British Literature Unit 2: Chapter 3 Notes

influenced by new learning, particularly by content and features from classical texts and Continental works influenced by them (i.e. humanist education)

Renaissance poetry

a kind of writing that uses shepherds and shepherdesses in leisure activities as its basic material

pastoral mode

typically brief, personal, and emotional, presenting the speaker’s thoughts and feelings from his own perspective

Lyric poems

a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter

originally an Italian form of verse, popularized by Petrarch, an Italian poet

sonnet

came into being through poets such as John Donee. It has a more realistic viewpoint and more natural use of sounds and syntax, as well as more intellectually vigorous content. It is known for its cleverness of language, commonly featuring puns, paradoxes, and metaphors, particular the metaphysical conceit (an elaborate metaphor that compares two unrelated things, i.e. comparing a husband and wife’s souls to the two points on a compass)

Metaphysical poetry

an elaborate metaphor that compares two unrelated things, i.e. comparing a husband and wife’s souls to the two points on a compass

metaphysical conceit

wrote the first English imitations of Petrarch’s poems

Sir Thomas Wyatt

the Earl of Surrey, developed the English sonnets technical aspects

Henry Howard

a rhythmic pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in a line of poetry (i.e. iambic pentameter)

Meter

the pattern of rhyming sounds that appear at the ends of lines (each identified with letters)

Rhyme Scheme

ten-syllable lines consisting of five iambic feet, an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable

Iambic pentameter

1. Contains an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines)  

2. The last two lines don’t rhyme

Italian Sonnet

1. Contains three quatrains (four lines) and a couplet (two lines) 

2. The last two lines rhyme

English Sonnet

• Author is Sir Thomas Wyatt 

• The speaker is choosing learning over love 

• The speaker is giving up on love because he is too old 

• The speaker is talking to Cupid which is the god of love

Farewell, Love and thy Laws Forever

Author is Sir Philip Sidney. He is talking to the moon because the sun and stars are joyful, but the moon is sad. He feels like he missed out on love so he relates to the moon

Sonnet 31

• Author is Sir Philip Sidney. The love he feels for Stella helps him win his race. He compares Stella to a star. 

“Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face sent forth the beams, which made so fair my race.”

Sonnet 41

• Author is Edmund Spenser. He wants to show Godly love.

“And grant we, for whom thou didst die, and Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin may love forever in felicity!”

Sonnet 68

• Author is Edmund Spenser. He is going to write the name of his love in the sky because when he wrote her name in the sand, it kept washing away. 

“My verse your virtues rarely shall eternize, and in the heavens write your glorious name.”

Sonnet 75

• Author is William Shakespeare. He is talking about autumn and the decay of old age. He says that if other people know he is going to die soon, then they will have a stronger love for them. Mortality makes love more precious. 

“This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Sonnet 73

• Author is William Shakespeare. If you truly love someone, you are not going to try to change them. Love is constant. 

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

Sonnet 116

Author is William Shakespeare. He thinks that because he is honest about his love, his love is rare.

Sonnet 130

• Attended King’s school and Cambridge on a scholarship 

• Speculated to have served as a spy 

• First play Tamburlaine revolutionized English drama

• His best known play Dr. Faustus is considered a masterpiece of English drama 

• Strong evidence he collaborated with Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe

• Author is Christopher Marlowe 

• He offered his love to be his mistress and live with him, but not marry him. 

• “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove” 

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

• Fought in support of the Huguenots in France 

• Was knighted and given land in Ireland; appointed Captain of the Queen’s Guard 

• Organized expeditions to the New World 

• Fell out of favor with the crown and was beheaded under King James 

Sir Walter Raleigh

takes as its basic materials shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in leisurely activities

Pastoral Poem

Latin for “Seize the day”; a philosophy that tells people to make the most of life while they can

Carpe Diem

repetition of initial consonant sounds

Alliteration

• Author is Sir Walter Raleigh 

• He is criticizing temporary pleasure.

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

• One of seventeenth-century England’s leading poets and its foremost preacher 

• Converted to the Anglican Church 

• Most poems published after he died 

• Relatively unknown as a poet until T.S. Eliot drew attention to him in the 1920s

John Donne

extended metaphors that draw a parallel between highly dissimilar objects or concepts

Conceit

• Author is John Donne

• He says that women are not constant in love 

• “Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me all strange wonders that befell thee, and swear, no where lives a woman true, and fair.”

Song

• Author is John Donne 

• He says that he and his love are joined together like two points on a compass

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

• Author is John Donne 

• He won’t be free until God breaks his will. 

• Complete submission to God = true freedom 

• “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.”

Holy Sonnet 14

• Poems demonstrate both sophisticated artistry and spiritual fervor 

• Became public orator of Cambridge University 

• Entered the Anglican ministry as a rector and died three years later 

• Wrote perhaps the finest devotional poetry in English

George Herbert

• Author is George Herbert 

• He says that God gave us all these blessings and He poured them out on us, but the one thing He didn't give us peace/rest of the soul because we need to go to God for peace and rest. 

• “Let him be rich and weary, that at least, if goodness lead him not, yet weariness may toss him to my breast.”

The Pulley

• England’s first poet Laureate 

• First English author to publish his own work 

• Became popular for his satiric drama 

• Mentored a group of younger poets, the Cavalier poets 

• Awarded a lifetime pension by King James I

Ben Johnson

the giving of personal characteristics to something that is not a person

Personification

the addressing of something non human (or an absent person) as if they were able to reply

Apostrophe

a type of short poem from classical poetry that dealt with one subject and was noted for its wit, pithiness, and balanced, polished style

Epigram

a poem lamenting a death (usually of a loved one) or of death and loss in general

Elegy

• Author is Ben Johnson 

• A love poem for a woman. He sent her flowers because he said that they would never wilt because of her presents. 

• Uses hyperbole to compliment her

Song to Celia

• Author is Ben Johnson 

• He thinks poetry needs to be simple and straightforward to understand it. 

• Compares a poem that is simple to a simple woman

“Then all the adulteries of art: they strike mine eyes, but not my heart.”

Still to be Neat

• Author is Ben Johnson 

• An example of an elegy because he is mourning his son who died at the age of 7. 

• He loved his son very much which is why it hurt him so much

On My First Son