The Elizabethan Age was a time of great change and progress. It was during this time that many of the Elizabethans’ greatest works were written, including sonnets.
Sonnets are poems that typically have 14 lines and follow a specific, rhyming pattern. They are often about love and other emotions, and can be interpreted in many ways.
Notable Elizabethan sonnet writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Donne. Their poems are considered to be some of the most beautiful and timeless pieces of literature ever written.
In the Elizabethan period, sonnets evolved into a new metric and rhyme structure that was distinct from Petrarchan sonnets. However, Elizabethan sonnets retained Petrarch’s conceit in some ways. Conceit was a literary device employed by poets to describe their love relationships in intricate yet exaggerated terms that emphasized the use of heraldry.
The metaphorical perfection of the mistresses would be emphasized by blazon because natural items were formed by God, thus when the mistresses were superior to nature, there was nothing better than them.
Elizabethan sonnets, on the other hand, started to use less blazon and employed more irony and humor. One of the most renowned Elizabethan sonneteers was Sir Philip Sidney. In his Astrophel and Stella, Sidney used the Petrarchan conceit to explore the pain of unrequited love. He also introduced a new form of Elizabethan sonnet called the sestina. The sestina is notable for its intricate structure that requires six repeated end-words. Each end-word appears once in each of the six stanzas, in a fixed order.
When writing the sestina, the poet must carefully select words that will create a satisfying poem with a clever twist at the end. Edmund Spenser was also a well-known Elizabethan sonneteer. His sonnets, such as Amoretti, were written in the Petrarchan form but with Elizabethan elements. Spenser’s sonnets often explore the theme of courtly love.
The Elizabethan Age was also a time when many famous poems were written. One of the most popular poems of the time was The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene is an epic poem that tells the story of six knights who are on a quest to save the Faerie Queene. The poem is notable for its intricate structure and rich language. Another popular Elizabethan poem is “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell.
By denying the Petrarchan poet’s mistress figure who was always ideal and adored, the Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare evolved into an anti-Petrarchan stance. Any lover’s mistress in a Petrachan sonnet would expect to have eyes that rival the sun, lips that are redder than coral, breasts as white as snow, and hair that glistens. Nonetheless, the speaker devised his lover to a contradictory image of an ideal lover. The speaker declared that his “mistress’ eyes” were “noting like the sun.”
The speaker even claimed that his mistress’ hair was “black as a berry.” Elizabethan Sonnet 130 is often mistaken as an insult to the woman that the speaker loved, but in fact, it is a love poem written in defiance of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet.
The Elizabethan Age is considered one of the most important eras in English Literature. It was during this time that William Shakespeare wrote some of the most famous poems and plays in English history. One of Shakespeare’s most famous poems is called Sonnet 130.
Sonnet 130 is different from most other sonnets because it doesn’t focus on praising the beauty of the woman that the speaker loves. Instead, the speaker insists that his mistress is not as beautiful as other women that the Petrarchan poets have written about. The speaker even says that his mistress’ eyes are not as pretty as the sun, her lips are not as red as coral, and her hair is not as black as a berry.
The speaker remarked, “if hairs are wires, black wires grew on her head.” Her skin was also dark and bumpy; her breath was noxious as well. These descriptions added up to an unattractive vision of her, suggesting that the speaker was attempting to present his beloved as someone who is less beautiful than the rest of the mistresses. He went on to say that “when my mistress walked,” she “tread[ed] upon the ground,” implying that his mistress was a real woman rather than an ideal goddess-like or fictitious lovers like other poets fashioned.
The Elizabethan sonnets are love poems that were popular during the Elizabethan Age. They were written in iambic pentameter and usually had 14 lines. The sonnets were about the speaker’s loved one, who was usually a beautiful woman. The poems would often compare the loved one to an idealized object, such as a goddess or an angel.
However, some of the Elizabethan sonnets were different from the others. They were not about a beautiful woman, but about an ugly one. In these sonnets, the speaker would describe his beloved in negative terms, such as calling her “black wires” and saying that she “treads on the ground.” These poems suggest that love is not just about beauty, but also about acceptance.
The Petrarchan sonnet was a form of poem with an octave and sestet, each having a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde. The Elizabethan sonnet had three quatrains and a couplet with the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg. The couplet frequently acted as a turning point in the sonnet. Sonnet 130’s conclusion is marked by a classical twist brought about by the couplet. Unlike the quatrains, which he claims his mistress isn’t truly repulsive because she is compared to other mistresses who were manufactured by their lovers,
One of the most famous Elizabethan sonnets is sonnet 18, which is about the speaker’s love for his young, male friend. The speaker compares his love for him to a summer’s day and claims that it will never die. Sonnet 130 is also an Elizabethan sonnet and it is one of the most famous ones too. It is about the speaker’s love for his mistress who is not traditionally beautiful. The speaker compares her beauty to other things that are not traditionally considered beautiful, such as snowflakes and nightingales. He claims that she is just as beautiful as they are.
