L1 Lit: Week 4 The Sonnet

If you would like to write a preparation for this week, you can choose one of the following questions. You can also do a practice commentary following one of the models I gave in class on Tuesday, February 9th. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poet's language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses.

1. For Petrarch: Petrarch, an Italian poet from the 14th century, is one of the major predecessors for the sonnet tradition we will be studying this week in Shakespeare and Keats. Petrarch wrote a series of sonnets addressed to a (fictitious?) lover Laura. These sonnets often describe the experience of being in love as one of suffering. The sonnet that we will read describes how love attacked through the eyes. The syntax is heavily distorted from normal spoken English. When this is the case, beginning with a translation can help you better understand the content of the poem. If you would like to do a preparation for Petrarch, translate the poem into French prose. Then identify and analyze the different ways Petrarch presents love as a visual experience in this poem.

Sonnet III

Twas on the morn, when heaven its blessed ray
In pity to its suffering master veil'd,
First did I, Lady, to your beauty yield,
Of your victorious eyes th' unguarded prey.
Ah! little reck'd I that, on such a day,
Needed against Love's arrows any shield;
And trod, securely trod, the fatal field:
Whence, with the world's, began my heart's dismay.
On every side Love found his victim bare,
And through mine eyes transfix'd my throbbing heart;
Those eyes, which now with constant sorrows flow:
But poor the triumph of his boasted art,
Who thus could pierce a naked youth, nor dare
To you in armour mail'd even to display his bow!

2. For Shakespeare: In English, we often refer to Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets. Both are composed of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The major difference between the two is in the rhyme schemes. You have a typical example of each sonnet form in the first two poems. First, based on these two poems describe the difference between Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets. Once you have identified the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, analyze how Shakespeare uses this form to present the lover's experience of insomnia in the following poem.

SONNET 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

3. For John Keats: Analyze how Keats uses images of movement, stillness, and tranquility in his presentation of love.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.