Middle Ages World View

1
Middle Ages World View

• All books must be written by hand
• A lot of people are still illiterate
• America doesnt exist
• The sun and all other planets revolve around the
  Earth
• The earth is flat
• England is centuries behind other countries,
  culturally/developmentally/politically

2
The English Renaissance and the Sonnet

• Marcel, English Language AP

3
RENAISSANCE!!!

• In 1476 an entrepreneur named William Caxton
  introduced the newly-invented printing press to
  England.
• In 1485 Henry Tudor defeated King Richard III at
  the battle of Bosworth Field and became King
  Henry VII, founder of the Tudor line of English
  monarchs.
• In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
• In 1512 the astronomer Copernicus defied ancient
  wisdom and announced that the earth and other
  planets revolve around the sun.

4
Changing Times

• In 1517 Martin Luther began the split with Rome
  that led to the Protestant
  Reformation
• in 1534 King Henry VIII, vexed by the Pope's
  refusal to let him divorce his first wife
  (Catherine of Aragon), declared himself Supreme
  Head of the English church. (Divorced, beheaded,
  died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.)
• Meanwhile, an intellectual and artistic movement
  known as the "Renaissance" had been spreading
  north from Italy and, early in the sixteenth
  century, reached England.
• What is the rebirth?

5
Changing Times

• Literacy improved - people were encouraged to
  learn to read, and various translators turned
  classic texts, and more importantly, the Bible
  into English. This process of translation
  culminated in the King James Bible of 1611.

6
Changing Times

• Yet things were not all grim. Under Elizabeth
  (who ruled from 1558-1603), England began to
  think of itself as something of a world power.
  Not only did the Spanish Armada, sent to crush
  England, end in disaster for Spain in 1588, but
  the English were successfully competing with
  Spanish ships on the high seas and in the New
  World.

7
Linguistically Speaking

• And, after four hundred years of rapid change,
  the English language began to stabilize.
  Linguistic historians call the period after 1500
  "Modern English," and anyone comparing the
  language of Chaucer and the language of
  Shakespeare can see why.
• By the second half of the sixteenth century, many
  English writers began to think that English
  literature could compete with even the great
  writers of antiquity. They were right. The years
  between about 1580 and 1620 mark an amazing
  efflorescence, or golden age, of English
  literature.

8
Early Modern English

• Chaucer vs. Shakespeare .170 vs. .513
• The words are our words. The grammar is our
  grammar, except for the occasional use of -th
  instead of -s to show the third person present of
  verbs "lieth" rather than our "lies."
• In short, we have now reached the period of
  Modern English. The first part of this
  period--from about 1500-1650 - we call "early
  modern," but what matters is that in most
  fundamental respects it is our language.

9
Early Modern English

• What has changed since Chaucer? The pronunciation
  has become more like ours (that Great Vowel
  Shift) and the grammar has continued to grow
  simpler. And what changes during this period is,
  first of all, that more and more big words come
  into the language from Latin and Greek.
• Thats why in studying literature were stuck
  with words like "simile," "metaphor," "iambic
  pentameter," "lyric," "tragedy"--these words
  already existed in the critical writings in Greek
  and Latin, and it seemed easier to import them
  than to come up with new words in English.

10
Early Modern English

• The second big change involves spelling. Up
  through the sixteenth century there was no fixed,
  right way to spell a word the same person might
  spell the same word "clowdie," "cloudie,"
  "clowdy," "cloudye," etc. There were limits to
  the chaos (you wont find "kludi," or
  "chlaothyy").
• The result was a spelling system full of letters
  that were no longer pronounced ("knight," for
  example) a delight for historians of the
  language, a lasting source of misery for children
  trying to learn how to spell English. But by 1700
  the system was pretty much in place. After that,
  people were expected to spell their words in the
  single "right" way.

11
Early Modern English

• No dictionaries, grammar books.
• The result is that throughout this whole period,
  people felt as if they controlled the language.
  If they needed a word, they made one up, or
  borrowed one, or changed the meaning of an
  existing word. There was no one to tell them that
  they were doing something wrong. No one exploited
  this freedom more than Shakespeare.
• The eighteenth century introduced dictionaries
  and grammar rules to curb this freedom.

12
The Sonnet

• It seems odd that the first real sign of the
  Renaissance in English literature should come in
  the guise of the sonnet, which had been developed
  in Italy in the thirteenth century and
  popularized by the Italian poet Petrarch a
  century later.
• Joint credit for introducing the sonnet into
  English is usually given to Sir Thomas Wyatt
  (1503-1542) and his younger friend, the Earl of
  Surrey (1517-1547). Both were aristocrats who led
  rather wild, dangerous, and brief lives.

13
The Sonnet

• These two not only introduced the sonnet as a
  form. They set the Petrarchan tone that most
  subsequent English sonnets would take a lovesick
  man seeking to win the affection of a
  cold-hearted woman and describing in verse the
  complicated mixture of bliss and misery caused by
  this passionate and unrequited love.
• They also established the sonnet as an
  aristocratic genre. According to the doctrines of
  courtly love inherited from medieval literature,
  only members of the upper classes were capable of
  true love (it required leisure, refinement, etc.).

14
Sonnets

• Sonnet - a lyric poem with fourteen rhyming lines
  (usually in iambic pentameter).
• Sonneto is little song in Italian.

15
Sonnet 34 (page 435)
Wide Guide Way Astray Ray Dismay Overcast
Plast Past Last Life Grief Comfortless Pensiveness

• Lyke as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde, 
• By conduct of some star doth make her way, 
• When as a storme hath dimd her trusty guyde, 
• Out of her course doth wander far astray.
• So I whose star, that wont with her bright ray, 
• Me to direct, with cloudes is overcast,
• Doe wander now, in darknesse and dismay, 
• Through hidden perils round about me plast.
• Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past, 
• My Helice the lodestar of my lyfe
• Will shine again, and looke on me at last, 
• With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
• Till then I wander carefull comfortlesse,
• In secret sorrow and sad pensivenesse.

A B A B B C B C C D C D E E
Q1 Q2 Q3 Couplet
16
Types of Sonnets

• Petrarchan - An octave and a sestet
• Rhyme scheme abbaabba, then a varying scheme
  (often cdcdcd)
• Spenserian - Three quatrains and a couplet
• abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee
• Shakespearean - Three quatrains and a couplet
• abab, cdcd, efef, gg

17
Sir Philip Sidney

• It was Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence,
  Astrophil and Stella, really set off the boom in
  sonnet sequences. Sidney (1554-1586) was regarded
  as the ideal Elizabethan courtier. - Page 452,
  sonnet 1
• Sidney wrote a large numbers of sonnets, each
  saying essentially the same thing (I love
  Stella), yet each saying it in a new way.

18
Sir Philip Sidney

• This requires an ingenious use of what came to be
  known as conceits (governing metaphors or images)
• Conceit in literature, fanciful or unusual image
  in which apparently dissimilar things are shown
  to have a relationship.
• The Elizabethan poets were fond of Petrarchan
  conceits, which were conventional comparisons,
  imitated from the love songs of Petrarch, in
  which the beloved was compared to a flower, a
  garden, or the like.
• The result was a habit of using language with
  great metaphorical intensity (Shakespeare).

19
Edmund Spenser

• Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) was born two years
  before Sidney. His two primary models seem to
  have been Chaucer and Virgil.
• Virgil had begun his career writing a set of
  pastoral poems, the Eclogues. Pastoral literature
  (named for the Latin word for "shepherd") gained
  popularity it dealt with shepherds and
  shepherdesses living an uncluttered, innocent
  life in the countryside. Why would this gain
  popularity?

20
Edmund Spenser

• Spenser's big work was The Faerie Queene, his
  attempt to win the Match Virgil contest with a
  massive English epic and at the same time gain
  the favor of Queen Elizabeth.
• Each book focuses on the adventures of a
  different knight, the allegorical embodiment of a
  particular virtue Holiness, Temperance,
  Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesy. His
  style is lush, leisurely, pictorial, full of
  poetic sound effects.

21
Edmund Spenser

• Lets look at his sonnets on page 435
• What is the (obvious) governing metaphor?
• Theme?
• What is the rhyme scheme?
• What are the metrical variations?

22
The Sonnet - Shakespeare

• Shakespeare wrote the most famous sonnet sequence
  in English, but by the time his collection was
  published (1609), love sonnets had largely gone
  out of style people generally assume that
  Shakespeare actually wrote most of his in the
  early 1590s, during the boom years.
• Critics have long bickered over how much
  biographical content we can find in the events
  and characters hinted at in the sonnets--the Fair
  Friend, the Rival Poet, the notorious Dark Lady
  with her reeking breath and two-timing ways. But
  even taken out of context (as they usually are)
  they contain some of the most resonant poetry in
  the English language.

23
The Sonnet - Shakespeare

• First 126 Fair Friend
• 1-17 urge the young man to marry and have
  self-preserving child
• 21-39 explores various aspects of being in love
• 40-42 hint at intrusion of Dark Lady in lives
  of two men
• 67-70 friend accused of unspecific sexual fault
• 78-86 youth shows favor to rival poet
• 92-98 absence of youth making spring seem like
  winter
• 116-126 miscellaneous about fair friend
• Then, the Dark Lady sonnets
• 127 152 Dark Lady sonnets
• Conscous repudiation of courtly
  tradition/conventions
• Feeling for her finer than lust, cruder than
  love

24
The Sonnet - Shakespeare

• Shakespeares sonnet cycle is unlike any other,
  as he subverts traditional expectations and
  notions
• Sense of Elizabethan duality
• Puritans (earthly ambition is BS)
• Zest for life, thirst for beauty vs. a look to
  the past
• Optimism exuberance vs. anxiety ambivalence
• Patriarchal society yet Elizabeth is in charge

25
Sonnet 97 page 505
A B A B C D C D E F E F G G

• HOW like a winter hath my absence been  
• From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!  
• What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
   
• What old Decembers bareness every where!  
• And yet this time removd was summers time
           
• The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,  
• Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,  
• Like widowd wombs after their lords decease  
• Yet this abundant issue seemd to me  
• But hope of orphans and unfatherd fruit   
• For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,  
• And, thou away, the very birds are mute    
• Or, if they sing, tis with so dull a cheer
• That leaves look pale, dreading the winters
  near.  

Q1 Q2 Q3 C
26
Sonnet 97 page 1036
A B A B C D C D E F E F G G

• HOW like a winter hath my absence been  
• From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!  
• What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
   
• What old Decembers bareness every where!  
• And yet this time removd was summers time
           
• The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,  
• Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,  
• Like widowd wombs after their lords decease  
• Yet this abundant issue seemd to me  
• But hope of orphans and unfatherd fruit   
• For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,  
• And, thou away, the very birds are mute    
• Or, if they sing, tis with so dull a cheer
• That leaves look pale, dreading the winters
  near.  

• HOW like a winter hath my absence been  
• From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!  
• What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
   
• What old Decembers bareness every where!  
• And yet this time removd was summers time
          
• The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,  
• Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,  
• Like widowd wombs after their lords decease  
• Yet this abundant issue seemd to me  
• But hope of orphans and unfatherd fruit   
• For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,  
• And, thou away, the very birds are mute    
• Or, if they sing, tis with so dull a cheer
• That leaves look pale, dreading the winters
  near.  

Q1 Q2 Q3 C
27
Sonnet 116

• LET me not to the marriage of true minds 
• Admit impediments. Love is not love 
• Which alters when it alteration finds, 
• Or bends with the remover to remove 
• O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,          5
• That looks on tempests and is never shaken 
• It is the star to every wandering bark, 
• Whose worths unknown, although his height be
  taken. 
• Love s not Times fool, though rosy lips and
  cheeks 
• Within his bending sickles compass come   10
• Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
• But bears it out even to the edge of doom.   
• If this be error, and upon me provd,   
• I never writ, nor no man ever lovd. 

28
Sonnet 130 in reply to typical love sonnet
(fictional examplethis is not Shakespeare)

• My mistress eyes are brilliant as the sun,
• And corals colour matches her lips red
• Her snow breasts are like to others none,
• And golden wires ornament her head.
• A bed of damask roses, red and white,
• I find within the confines of her cheeks,
• And perfumes self, conferring all delight,
• Breathes in the breath that from my mistress
  reeks.
• I love to hear her speak, and well I know
• That only music hath such pleasing sound
• In walking she doth like a goddess go,
• Her dainty feet scarce printing on the gourd.
• In all, by heaven I think my love as rare
• As any she conceived for compare.

29
Sonnet 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,          5
• 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   10
• 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.

30
Sonnets

• Pay attention to the meter
• The rhyme scheme
• The rhyming couplets will likely tell you what
  the theme of the poem will be.
• T Title, Thought and Theme
• I Imagery and Figurative Language
• M Music and Sound
• E Emotion (expressed/experienced)

31
Sonnet 18

• SHALL I compare thee to a summers day? 
• Thou art more lovely and more temperate 
• Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
• And summers lease hath all too short a date 
• Sometime too hot the eye of heaven
  shines,          5
• And often is his gold complexion dimmd 
• And every fair from fair sometime declines, 
• By chance, or natures changing course
  untrimmd 
• But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 
• Nor lose possession of that fair thou
  owst,   10
• Nor shall death brag thou wanderst in his
  shade, 
• When in eternal lines to time thou growst   
• So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,   
• So long lives this, and this gives life to
  thee. 

32
Sonnet 29

• WHEN in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes 
• I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
• And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
• And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
• Wishing me like to one more rich in
  hope,          5
• Featurd like him, like him with friends
  possessd, 
• Desiring this mans art, and that mans scope, 
• With what I most enjoy contented least 
• Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
• Haply I think on thee,and then my state,   10
• Like to the lark at break of day arising 
• From sullen earth, sings hymns at heavens
  gate   
• For thy sweet love rememberd such wealth
  brings   
• That then I scorn to change my state with
  kings. 

33
Sonnet 30

• WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
• I summon up remembrance of things past, 
• I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 
• And with old woes new wail my dear times waste 
• Then can I drown an eye, unusd to
  flow,          5
• For precious friends hid in deaths dateless
  night, 
• And weep afresh loves long since cancelld woe, 
• And moan the expense of many a vanishd sight 
• Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 
• And heavily from woe to woe tell oer   10
• The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 
• Which I new pay as if not paid before.   
• But if the while I think on thee, dear
  friend,   
• All losses are restord and sorrows end. 

34
Sonnet 71

• NO longer mourn for me when I am dead 
• Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
• Give warning to the world that I am fled 
• From this vile world, with vilest worms to
  dwell 
• Nay, if you read this line, remember
  not          5
• The hand that writ it for I love you so, 
• That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, 
• If thinking on me then should make you woe. 
• O! if, I say, you look upon this verse, 
• When I perhaps compounded am with clay,   10
• Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, 
• But let your love even with my life decay   
• Lest the wise world should look into your
  moan,   
• And mock you with me after I am gone. 

35
Sonnet 138

• When my love swears that she is made of truth
• I do believe her, though I know she lies,
• That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
• Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
• Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
• Although she knows my days are past the best,
• Simply I credit her false speaking tongue
• On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
• But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
• And wherefore say not I that I am old?
• O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
• And age in love loves not to have years told
• Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
• And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

36
The Sonnet

• The later career of the sonnet is worth
  considering. In the earlier seventeenth century,
  Ben Jonson, the great proponent of
  "neoclassicism," scornfully rejects the sonnet
  form entirely, while John Donne, the great
  "metaphysical," rejects the traditional love
  sonnet and addresses his "Holy Sonnets" to God.
• In 1621 Lady Mary Wroth, Sidney's niece,
  published the only sonnet sequence of the period
  written by (and from the perspective of) a
  woman--a refreshing change from all those whining
  men.
• Milton, the giant peak marking the end of the
  Renaissance, writes occasional sonnets on
  assorted themes, none remotely Petrarchan. After
  Milton, the sonnet disappears for a century and a
  half, to be resurrected by the Romantic poets in
  the early nineteenth century.

37
Sonnet 129

• The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is
  lust in action and till action, lust Is
  perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
  Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, Past
  reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason
  hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to
  make the taker mad Mad in pursuit and in
  possession so Had, having, and in quest to
  have, extreme A bliss in proof, and proved, a
  very woe Before, a joy proposed behind, a
  dream. All this the world well knows yet none
  knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to
  this hell.