Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University
Poetry is generally still an adjunct
profession in
the Renaissance, not a primary occupation. The Renaissance poet
still operates under the medieval notion that art is a craft.
Poetry is somewhat mingled with politics since one probably needs
a patron and since publishing is often overseen by bureaus, which
always means trouble.
Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered "the first
writer of the Renaissance." Although his Italian sonnets
rely on courtly love conventions, the Renaissance sees a sort
of codification of the material and certainly of the form.
Petrarchan love conventions:
she often has a classical name like Stella or Delia.
the poet-lover praises his mistress, the object and
image of Love, with praise for her superlative qualities using
descriptions of beauty supplied by Petrarch: "golden hair,"
"ivory breast," "ruby lips."
the poet employs contradictory and oxymoronic phrases
and images: freezing and burning, binding freedom (see Petrarch's #134).
the poet-lover dwells only on the subjective experience,
hence on the misery of being in love: thus the occasional appearance
of the conventional invocation to sleep to allay the pain (insomnia
poems).
the poet disclaims credit for poetic merits: the
inspiration of his mistress is what makes the poetry good, he
claims.
the poet promises to protect the youth of his lady
and his own love against time (through the immortalizing poetry
itself).
The Italian sonnet functions as an act of intuition
complete in itself, seeking to crystalize a tender state of being.
The poet seems continuously at work on his personal drama, recording
all the subtle modulations of feeling. It is said that the self-centered
quality of this kind of work is new. But the focus on the subjective
state and of the suffering self as opposed to the lady supposedly
at the heart of the matter is all part of courtly love poetry
and to be found repeatedly in medieval poetry and lyrics. Perhaps
the degree of precision in the anatomy of the love process can
be claimed as new to the Renaissance. And characteristically Renaissance
is the celebration of that attraction to mortal beauty and earthly
values as sublime.
As Petrarchan conventions became established, a simultaneous
inclination to sound original emerged. Later sonnet developments
included:
an emphasis in mode upon persuasive reasoning.
the inclusion of physical love with the platonic.
an increased self-consciousness about the act of composing itself (love
poetry about love poetry).
Sir Thomas Wyatt (a diplomat, 1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
(1517-1547, when he was beheaded) early in the 1500s introduced the
Petrarchan sonnet to England, sometimes translating Petrarch and
sometimes displaying a more
original English temperament. Surrey established the English sonnet
form (ababcdcdefefgg, also known as the Shakespearean sonnet
form) since the English language simply cannot sustain the Italian
rhyme scheme of abba abba etc.; we don't have as easy a
time rhyming as do romance languages. Surrey was an uncle of Edward
de Vere, the prime contender in the debate about Shakespeare's
identity.
Edmund Spenser later in the century offered some
technical innovations in the form. His sonnet cycle, Amoretti
("little love poems") seems to be devoted to his courtship
of the woman who became his second wife in 1594. The Spenserian
archaism (fake "olde tyme" spelling) is rather annoying.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) sparked the English
sonnet fad. His sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella traces
the love relationship through its stages. Although written in
1582 and circulating privately, it was not published until 1591
at which point it inaugurated the sonnet vogue with its standard
themes: insistence on originality and disclaimers of conventionality,
the lady's coldness, the poet's despair, the lady's beauties,
invocations to sleep, the immortality of the verse. Sidney often
addresses the issue of composition -- how not to be self-conscious
and phony -- so we get from him lots of love poetry about love
poetry.
For the Elizabethans, "sonnet" referred
to any short poem. What we call sonnets (the rhetorically ornate
14 lines of iambic pentameter with the elaborate rhyme scheme)
they called "quatorzains."
Roughly 1200 sonnets survive in print from the Elizabethan 1590s. Among
the deservedly big names in sonnet cycles are Samuel Daniel
(Delia) and Michael Drayton (Idea). The fad declined
rapidly and sonnets were no longer the hip thing after the 1590s.
the poet (male) addresses a lady (corresponding to Petrarch's Laura).
a replacement of the Petrarchan metaphor (expressing the unity of all
things) with a simile drawn from common observation and direct
perception.
Otis, William Bradley, and Morriss H. Needleman. An Outline History of English Literature: Volume I. NY: Barnes and Noble, 1967.
Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare: A Life in Drama. NY: W.W. Norton and Co., 1995.