English Sonnet Research Articles

A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet

This book is a genre history that traces the second life, in the nineteenth century, of a poetic form that had enjoyed its original heyday three hundred years earlier.

A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet

A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet

Watson'sHekatompathiaand Renaissance Lyric Translation

Nearly all of the poems in Thomas Watson's one-hundred-lyric sequence, the self-annotated Hekatompathia (1582), are translated; or rather, they are poems based on translation.1 In this case, to specify the meanings of 'based on' and 'translation' is immediately to expand our sense of the possible in lyric translation, and even our sense (already enlarged) of the place of translation in English Renaissance poetics. In fact, from these points of view Watson's eccentric little book is quite central, although it and its author are not usually thought of in that way, if they are thought of at all.2 The largest one-author book of love poems in English since that of Charles d'Orleans in the middle of the fifteenth century, and sometimes said to be the first English sonnet sequence, the Hekatompathia? (s value here is that it does unusual things with lyric translation and does them at a crucial moment in English literary history.3 Having circulated in manuscript alongside Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, and in print during the decade just before the grand flowering of English sonnet sequences, the Hekatompathia joins a literary moment and milieu intensely concerned with the creation of a national literature in relation to both classical and vernacular literatures.4 Spenser, Sidney, Gascoigne, Wilson, and soon Puttenham and others, were asking how English poets might best use Latin and Greek texts; whether and how to imitate in English; and how to establish a worthy national literature. With these broadly important questions came narrower questions about English lyric: could little poems be as important in English as they had been in Petrarch's Italian, and (of more immediate concern) as they were proving to be in French since the stellification of the Pleiade poets? Clearly the status of lyric in England could be elevated; little poems could profit from more impressive, more unified print collection and a more assertive authorship than manuscript and miscellany had yet afforded. To several such broad and narrow questions in Renaissance English poetics, Watson's Hekatompathia declares a single answer: translation.

"Thou maist have thy Will": The Sonnets of Shakespeare and His Stepsisters

dergraduates may quickly become overwhelmed by the array of unanswered and unanswerable questions that surround the 1609 Quarto. When they come to the sonnets with the expectation of hearing the unmediated voice of the Bard, they confront instead a group of shifting and mysterious figures-the fair young friend(s), the rival poet, and the dark lady. If they share Wordsworth's conviction that unlocked his heart in the sonnets,' they may follow in the wake of many earlier generations of readers who have searched in vain for a key. To lead students into more fruitful approaches to the sonnets, I prefer to teach the sequence in conjunction with lyrics by contemporary women poets, including Elizabeth I, Aemilia Lanyer, and Lady Mary Wroth. By using a paratactic method-juxtaposing sonnets on related subjects, such as absence, night, lust, betrayal, or constancy-it is possible to see how these poets differ in their treatment of conventional motifs.2 It is also valuable to explore how Shakespeare and the women authors radically transform their Petrarchan heritage, for most of these poets are writing after the extraordinary outpouring of English sonnet sequences in the 1590s. They confront the common problem of how to write in a genre in which the female beloved is generally silent, distant, and unattainable. One strategy to use in teaching the sonnets is to divide the class into teams, each responsible for researching and discussing a critical perspective on the poetry. Although the particular approaches listed below could easily be changed or expanded, the advantage of having students working together is the opportunity it gives them to discuss the poetry in small groups, to formulate their own interpretations, and then to share their results with the class; often the groups offer vastly different readings of the same poem, especially Sonnets 20, 93, or 1 16. In the first week of study on the sonnets, I generally meet with each of the teams outside of class to discuss the readings (and in some cases to provide additional reading materials, such as xeroxes of the 1609 Quarto or Wroth's manuscript poems). During the second and third weeks, the teams give their class presentations. The students working on physical features of the texts generally speak last because their topic is the least familiar and requires some extra time for preparation.

Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences. Thomas P. Roche, Jr.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsPetrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences. Thomas P. Roche, Jr.Jeffrey N. NelsonJeffrey N. Nelson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 88, Number 2Nov., 1990 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/391847 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1990 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

:Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences

:<i>Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences</i>

:Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences

:<i>Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences</i>

Petrarch and the English sonnet sequences (review)

Petrarch and the English sonnet sequences (review)

Petrarch and the English sonnet sequences

Petrarch and the English sonnet sequences

The Sonnet’s Body and the Body Sonnetized in Romeo and Juliet

HEN MERCUTIO NAMES ROMEO'S INHERITED MALADY-Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flow'd in . . (2.4.38-39)1-he places Petrarch as Romeo's literary father, the poetic counterpart of the dynastic father whose verbal legacy Juliet sees as dangerous: Deny thy father and refuse thy name. . .. (2.2.34). In Mercutio's allusion, renewal remembers inheritance; there is no escape, familial or poetic, from the influence of a preexisting word. This was true for Shakespeare as for Romeo, since he wrote at or near Petrarch's English zenith, though after the time of Petrarch's greatest Continental influence. That realizing Petrarchan conventions can be fatal is a familiar argument, but in Romeo and Juliet the inherited Petrarchan word becomes English flesh by declining from lyric freedom to tragic fact through a transaction that sonnetizes the body, diminishes the body of the sonnet, and scatters the terms of the blason du corps.2 In fact Romeo and Juliet opens with a Petrarchan inheritance in the reliquary of the Prologue's English sonnet, an inheritance that endures

Shakespeare's Non-Shakespearean Sonnets

M Y TITLE IS AMBIGUOUS, PERHAPS EVEN MISLEADING, since what I am about to discuss has nothing to do with questions of authorship. Instead I shall be considering how rhyme schemes function within sonnets that I am willing to believe William Shakespeare wrote. ambiguity of my title is not accidental, however. To the extent that it leads anyone to think that what follows will be a discussion of authorship, it illustrates the hold upon us of the deeply embedded consensus that declares that every by Shakespeare rhymes abab cdcd efef gg, thereby conforming to the rhyme scheme of an sonnet. One measure of the power of that consensus is that it permeates the terminology that precedes and shapes our acts of analysis and thus to a large extent determines their outcomes. We routinely use the terms English sonnet and Shakespearean sonnet interchangeably-as in the following excerpt from the foreword to the sonnets provided in one of the most widely used editions of works: The sonnets are written throughout in the 'Shakespearean' or form, abab cdcd efef gg.1 A terminology that uses English sonnet and Shakespearean sonnet as virtual synonyms makes it difficult to pose the question of whether a by Shakespeare has a rhyme scheme that is not Shakespearean, that is not abab cdcd efef gg. A second measure of the power exerted by the consensus is that commentators whose acuity is justifiably much admired embrace and thus reinforce the idea of a uniform rhyme scheme for all of sonnets. Edward Hubler, for example, says of Shakespeare's form: Its fourteen lines were divided into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. . . . There are seven rimes: abab cdcd efef gg.2 C. L. Barber observes that Shakespeare never varies from three quatrains followed by a couplet, abab, cdcd, efef, gg. . ..3 Note Barber's use of never, which Stephen Booth tempers only slightly when he points out, in his acclaimed edition of Sonnets: All but three of the 154 poems in Q[uarto] consist of fourteen pentameter lines-three quatrains and a couplet-and rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. .. .4 three exceptions that Booth gives are 99 (fifteen lines), 126 (six couplets), and 145

Herbert Crashaw, and the Schola Cordis Tradition

Herbat GrashflM, and the Schoia Cordis Tradition by Albert C. Labriola The speaker in Shakespeare's sonnets sometimes refers to his heart as the place wherein the loved one is kept. To elaborate this concept, he employs or adapts various images. The loved one, for instance, is likened to a treasure closely guarded under lock and key. Or a picture of the loved one is painted or inscribed on the speaker's heart, which is likened to a tablet. Thus, he may compare himself to "the rich whose blessed key /Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure" (Sonnet 52), or within himself the speaker may view the "true image pictured" of the loved one (Sonnet 24). 1 Though it may be argued that images of the heart describe the relationship between the speaker and the loved one, it is more exact to remark that images reflect the speaker's changing perception of that relationship. Exactness is essential here, for in recounting the speaker's changing perception the sonnets articulate the fullness of his voice, including its tonal range and the variety of his attitudes. The two images I have cited in Shakespeare's sonnets — the loved one as treasure under lock and key and the picture imprinted on the speaker's heart — are commonplace in love poetry. Recurring in Petrarch's Canzonlere. they are likewise employed in English sonnets written under Petrarch's influence . Interestingly, they also appear in religious poetry, including that of George Herbert and Richard Crashaw. Like Shakespeare's Sonnet 52, Herbert's "The Bunch of Grapes" begins with an image of lock and key. In this case, however, the image reflects the speaker's awareness of some loss: "Joy, I did lock thee up: but some bad man / Hath let thee out again." 2 Two of Crashaw's poetic paraphrases of John 1 0: 7-9, the one in English ("I am the Doore") and the other in Latin (Ego »urn oatlum"), adapt the same image. The Latin paraphrase, in fact, develops a pun on the words for nails and keys: Etclavtclavea undlque et reaerant" ("And the nails as keys unlock you on all sides"). 3 Describing the Crucifixion or its sacramental celebration in the Eucharistie banquet, these poems by Herbert and Crashaw center on the redemptive effect of 13 Albert C. Labriola Christ's spilled and shared blood. Several other poems by Herbert and Crashaw describe the redemptive mystery by using the image of the crucified Christ painted or inscribed on the human heart. A comparison with secular poetry is again evident, poetry like Shakespeare's Sonnet 24 that uses the image of the inscribed heart to depict a loving relationship. If imagistic resemblances between secular and devotional poetry are this clearcut, the speakers' changing perceptions of their loving relationships are likewise comparable. In secular poetry the speaker is variously alienated from, punished by, longing for, or united with his beloved. When he perceives a change in relationship, his tone and attitude reflect it. In devotional poetry the speaker's relationships with God are likewise various. Within a single poem (Herbert's "The Collar," for instance) the speaker at first is rebelliosuly alienated from God, but by the very end of the poem his attitude and tone of voice dramatically change to deference, pliancy, and submissiveness . The larger cycle through which man passes in his changing relationships with God— temptation, sinning, alienation and rebelliousness, penance, atonement, regeneration, and sanctification — has its counterpart in secular poetry, not only in the sonnets and love lyrics but in romances, most notably Romance ofthe Roae. This parallelism of sacred and secular love characterizes emblem books written in the so-called achola cordl» tradition. Largely dependent on Continental prototypes, including Corleauamantlaacrum (ca. 1600) by Anton Wierix and Le coeur devot (1626) by Etienne Luzvic, Henry Hawkins' book The Devout Hart (1634) has cardiomorphic emblems showing Christ sweeping, cleaning, and preparing the human heart for habitation, consecrating it with a sprinkling of blood, wounding it with fiery darts and arrows, celebrating his marriage with the sanctified heart, and so forth. Several scholars, including Mario Praz and Rosemary Freeman, have traced the achola cordl» tradition in emblem books, Continental and...

Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa including Poems by His Heteronyms Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, as Well as Some of His English Sonnets and Selections from His Letters

Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa including Poems by His Heteronyms Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, as Well as Some of His English Sonnets and Selections from His Letters

The English Sonnet

The English Sonnet

Reviews

Journal Article Reviews Get access THE ENGLISH SONNET. W. Kenneth Richmond. Clearway Programmed Books, Methuen. 64 pp. 4s. 6d. ELT Journal, Volume XXII, Issue 2, January 1968, Pages 195–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/XXII.2.195 Published: 01 January 1968

Les Savants Ne Sont Pas Curieux

To the Editor:— In the April 12, 1965, issue ofThe Journal(192: 94) you reprinted a sonnet by Merrill Moore (not Merril) and gave his dates as (1903-). Unfortunately, Dr. Moore, whose sonnet begins Doctors must die, too..., died in 1957. According to his own diagnosis, Dr. Moore suffered from a compulsive addiction to the sonnet and wrote from two to five a day in his sonnetorium. The quality of many of his sonnets is such that he will be remembered in the history of the sonnet in English for something more than his remarkable prolificacy.

XLI. The Sonnets in Tottel's Miscellany

In Tottel's Miscellany there are 310 poems, including the thirty-nine added in the second edition of 1557. Of these 310, ninety-six are noted as by Wyatt, forty by Surrey, forty by Grimald, and 134 by “Vncertain auctours.” There are fifty-four sonnets in Tottel. Wyatt contributed twenty-seven, or exactly half. Surrey contributed fifteen; Grimald, three; the uncertain authors, nine. Rather more than one out of every six poems in the book is a sonnet. It is interesting that, among these fifty-four sonnets, fourteen different rime patterns are to be found. These constitute eloquent evidence of the mood of experimentation in which the English sonnet was conceived. It is a mistake to assume that Tottel contains only two types of sonnets, the Italian (or Petrarchian) and the English (or Shakespearian). Even if we define the first type loosely (and we must, when dealing with its early manifestation), there remain fifteen sonnets in the Miscellany which more or less defy classification. It is instructive to consider the various rime patterns in some detail. From them we may get, not only a suggestion of how the English sonnet evolved, but also a clue to the authorship of at least two sonnets by uncertain authors. A study of rime patterns is a narrow approach to the whole problem of sonnet technique, but, when applied to the English sonnet in its infancy, it has an unusual usefulness.

LII Mrs. Browning's Rhymes

For many years critics have been finding fault with Mrs. Browning's rhymes. Asserting that she “richly deserves the place generally accorded her as the foremost poetess of England,” that her Sonnets from' the Portuguese take “rank with Shakespeare's Sonnets and Rossetti's House of Life as one of the three great English sonnet cycles,” that “some of her social poems seem written in blood,” that she is at times “not only original but an equal of the greatest,” and that “her poem ‘The Great God Pan’ is almost perfect,” yet critics repeat the Victorian criticism of her rhymes. Saintsbury considers her “proficient in all the qualities which distinguish the poet from the prose-writer with the exception of ear for rhyme”; and this is what he says of these rhymes: “The dullness or falseness of her ear for consonance of sound was quite unparalleled, and she, with all the advantages of gentle birth, feminine sex, country breeding, and an almost scholarly education, confuses rhymes in a manner usually supposed to be limited to the lower class of cockneys.” Other critics have said her rhymes are “inadmissible,” “eccentric,” “illegitimate,” “slovenly false,” “vicious,” “feeble and commonplace,” “careless and perverse,” “painful,” “really shocking,” and that “few, if any, poets have sinned more grievously or frequently against the laws of metre and rhyme.”

The English Sonnet

The English Sonnet

A Newly Discovered American Sonnet Sequence

The American sonnet before the Civil War is not a rich field. Few of our literary men had written in this difficult and conventional form. Some, like James Gates Percival and William G. Simms, wrote poems of fourteen lines in such eccentric variations as to defy classification. A few, like Jones Very or Park Benjamin, hid an occasional fine sonnet among numerous negligible ones. Some, like David Humphreys and Washington Allston, achieved mere mixed echoes of English originals. Among the major poets before the War, Bryant wrote five and Lowell twenty-seven sonnets. Longfellow, whose great period of sonnet writing was yet to come, had written but nine sonnets in 1861. Compared with these poets, George Henry Boker stands alone, both for the quality and quantity of his work. By his contemporaries he was regarded as the greatest American sonnet writer. The Book of the Sonnet,1 a collection of American and English Sonnets, edited by Leigh Hunt and S. Adams Lee, is dedicated to Boker. Both in the text and introduction he is given more space than any other American. The editors' phrase, “such sonnets as those of Wordsworth in English and George Henry Boker in American literature” indicates the height of his contemporary reputation. The Philadelphia Press, December 22, 1881, tells the story of Boker's confusion, when as a young man, he attended a dinner addressed by Daniel Webster, who, in the midst of his discourse, acknowledged Boker's presence and recited his beautiful “Lear and Cordelia” from start to finish, to illustrate a point.