”, adressed to a young man, urging him to marry and have
children, thereby passing down his beauty to the next generation.
Sonnets 18-126 - addressed to a young man (FAIR YOUTH) expressing the poet's love for him (Themes:
the beauty of the loved one; destruction of beauty; competition with a Rival Poet; despair about the
absence of a loved one; and reaction toward the young man's coldness)
Sonnets 127-152 are addressed to a young woman (DARK LADY) expressing the speaker’s love for her.
Sonnets 153-154 - allegorical.
THE ENGLISH (SHAKESPEREAN)
SONNET
How many lines does the
Shakesperean sonnet have?
Is the pattern rigid or free?
What is its rhyming pattern?
What is iambic pentameter?
William Shakeperare: Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, quatrain
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines, quatrain
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, quatrain
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, couplet
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day - IAMBIC PENTAMETER
II. RENAISSANCE
PROSE
Thomas More
“Utopia” (Latin
1519, English 1551)
From Ancient Greek --> "no place",
οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place")
depicts a fictional island society in the New
World and its religious, social and political
customs, a description of an “ideal”
commonwealth
the beginning of a new genre - a
description of an ideal state / society
other prose genres
EUPHUISTIC ROMANCE
John Lily, "Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit" (1578) - a romance written in very
ornate and sophisticated style: parallelism in sentence structure --> extremely long,
artificial sentences;excessive use of literaty devices: alliteration, repetition, wordplay,
fantastic similies and comparisons, allusions to mythology
PASTORAL ROMANCE
Sir Philip Sidney, "The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia" (1590) - characterized by
love plots featuring stylized characters of shepherds and shepherdesses in natural
landscapes, idyllic vision of rural life, long descriptions of nature and gardens; written in
ornamented semi poetic prose often interspersed with songs.
PICARESQUE ROMANCE
Thomas Nashe, "The Unfortunate Traveller" (1594), a parody of chivalric romance;
episodic structure - a series of adventures of a picaroon - the rogue-like protagonist;
motif of travel
KEY POINTS
1. What is an example of alliterative romance (Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene).
What is it about? What levels of allegorical meaning can be identified in it?
2. Remember the names of Renaissance poets, who wrote sonnets. Who were the first
English soneteers?
3. What are the most important cycles of sonnets in the Renaissance? Who wrote them?
4. What is Petrarchan sonnet? (structure, rhyming pattern, themes, roots)
5. What is Shakesperean sonnet? (structure, rhyming pattern, themes). How is tit
different from Petrarchan sonnet?
6. How many sonnets did Shakespeare write?
7. What is the new genre named after the work by Thomas More? What is it about?
8. What is characteristic of euphuistic romance? Give example of euphuistic romance
(author and title).
9. What is characteristic of pastoral romance? Give example (author and title).
10. What is characteristic picaresque romance? Give example (author and title).
