Elizabethan EraPoetry Unit1485-1625

Vocabulary

• Church of England

• Puritan

• Renaissance

• Sonnet– Petrarchan– Shakespearean– Spenserian

• Iambic foot• monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter,

pentameter, hexameter• Octave• Sestet• Quatrain• Couplet• Conceit• Stock devices• Oxymoron

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

• Allusion

• Apostrophe

• Rhyme scheme

• Rhythm

• Scansion

• Bound verse• Polyrhythmic/free verse• Blank verse• Forced rhyme• Carpe diem• Archaism• Sonnets (Petrarchan, Shakespearean,

Spenserian)• Pastoral/idyll lyrics

So long Middle English Period…hello Elizabethan Period

What happened during the Elizabethan Era?– Lots of political upheaval (wars between

countries)– Lots of religious upheaval (the beginning of

Puritanism)– Change in the economics (new merchant class)– Cultural changes (influences of the

Renaissance)

The Social Ladder of the Elizabethan Era

• Monarchs (king/queen)• Nobles, knights (wealthy, but sometimes only in title!) • Clergy• Merchants (the people who bought and sold goods for

profit) – Explorations/discoveries of new lands and seaways-

expanded commerce/trade.– England became a great power in world-wide

seafaring trade.– The power in the state was shifting from the landed

aristocracy to the merchant/middle class.

• Peasants/paupers– Still not a pleasant life to live!

• Squalor living conditions• Bubonic plague• Vagabonds, laborers, child labor• Poor relief

Let’s take a closer look at politics and religion …

• Henry VII

• Took the throne in 1485 (ending the Wars of the Roses)

• Took power away from the feudal barons…goodbye feudal system!

• Henry VIII

• ascended to the throne in1509 (chop…chop…chop…divorce-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived!)

• Successfully challenged the Pope’s authority over the country• Broke from the Roman Catholic Church• 1535- Established the independent Church of

England (with himself as the Head!)

Just so you know…Around the same time as Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church,

religious unrest was spreading throughout Europe. Did you ever hear of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses? This was a catalyst to the Protestant Reformation- a schism in the

Roman Catholic church.

Protestant Reformation:– Started as a way to reform the Catholic Church– Some did not like the teaching and sale of indulgences, simony,

Mariology (devotion to Mary), devotion to the saints, clerical celibacy, authority of the Pope, etc.

– Some saw these as corruption of the church

Troubled times

• Edward VI (1547-1553) strong Protestant

• Mary I (1553-1558) tried to turn the people back to Catholicism by a series of bloody executions.

– “Bloody Mary”– Locked her sister into the Tower of London– Can you say “crazy”?!

Troubled times turn into good times…

• Elizabeth I (Good Queen Bess) took the throne.– Got England out of debt– Stopped wars with Spain– Sponsored the arts– This is whom the era is named after

– Worked out a compromise on religion:

Church of England kept some Catholic doctrine and ritual, but remained separate and independent.

BUT-this did not suit some extreme Protestants and they wanted to “purify” the C of E from Catholic influences. These extremists were called Puritans.

Puritans

• Encouraged direct personal religious experience with God (no middle-men priests, archbishops, etc.)

• Followed strict moral conduct • Held simple worship services (no flashy

indulgences, etc.)• Believed that Christianity should be taken

as the focus of human existence…you are here to serve God—NOT to have fun!

Cultural Change

• However, Puritans were not the only “reformers” of the time…

• Another influence on England’s religion and culture was the Renaissance.

• English scholars visited Italy & brought back the “spirit of the Renaissance”…

In this corner we have the Humanists, and in the far corner…the Puritans!

• Man-centered vs. God-centered– Renaissance emphasized human potential, NOT

God’s power.

• Individual authority vs. Submitting to authority– Humanists believed a person’s role in life should be

action, NOT religious contemplation.

There was one common denominator though…

• Both Humanists and Puritans believed in analyzing, questioning and scrutinizing the Church, NOT submitting to the authority of church officials

– The Renaissance influenced a critical study of the Scriptures which partly led to a challenge of Roman Catholicism & the emergence of English Protestantism.

The Renaissance’s Influence on Learning:

– Learning was important & for everyone• Before Caxton printed his first book(1476) in

English, no more than 2% of the English people could read.

• Afterwards, learning increased rapidly-from the Crown to the commoner.

– Access of information is easier– Books become more accessible

– Universities offered:• Latin, logic, rhetoric (public speaking), arithmetic,

music, geometry, and astronomy

– Universities promoted questioning attitudes about:

• the status quo• scientific discovery

With all this emphasis on learning, it’s no wonder a new hero evolved!

• New hero of the Renaissance: The Scholar Hero

• Accomplished at reading, writing, composing poetry, etc

• Knew the Greek and Roman period, the Classics & the ideas put forth in the Classics

• Accomplished musician

• Knew the skills of diplomacy (foreign languages) and Court etiquette

• Was a member of the new Protestant religion (at least in Public)

• Was able to fence & ride (a horse!)

• Was able to fight

• Was interested in exploration and conflict with other countries

• Everyday Life in the Renaissance-DVD

What about our English language?

• English had already triumphed over French as the spoken language by the late14th century.

• During Elizabethan Era, English became the language of scholars… and some theologians were starting to use it, too .

English expanded its vocabulary… again!

• Influences from Latin and Greek literature (brought in by the Humanists)

• Explorers/overseas tradesmen brought an influx of words from many foreign languages

• Many writers (like Shakespeare) were inventing new words daily

• In 1582 Robert Mulcaster proposed a system of regularized spelling-this made a significant difference by 1600.

Literature

At the beginning of the period, England was far behind the literary progress of France and Italy.

However, by the end of the Elizabethan Period, England was in the lead (mostly due to the writings of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney and Christopher Marlowe.

Poetry

• During Elizabeth I’s reign, “England was called a nest of singing birds; every courtier felt it part of his duty to write poetry; sonnet sequences by the hundreds appeared; and English poetry was the admiration of all Europe.”

Sonnets

• Are poems consisting of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme, usually divided either into octave and sestet or, in the English form, into three quatrains and a couplet.– Got that? Don’t worry, we’ll come back to it.

What were sonnets written about?

• Love• Nationalistic pride• Man’s potential• Nature• Seven deadly sins

• Gluttony, lust, pride, envy, wrath, sloth, and avarice• Seven cardinal virtues

• Faith, hope, love, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance

• The Humors– In the old theory of physiology, the four chief

liquids of the human body were: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

• It was believed that:– Both physical diseases & mental and moral

dispositions were caused by the dominance of some element within a humor, or from an imbalance of the humors.

• Divine Right of Kings– A political & religious doctrine of royal absolutism.– A monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving

his right to rule directly from the will of God.– To go against the king or to restrict his powers runs

contrary to the will of God and could be considered heresy.

– Divine right started in Medieval times and only ended in 1689.

• The Great Chain of BeingGod

Angels Humans

Beasts Plants

StonesThe ladder of intellect

Elizabethan poetry’s literary devices:

Conceits- were prominent in many love poems.• unusual and elaborate comparisons between two dissimilar things.• these images were usually about a despairing lover and his unpitying, but idolized, mistress.Ex. A lover is compared to a ship on a stormy sea and his mistress is a cloud of dark disdain.

• Stock devices – themes, characters, etc. which show up again and again. This is especially apparent in poems dealing with the tradition of courtly love.– The idea of the cruel or indifferent mistress– The idea of the all-consuming passion– The pale, wan lover

• The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymorons- (a figure of speech that combines normally-contradictory terms. Ex. wise fool, failed success, dark sunshine• Similes• Metaphors

• Personification• Allusion -making reference to a famous

historical event, literary figure, or pop culture person/event that would be known of by the majority of the population.

• Apostrophe -to address the absent as though present, the dead as though living, or the inanimate object as if it were animate. Ex: an invocation to the muses.

• Rhyme scheme

• Rhythm –accented and unaccented syllables.

• Iambic- an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Ta THUMP– To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel

shells.

• Scansion-the division of verse into feet by indicating accents and syllables to determine the meter of a poem.

• (iambic feet) (pentameter, etc.)– ta TUM -5 metrical feet– A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a

row:– da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

– To swell / the gourd, / and plump / the haz / el shells.

Rhythm types

• Iambic ~ / (The most common meter in our language and naturally falls into everyday conversation. To BE or NOT to BE-Shakespeare.

• Trochaic / ~ DOUBle DOUBle TOIL and TROUBle.

• Anapestic ~ ~ / I aRISE and unBUILD it aGAIN.• Dacylic / ~ ~ Openly• Spondee / / HEARTBREAK• Pyrrhic ~ ~ (generally used to vary rhythm)

Meter-rhythm type

• Monometer-one foot in a line

• Dimeter-two feet

• Trimeter- three feet

• Tetrameter-four feet

• Pentameter-five feet

• Hexameter-six feet

• Bound Verse is poetry which must conform to a specific pattern:– Uniform line length – Consistency in the number of lines in a stanza– Rhythm must be uniform (but may have

exceptions)– Rhyme scheme should have a pattern

• Free Verse/Polyrhythmic Verse – Does not have to conform to a specific

structure– Is distinguished by an irregular metrical

pattern – The focus is not on the way it is written, but

on the message

• Poetry notes on FRIDTM (handout)

• Form

• Rhythm & rhyme

• Imagery

• Diction

• Theme

• Mood

Sonnets

• There are three types of sonnets in English literature:– Italian (Petrarchan)– English (Shakespearean)– Spenserian

Petrarchan Sonnet

• Also called the regular or classical sonnet • Is divided into the octave (first 8 lines) and the

sestet (last 6 lines)• The rhyme scheme of the octave is: abba, abba• The rhyme scheme of the sestet is: cdc, cdc or

cd, cd, cd• The octave sets out the problem or difficulty• The sestet attempts a solution

Spenserian

• Developed by and named for Edmund Spenser

• It consists of three quatrains and a couplet

• The rhyme scheme is abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee

Shakespearean Sonnet

• Has four divisions: three quatrains and a rhymed couplet.

• The rhyme scheme is : abab, cdcd, efef, gg

• The concluding couplet is usually a comment on the preceding lines or acts like a general statement about life.

Let’s take a look at some poets and their sonnets!

• Get ready to FRIDTM and WTF the following poems…

Edmund Spenser

• Believed in the Renaissance’s ideals of: man’s potential, human love, earthly beauty and the value of art.

• Believed in the Reformation ideals of: moral idealism and religious devotion.

• Used metaphors and similes.

• Was very concerned with structure and rhythm.

Edmund Spenser-from “Amoretti” XLVII

• “Amoretti” sonnets are a sequence of sonnets in which Spenser paid court to the lady who became his wife.

– WTF: What is this poem about?– Form: This is a typical Spenserian sonnet. Explain.– Rhythm: What is the scansion of line five?– Imagery: What is the conceit? What stock devices are used? – Diction: What does the word “tied” (in line 12) mean?– Theme: What is one possible theme for this poem? Explain

your answer.– Mood: What is it? What words from the poem set this mood?– What are some of the subjects touched upon in this poem that

are common of sonnets written during this period? (ie. Nature, Nationalism, Love, Man’s potential, Seven Deadly Sins/Cardinal Virtues, Divine Right of Kings, Humors, Great Chain of Being)

Shakespeare

• Wrote 154 sonnets.

• His sonnets dealt with the usual themes/stock devices of the time period:

– the beauty of his lady

– the intensity of his love for his lady

– the assurance of her immortality through his verse

– the sufferings of the frustrated lover, etc.

Shakespeare-Sonnet CXXX

• WTF: What’s this poem about?• Form: Is it bound verse or polyrhythmic? What is the

purpose of the rhyming couplet?• Rhythm: What is the line scansion of line one? What is

the rhyme scheme of the poem? Classify the type of sonnet this is an example of.

• Imagery: Find 5 metaphors. What stock devices are being used?

• Diction: By looking at the word choices, what is the author’s purpose for writing this poem? What does the word “dun” mean? Why did the poet include it?

Sir Thomas Wyatt

• Graduated from Cambridge• Member of Henry VIII’s court• Was a diplomat & knighted for his services to the king…

but fell out of favor and was imprisoned (twice) in the Tower of London.

• His poetry was inspired by Italian lyrics and Petrarch.• He imported the sonnet to England.• He often ended his sonnets with a couplet, thus taking a

step in the direction of the Shakespearean sonnet.

Sir Thomas Wyatt “The Lover Compareth His State to a Ship in Perilous Storm Tossed on the Sea”

• This sonnet is an example of a conceit. Explain.• What is the rhyme scheme of this poem?• What are the last two lines of the poem called?• If you tried to classify this sonnet, what type of

sonnet would it be? Explain your answer.• Is there any mention of the stock device of

courtly love? If so, where?• What’s the mood? Explain.

Earl of Surrey

• Was one of Wyatt’s disciples.• Was a childhood friend of Henry VIII’s son.• Served with the English army, but was

accused of treason, imprisoned in the Tower and later executed.

• Used Petrarch’s sonnet style at first, but then moved to the English form of three quatrains and a couplet.

• He introduced blank verse into English.

• Blank verse-a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter (as used in Shakespearean plays).

Earl of Surrey- “The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty”

• WTF: WTF this poem.

• Form: – What type of sonnet is this? How do you

know this? – What is the sonnet broken into?

a) Quatrains and a couplet

b) Octave and a sestet

• Rhythm: What is the metrical foot of most lines? What is the rhythm of most lines?

• Imagery: – Find two oxymoron in this poem.– What is the conceit?– Find one simile.

• Diction: – What does the word “peason” mean? What

type of word is it? Why was it used?

• Theme: – What is the main message of this poem?

(Connect this poem to our modern ideals of beauty.)

– What other subjects show up in this poem that would be common among sonnets of this era?

Writing Assignment!!!

• Write a sonnet. You may choose the style (Petrarchan, Shakespearean, or Spenserian.)

• You may choose the subject (love, nature, religion, etc.)• Write in iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line).• Include 4 of the following literary devices: oxymoron,

personification, conceit, simile, allusion, apostrophe or hyperbole.

• Use FRIDTM and WTF to analyze your own poem. Attach it on a separate sheet.

Let’s move on to lyrics…

Pastoral Lyrics

• Are characterized by a state of contentment and of innocent and romantic love.

• Rural country folk (often shepherds) are presented in an idealized natural setting, while they contemplate their perfect and peaceful world that is absent the worries and issues of crowded city life.

• Often provide an escapist picture of rural tranquility and idleness:– actual sheep-tending is displaced by amorous conversation and

song– real shepherds are displaced by noble exiles from the

corruptions of city and court.

Christopher Marlowe-The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

• This is “somewhat” an example of a pastoral poem. (It can also be considered a parody of the idyll poems.)

• This was the first poem in a series of lyrics which proved to be famous among the Elizabethans. This poem elicited many replies and parodies…

• Use FRIDTM to analyze this poem.

Christopher Marlowe

• His poems are filled with exuberance (Carpe Diem- Live for the day or Seize the moment) which marks him clearly as a man of the Renaissance.

• Apparently he liked the philosophy; he was killed in a bar brawl when he was 29.

Sir Walter Raleigh-The Nymph’s Reply

• Reply to Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

• Use FRIDTM to analyze this poem.

Sir Walter Raleigh

• He was an explorer, a statesman, an admiral, a historian, a solider, and a poet.

• Made an early voyage to North America and discovered and occupied the colony of Virginia for the Queen.

• Chivalric manners? He supposedly threw down his clock for Queen Elizabeth to walk upon!

• His death? Beheaded at the Tower.

One Last Poem…written by the Queen herself…

Elizabeth I-Written on a Wall at Woodstock

• Oh fortune, thy wresting wavering state Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,Whose witness this present prison lateCould bear, where once was joy's loan quit.Thou causedst the guilty to be loosed From bands where innocents were inclosed, And caused the guiltless to be reserved,And freed those that death had well deserved.But all herein can be nothing wrought, So God send to my foes all they have thought.

Written on a Wall at Woodstock

• Use FRIDTM and WTF to analyze the poem.

• Extras:– Find the apostrophe.– How is the rhyme scheme unpredictable?– Find the example of a forced rhyme.

• And this concludes our Elizabethan Poetry Unit…