Petrified Petrarch Essay - 1403 Words

Petrified Petrarch Two hundred years had passed between the sonnets of Petrarch and the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As a form and structure for poetic life, the sonnet had grown hard. Fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter remained pregnant with possibilities and vitality, but must the sense turn after the octave and resolve in the sestet? Love remained in some ways inexpressible without this basic verse form, but something wasn’t right. Too many rose red lips and too much snow white skin belonging to unattainable lovers did not communicate the prevailing amorous imagination. The conventions were a little too conventional. The metaphors were gone somewhat stale. The Reformation had intervened between the Italian Renaissance and†¦show more content†¦One reads in Wyatt’s sonnets about some justice in love; there is more than unrequited love and enduring adoration and misery. His male lover expresses a desire to break out of his amorous prison. This is an anti-Petrarchan theme. This is the opposite of the hopelessly adoring pose of the enslaved Petrarchan lover. The opening sonnet in Astrophel and Stella begins Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,/ That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain- (Longman 987). Sidney begins in imitation of Petrarch in three ways. The poet’s beloved is unkind; so he is plunged into despair. Sidney has also adopted Petrarch’s habit of self-scrutiny. Thirdly the thought changes at the end of the eighth line. The octave tells of the poet’s futile efforts to write a poem; the sestet discloses why he had been unsuccessful. The poet looks to the Petrarchan tradition for inspiration to cure his writer’s block. Oft turning other’s leaves, to see if thence would flow/ Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain (7-8). But this method is unproductive because it lacks the support of imagination. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay (9). Sidney is employing the new English sonnet form developed by Surrey. This new structural scheme divides the poem into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg, is easier and more obvious to the ear. This structure is moreShow MoreRelatedEssay about Comparison of Stone Trees and Pangs Of Love656 Words   |  3 Pagesto the life of a tree in showing compassion and the attitudes of the characters and their lives and environment. The narrator wants to immobilize her love for her husband, similar to stone trees, once beautiful and alive but now petrified and preserved forever their stone barkà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦...ancient among the young stones (lines 151-155). Her husband now lives on through his son who looks and behaves exactly like him when he was alive, this way her husband