Sonnets of Love

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Sonnets of Love

• Douglas A. Northrop
• Ripon College

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Lecture on the transition from courtly love to
Elizabethan sonnets

• 1115 a.m.
• Monday, October 6, 2008
• Todd Wehr 104

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Romantic Love

• Grand Passion
• Continental
• Non-matrimonial
• True Love
• Anglo-American
• Matrimonial

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Cyrano De Bergerac

• Rostand 1897
• Depardieu 1990
• Roxanne 1987
• Steve Martin
• Daryl Hannah

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Gerard Depardieu
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AS CYRANO
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Roxanne Poster
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scene
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The Four Hepburns

• The Philadelphia Story (Katharine)
• Sabrina (Audrey)
• Summertime (Katharine)
• Roman Holiday (Audrey)

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Katharine Hepburn
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The Three Roles of Love
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Audrey Hepburn
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The Four Hepburns

• The Philadelphia Story (Katharine)
• Sabrina (Audrey)
• Summertime (Katharine)
• Roman Holiday (Audrey)

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C. S. Lewis

• The Allegory of Love 1936
• Classical Love
• Merry sensuality
• Domestic comfort
• Tragic madness
• Romantic Love
• Humility
• Courtesy
• Adultery
• Religiosity

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Italian Love Relationships

• Dante 1265-1321
• Beatrice b. 1266, m. 1287, d. 1290
• Petrarch 1304-1374
• Laura b.1308, m. 1325, d. 1325
• 11 children

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DANTE
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PETRARCH
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Sonnets Conventions

• Love sonnets 14-17th century
• Topics of Discussion
• Conventional form
• Conventional meaning
• Relation of form and meaning

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Form

• 14 lines
• Iambic pentameter
• Rhyme schemes
• Octavo, sestet
• Three quatrains, couplet
• Examples
• Petrarch
• Shakespeare
• Sequences

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Sonnet Forms

• Italian (Petrarchan)
• Octave (8 lines) Sestet (6 lines)
• ABBAABBA CDECDE
• or cdcdee or cdcdcd

English (Shakespearean) three quatrains (4 line
units) couplet (2 lines) ABABCDCDEFEFGG
Spenserian linked quatrains and a
couplet ABABBCBCCDCDEE
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POETIC RESOURCES

• Denotative and connotative meanings
• Grammatical and rhetorical relations
• Strategic placement
• Sounds rhyme and rhythm, assonance, consonance,
  alliteration, onomatopoeias
• Figurative language images, symbols, metaphors,
  similes

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Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet

• Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)
• Sonnet 28
• Alone and ever weary with dark care,
• I seek the solitude of desert ways,
• Casting about the while a timid gaze
• Lest alien steps my refuge seek to share.
• No other shield I find against the stare
• Of curious folk too clear my face displays
• In ashen cheerlessness how cruel the blaze
• That burns within, and lays my secret bare.
• Tis only hills, I think, and silent streams
• And meadows and deep thickets that can know
• The tenor of my life, from men concealed.
• Yet not so wide I wander with my dreams
• But Love comes with me, following where I go,
• And long we parley on the lonely weald.

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Sonnet 69

• She used to let her golden hair fly free
• For the wind to toy and tangle and molest
• Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.
• (Seldom they shine so now.) I used to see
• Pity look out of those deep eyes on me.
• (It was false pity, you would now protest.)
• I had loves tinder heaped within my breast
• What wonder that the flame burned furiously?
• She did not walk in any mortal way,
• But with angelic progress when she spoke,
• Unearthly voices sang in unison.
• She seemed divine among the dreary folk
• Of earth. You say she is not so today?
• Well, though the bows unbent, the wound bleeds
  on.

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Sir Philip Sidney

• 1554-1586
• Astrophil and Stella
• Penelope Devereux
• Frances Walsingham
• mistress

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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
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Sidney Sonnet
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William Shakespeare

• 1564-1616
• Person addressed as inspiration
• Anne Hathaway, his wife
• The Dark Lady

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William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare Sonnet 130
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Shakespeare

• Sonnet 73
• That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen
  yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon
  those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare
  ruind choirs, where late the sweet birds
  sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such
  dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by
  and by black night doth take away,Deaths second
  self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou seest
  the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of
  his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it
  must expire,Consumd with that which it was
  nourishd by.This thou perceivst which makes
  thy love more strong,To love that well which
  thou must leave ere long.

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Edmund Spenser

• 1552-1599
• Amoretti
• Epithalamium (1596)
• Elizabeth Boyle

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EDMUND SPENSER
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Spenserian Sonnet
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But
came the waves and washed it away Again I wrote
it with a second hand, But came the tide, and
made my pains his prey. Vain man, said she,
that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to
immortalize, For I myself shall like to this
decay, And eke 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.
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Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth 1558-1603
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John Milton 1608-1674
Paradise Lost 1667, 1674
The companionate marriage
Celebration of the physicality and spirituality
of marriage
Divorce tracts
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John Milton
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Complex, contradictory ideals
Woman ideal spiritual chaste Wife, mother
domestic Mistress siren lustful
Man subordinate, adoring, service Master of
household Ambivalent attraction/repulsion
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Two traditions
Grand Passion Continental. Italian.
Catholic Idealized Extramarital
True Love Anglo-American, Protestant Companionate,
physical, faithful
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Meaning

• Love
• Praise
• Relationship
• Service - development of writer/lover

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The Value of Convention

• Constraint
• Freedom

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Conclusions

• Conventions direct our thoughts, feelings, and
  actions
• Conventions change

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Current Conventions of Love Expressions

• What if no conventions existed?
• Distinguish eternal from cultural

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Sonnetby Billy Collins

• All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen
  now,
• and after this next one just a dozen
• to launch a little ship on loves storm-tossed
  seas,
• then only ten more left like rows of beans.
• How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
• and insist the iambic bongos must be played
• and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
• one for every station of the cross.
• But hang on here while we make the turn
• into the final six where all will be resolved,
• where longing and heartache will find an end,
• where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his
  pen,
• take off those crazy medieval tights,
• blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
• 1999