Looking ahead
Plans for remaining weeks in the quarter
Handouts
Dr. Faustus Review
Parodic Structure
How are we to
understand Faustus?
Sidney
Astrophil and Stella
Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich
Sonnet
Italian
Sonnet cycle—first recognizable one in English
108 sonnets and 11 songs
Way of looking at a collection of sonnets rather than a
“plot”
Neoplatonism
“Divine Beauty” through an “earthly lover”
“material world is a path to the spiritual world,
rather than an obstacle to or diversion from
it”
(Murfin and Ray, 292)
Petrarchanism--Neoplatonism
Petrarch—14th c. Italian poet, Francesco
Petrarca
Sonnet form plus distinctive use of:
Imagery
Figures of speech
Formal style
Petrarchan conceit (exaggerated portrait of lady’s
beauty and cruelty)
Hyperbole
Oxymoron
Petrarchanism/Neoplatonism
Sidney engages this poetic tradition, but also
questions it
Sonnet form
14 lines rhymed iambic pentameter
2 forms for Sidney/Shakespeare
Italian/Petrarchan
English/Shakespearean
Mapping a sonnet
Considering scansion
Who will in fairest booke of nature know
How virtue may best lodged in beauty be,
Let him but learn of love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty
In-class scansion
Try the next two lines
Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly,
That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.
Sonnet 71
“Give me some food”
Playing with the Neoplatonic tradition
Form matters
Why choose a sonnet?
What is the connection between form and
meaning?
Sonnet 1
Look in thy heart and write
Sonnet is about love, but also about writing
and style, about “invention”
Some elements to know: alexandrine (iambic
hexameter), “fain” (l. 1), childbirth metaphor,
How does the poem flow?
Does the lady get to speak?
Sonnet 31
Personification of the Moon
Speaker standing outside the courtly world
Opening monosyllables and repetitions
Sonnet 9
Petrarchan convention (see also sonnet 6)
“Rich”
Penelope Rich, an idealized love, Queen
Elizabeth?
New classes Winter quarter only
LTEN 110 and 112
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Form: 3 Quatrains/Couplet
abab cdcd efef gg
The sonnet vogue
Shakespeare as icon and the perils of
autobio-crit.
Is this a sonnet cycle?
The Figures of the Sonnets
The Young Man
The Rival Poet
The Dark Lady
The Young Man
Who is the Young Man?
What are the implications of autobiographical
criticism?
The Young Man
Many references to time
Sonnet 3
Sonnet 19
Sonnet 55
Sonnet 65
Tomb of Mary and Elizabeth
Poetic form
Sonnet 129
The Dark Lady
Sonnet 130
Sonnet 127
Often read in relation to Petrarchan
convention
The Dark Lady
Kim Hall, Things of Darkness
The Defence of Poesy
Three types of poets p. 958
Vates—Prophets
Philosophical Poets
“Right” poets—”to teach and delight”
(echo of Chaucer’s “sentence and solaas?)
Poetry as imaginative literature
Poet as “maker” (956)
Poetry improves humanity
Delivering a golden world (957)
Cyrus (957)
Erected wit/infected will (957)
Poetry draws us to perfection (neoplatonic)
(959)
Architectonike (960)
Charges Against Poetry
P. 967
Waste of time
Mother of lies
Nurse of abuse
Sidney’s response
“No learning is so good as that which
teacheth and moveth to virtue” (967)
“of all writers under the sun the poet is the
least liar” (967)
Neil Gaiman
“telling lies to tell the truth”
What makes the canon?