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Topic: Analyse the structure and theme of sonnets of Sidney and Spencer
The Sonnet form, imported into England from Sicily, served the most fruitful channel of
creative urge of the Elizabethan period, released from every possible shackle by the
Renaissance
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Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan
form in England in the 16 century but this was intractable to English language, so
Surrey modified it, made its rhyme scheme pliable to English language and thus threw
open the vast vista of possibilities that lyric poetry could offer to Elizabethan England
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Sir Philip Sidney defended his literary vocation in The Apology for Poetrie
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Sidney was drawing very
largely on his acquaintance with Italian poetry and was indebted to Italian models
specially Petrarch
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Sidney's opening sonnet Loving in truth of Astrophil and Stella is a text that is
distanced from immediate feeling as much as it is an intense expression of it
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In 1576, there was some talk of
marriage between the two, but it did not materialize and Lady Penelope was married to
Lord Rich
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The title suggests that Sidney was unable to distance himself from the tradition of
Platonic love celebrated by the Canzoniere of Petrarch
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The poem bears the theme of disappointed love and celebrates the
honest devotion of the poet
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It uses 12- syllabled lines or alexandrines as the verse form, instead of a
decasyllabic line
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The rhyme scheme followed is ababab abcdcdee
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In the Octave, he expresses his wish to find fine inventions for entertaining the wit of
his beloved
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He discovers that poetry
imitated cannot be genuine
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The poet sincerely loves his beloved and longs to
express it to her
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The poet yearns to make his beloved take
some pleasure from his work of art, which is begotten after undergoing so much pain
of poetic process
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Sidney's beloved would
peruse his lay, out of pleasure derived from it, which would make her acquainted with
the poet's agony, that will soon materialize into pity and pity would fetch favour,
goodwill, even divine blessing from Penelope
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For the lover, to obtain the grace of his mistress is a deeply coveted
experience, almost akin to a religious one
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He has studied poetic techniques
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This refers to 'inventio',
that is, selection of an appropriate theme or subject matter, either from books or from
the poet's mind
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Sidney as often resorted to literary imitation, hoping

to get some showers to refresh and to mellow his "sunburnt brain", as the vital
moisture of his intellect has been dried up by the flames of love or passion
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He finds that his words come halting, lacking the supporting power
that true imagination possesses
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Astrophil made the mistake of working in
wrong order by seeking words (elocutio) before matter
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Poetry cannot
be procreated by studying at poetising
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Sidney employes a magnificent imagery of mother and child invention and
study
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The imitation of other poet's "feet", a quibble on the
metrical feet, cannot fit in well with the poetic Faculty of Sidney
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The graphic
images used are that of confusion or frustration and pain
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The poet hints a beautiful image of a poet biting his "truant pen" , composing
verses by effort in the absence of genuine inspiration; searching for words to fit his
poem, thus ‘biting’ pen in frustration
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The poet compares the mental turmoil of a poet,
without genuine inspiration, with the labour pain of childbirth
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The poets who lack the spontaneous overflow of thoughts, rack
out their brain to find thoughts and expression in a spirit of vexation
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Ringler remarks

that it is the 'most quoted and least understood line of all Sidney's poetry'
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The muse advices Sidney to look into his own heart referring to the mind in
general- the seat of all faculties, and write
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This section
of the poem is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Sonnet-" How can my muse want subject
to invent"
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The last line is colloquial in tone and diction by which Sidney gives
Astrophil an arrestingly comic self-awareness that counters the spiritual sincerity of
Petrarchan poems
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His Sonnet cycle Amoretti, a collection of 88 sonnets published
in an octavo volume in 1595, is remarkable for its depth of feeling and thought
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He
also acknowledged his debt to the poetry of Chaucer and to the scholarship of
Renaissance scholars
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One day I wrote her name is Sonnet 75 in Spencer’s sequence entitled Amoretti
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His choice of the
title, ‘Amoretti’ drawn from contemporary Italian rather than classical tradition, is
unusual as it refers to the poems themselves, rather than to the persons involved in
the courtship
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In
One day I wrote her name, the poet-lover finds that the only way he can immortalize
his love is through poetry, which links the sequence with the traditions of Dante and
Petrarch
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His sonnet is the deep-felt articulation of sincere passion
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The poem is predominantly written in iambic pentameter
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The poem opens with the scene: Spencer
walks with Elizabeth Boyle on the strand of Youghal, which is near her home
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The poet-lover behaves like a romantic
suitor, walking with his mistress on a sandy stretch of beach and writing her name in
the sand
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The tide is referred to, here, as a symbol of inexorable time,
which is aggressive and which brutishly gobbles up his effort
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In the
second and third quatrains, which are in the form of a dialogue between the lover and
the beloved, the theme of the poem is developed and diversified
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She uses his bafflement to
write her name on the sand, to playfully chide him for his foolishness and vanity
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e, the object of the poet's
love, his beloved
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In the third quatrain, there is a swing of thought
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The poet proposes to let baser things
contrive to mortality as against the natural manner, in which love itself has the power
to raise the basest human being to a higher spiritual plain
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The concluding couplet of the poem not only refers
to the love of the beloved, but mutual love
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The poet uses a double relative clause 'where
whenas' to strengthen the poet's claim to immortality
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