1st lecture Intro to Early Modern Lit L3 S5

When and what was the period recalled as the age of Shakespeare?

Renaissance or Early Modern Period (XVI-XVIIth )

What is a sonnet?

A 14 line-poem with contraints (to display rhetorical ability and to develop poetic creativty)

What is an Italian sonnet? + example

ABBA ABBA CDE CDE (2 quatrains, 2 tercets)

→ Petrarch, rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta

What is an English Sonnet?+ example

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (3 quatrains, 1 couplet)

→ Shakespeare’ Sonnets, 18

What is the other name of the English Sonnet and who invented it?

• The Skakespearian sonnet

• invented by Henry Howard

What is a Scottish Sonnet? and what is its another name? + example

ABAB BCBC CDCD EE (3 quatrains, 1 couplet)

→ also called Spencerian sonnet but didn’t invent it

→ Edmond Spencer, Amoretti

What does “stanza” mean?

room in italian

How is called the end of the 8th line?

A volta or a turn

What is a volta?

change of subject, usually around the 9th line

what is the role of the final couplet?

• a conclusion/ a twist

• close to the epigram

What is an epigram?

a short, witty pun (can be satirical)

What is most of the time the metrical pattern of sonnets?

decasyllabic iambic pentameter

How can be the sonnet classified?

• the lyric mode

• elegiac poetry

• epideictic/encomiastic poetry

What is the lyric mode?

Antiquity poems: poems with lyre

Sonnets: little song but =/ always sang

Applies also to the Romantic period (expression of feelings)

what is the elegiac poetry?

• common points with the genre of the complaint

• poems expressing sadness, mourning, etc

what is Epideictic/Encomiastic poetry?

praise someone (a beloved, the K or the Q,etc)

What are the most frequent poetic devices in the sonnet?

Praise: metaphors, similes, hyperboles, amplifications, hypotyposis, blazon

Complaint: metaphors, similies, hyperbolesn enumeration, antithesis, oxymorons

Conceit: far-stretched metaphors, particular use of poetic devices, strinking metaphors organising the sonnet

Tropes or topoi: a game of combinations

What is a hypotyposis?

lifelike description of a scene

Give an exemple of a Conceit

John Dohn that compare his wife with a compass top evoke the distance in a relationship. 

Love as a perfection = the leg of the compass away

What is a blazon?

description of body parts