RENAISSANCE POETRY

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RENAISSANCE POETRY

• PASTORAL POETRY
• CARPE DIEM
• SONNETS

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PASTORAL POETRY

• Set in an idealized countryside
• Inhabited by handsome shepherds and beautiful
  young women (nymphs)
• All live in harmony with nature
• Characters are simple country folk, yet they use
  sophisticated diction and imagery

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PASTORAL POETRY continued

• Many express a longing or nostalgia for a
  simpler, more innocent time
• Takes its name from the Latin pastor meaning
  shepherd
• Depict country life in idyllic, idealized terms
• Characters are naïve and innocent yet express
  themselves with poetic sophistication

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PASTORAL POETRY continued

• Christopher Marlowe (1564 1593)
• Contemporary of William Shakespeare
• His most famous play The Tragicall History of
  Dr. Faustus, which is about a man who makes a
  deal with the devil.
• Our book tells us that Marlowes heroes want to
  be more than mere men, and only death can put an
  end to their grand ambitions
• Marlowe is believed to have died in a bar fight
  about the amount of a bill (258)

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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by
Christopher Marlowe (pg. 259)

• Come live with me, and be my love,
• And we will all the pleasures prove
• That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
• Woods, or steepy mountains yields.
• And we will sit upon the rocks,
• Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
• By shallow rivers, to whose falls
• Melodious birds sing madrigals.

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• And I will make thee beds of roses,
• And a thousand fragrant posies,
• A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
• Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
• A gown made of the finest wool
• Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
• Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
• With buckles of the purest gold.

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• A belt of straw and ivy buds,
• With coral clasps and amber studs,
• And if these pleasures may thee move,
• Come live with me, and be my love.
• The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
• For thy delight each May morning.
• If these delights thy mind may move,
• Then live with me, and be my love.

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PASTORAL POETRY continued

• Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 1618)
• Served as Queen Elizabeth Is confidential
  secretary and captain of the guard
• Devoted to colonizing the Americas
• Charged with treason (not true) against King
  James in 1603
• Executed in 1618
• Lived in Tower of London until execution
• Did not think of himself as a writer only 35 of
  his poems have survived (260)
• Wrote a reply to C. Marlowes pastoral poem

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• 125 / 195-7dc. Tower of London - Brick Tower -
  and Sir Walter Raleigh.
•  
• Sir Walter Raleigh
• Adventurer - explorer - parliamentarian - author
  and poet - Raleigh was the man who according to
  legend laid his cloak over a puddle so that Queen
  Elizabeth 1st. would not muddy her feet. He also
  introduced potatoes and tobacco into Britain from
  the New World, now known as North America. So
  why was Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned in the
  Tower of London. And, not just once but on three
  separate occasions.
• First time Early on in his career Raleigh
  happened to be the favourite of Queen Elizabeth
  1st. That is until in 1592 when she discovered he
  was secretly married to her maid-of-honour
  Elizabeth Throckmorton, whereupon she flew into a
  jealous rage and sent him to the Tower of London.
  Although he was later released, he was for ever
  more banished from the Royal Court. As for where
  he was imprisoned exactly, no-one really knows,
  although it is thought that the Brick Tower above
  is a likely candidate.

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• ....Second time Raleigh, although admired by
  many, nevertheless, was not without his enemies
  who in 1603 persuaded James 1st that he was
  suspected of opposing the Kings succession to
  the throne. And although not sentenced to death
  for treason, Raleigh was nevertheless arrested
  and sent to the Tower of London yet again. On
  this occasion, however, he was definitely kept
  here in the Bloody Tower. And an extra floor was
  added so that his family, who wanted to be with
  him, could also be accommodated.

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• On the first floor of the Bloody Tower, seen
  here, is Raleigh's private chamber in which you
  can see the writing desk where he wrote the
  'History of the World'. Although it appears he
  did'nt get very far, as he only reached the
  second Macedonian War in 130 BC....

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The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd by Sir
Walter Raleigh (pg. 261)

• If all the world and love were young,
• And truth in every shepherds tongue,
• These pretty pleasures might me move
• To live with thee and be thy love.
• But Time drives flocks from field to fold,
• When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
• And Philomel becometh dumb
• The rest complains of cares to come.

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• The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
• To wayward winter reckoning yields
• A honey tongue, a heart of gall
• Is fancys spring, but sorrows fall.
• Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
• Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies.
• Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
• In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

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• Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
• Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
• All these in me no means can move
• To come to thee an be thy love.
• But could youth last and love still breed,
• Had joys no date, nor age no need,
• Then these delights my mind might move
• To live with thee and be thy love.

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CARPE DIEM

• Literally means seize the day
• Literary theme that urges living and loving in
  the present moment, since life and earthly
  pleasures cannot last (263)

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To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert
Herrick (pg. 265)

• Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
• Old Time is still a-flying
• And this same flower that smiles today,
• Tomorrow will be dying.
• The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
• The higher hes a-getting,
• The sooner will his race be run,
• And nearer hes to setting.

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• That age is best which is the first,
• When youth and blood are warmer
• But being spent, the worse, and worst
• Times still succeed the former.
• Then be not coy, but use your time
• And while ye may, go marry
• For having lost but once your prime,
• You may forever tarry.

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To His Coy Mistressby Andrew Marvell (pg.
267-68)

• Had we but world enough, and time,
• This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
• We would sit down, and think which way
• Thou by the Indian Ganges side
• Shouldst rubies find I by the tide
• Of Humber would complain. I would
• Love you ten years before the Flood,
• And you should, if you please, refuse
• Till the conversion of the Jews,
• My vegetable love should grow
• Vaster than empires and more slow

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• An hundred years should go to praise
• Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze
• Two hundred to adore each breast,
• But thirty thousand to the rest
• An age at least to every part,
• And the last age should show your heart.
• For. Lady, you deserve this state,
• Nor would I love at lower rate.

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• But at my back I always hear
• Times wingèd chariot hurrying near
• And yonder all before us lie
• Deserts of vast eternity.
• Thy beauty shall no more be found,
• Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
• My echoing song then worms shall try
• That long-preserved virginity
• And your quaint honor turn to dust,
• And into ashes all my lust
• The graves a fine and private place
• But none, I think, do there embrace.

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• Now therefore while the youthful hue
• Sits on thy like morning dew,
• And while thy willing soul transpires
• At every pore with instant fires,
• Now let us sport us while we may,
• And now, like amorous birds of prey,
• Rather at once our time devour
• Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

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• Let us roll all our strength and all
• Our sweetness up into one ball,
• And tear our pleasures with rough strife
• Through the iron gates of life
• Thus, though we cannot make our sun
• Stand still, yet we will make him run.

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SONNETS

• A 14 lined lyric poem
• Conforms to a specific rhyme scheme
• You are responsible for knowing three types of
  sonnets
• 1. Spenserian sonnet
• 2. Petrarchan sonnet
• 3. Shakespearean sonnet

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Spenserian sonnet taken from Literature
timeless voices, timeless themes

• Named for the poet Edmund Spenser (1552 1599)
• Born into a working-class family, but later
  became one of the few poets who depended on his
  writing money for his lively hood.
• He is most famous for his sonnet sequence called
  Amoretti, which is addressed to his own wife.
• He dedicated The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth I.
• Sonnet sequence a group of sonnets linked by
  theme or subject. (206 07)

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SPENSERIAN SONNET continuedTAKEN FROM
LITERATURE TIMELESS VOICES, TUIMELESS THEMES

• Rhyme scheme
• ababbcbc cdcdee
• The sonnet is divided into two sections
• the octave and the sestet
• The octave raises a question or presents a
  situation and the sestet gives a response.

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Edmund SpenserSonnet 30

• 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?
• 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
• 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 powr of love in gentle mind,
• That it can alter all the course of kind.

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Petrarchan sonnet

• Also called the Italian sonnet
• Rhyme scheme
• abbaabba ccdeed
• Divided into two parts
• the octave and the sestet
• The volta is the transition or turn of the sonnet
  usually found in the ninth line
• (276)

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Shakespearean sonnet

• Also called Elizabethan sonnet or English sonnet
• Rhyme scheme
• abab cdcd efef gg
• This kind of sonnet is divided into four parts
• three quatrains and one couplet which is
  indented
• The quatrains (4 lines) express related ideas
• The couplet (2 lines) sums up the poets message
• This sonnet also has a volta
• Many of Shakespeares sonnets are sad because of
  unrequited love (276 78)

                 
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William ShakespeareSonnet 18

• Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
• Thou art more lovely and more temperate
• Rough winds do shake the darling bud of May,
• And summers lease hath all too short a date
• Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
• And often is his gold complexion dimmed
• And every fair from fair sometime declines,
• By chance or natures changing course untrimmed
• But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
• Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest
• Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his shade,
• When in eternal lines time thou growest
• So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
• So long live this, and this gives life to thee.

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William ShakespeareSonnet 130

• My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun
• Coral is far more red than her lips red
• If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun
• If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
• I have seen roses damaskd, red and white,
• But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
• And in some perfumes is there more delight
• Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
• I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
• That music hath a far more pleasing sound
• I grant I never saw a goddess go,
• My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
• And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
• As any she belied with false compare.