W4 - Sonnets

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• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Sonnets Assignment

Go to your booklet (page 64) or the internet and in the next slide write down as many characteristics of a sonnet you can find.

Sonnet

What is a sonnet?

Italian Sonnet

14 lines

usually 2 parts 
octave - first 8 lines - poet describes situation

Break of thought - volta - turn

sextet - remaining 6 lines - poet's personal views and feelings

Look up on the internet: what is a courtier?

Courtier

A person who is often at court.

A true uomo universale, a perfect human being, learned, civilized, elegant, well dressed, courageous, and a good fighter both in battle and in duels.

 grazia "grace" or charm that marks the true courtier  =
 everything he does should appear natural and effortless.

The courtier has to be a man of many parts, at home in war as well as in peace, a man who will cut a good figure in an elegant conversation or when courting a lady. But it is impossible to reduce the courtier to any of his many roles; the feature that really defines him is none of his individual accomplishments but grazia ('grace').

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

Courtier

Ambassador and adviser to the king (Henry VIII)

First person to translate Petrach/Petrarca (Italian) 
Went on to write his own poems in a similar style

Remember that the artists of the English renaissance looked to the Italian renaissance artists and mimicked them.

Whoso List to Hunt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that furthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Whoso list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Assignment "Whoso List to Hunt"

Read the poem together "Whoso List to Hunt"

Do the questions 1-12 in groups

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

Poor family

Translating poetry

The Faerie Queene (1590) - to gain favour of Elizabeth I

English sonnet - Surrey

Managed to gain favour. Got a pension of 50 pounds per year because of it. 

English sonnet - surrey

Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

Assignment Edmund Spenser

Get into groups and do questions 1-16 together - make sure everybody has the answers

`Taylor Swift - Shake it Off

Spice Girls - Wannabe

Bowie - Heroes

Metallica - Enter Sandman

Justin Bieber - Baby