NAME- KIRTI GARG

COURSE- ENGLISH HONS.

ROLL NO. – 202028

QUES. Based on the poems you have in this paper analyze the
representation/role of women under the arch of Petrarchan
tradition. Cite proper example and context.

ANS. Petrarchan sonnet is also known as Italian sonnet, which was

named after 14th century Italian poet, called Francesco Petrarca. In
order to determine whether a poem is Petrarchan sonnet, there are
two signs. First is that the poem should have 14 lines and an octave
that follows an ‘abbaabba’ rhyme scheme. The poems make extended
use of metaphors and simile. Petrarchan tradition included themes like
love, pleasure, unrequited love etc.

Typically, the women addressed or described in the poems are

depicted as to be the male poet’s desired objects, a source of pleasure
or pain for the male speakers. The Petrarch poets focused on
materialistic things to describe the idealistic women like jewels etc.
They even focused on physical beauty by describing bodily aspects like
lovely face, golden beautiful hair and bright eyes rather than giving
importance to inner beauty. Talking about Thomas Wyatt, he was a
renaissance poet and also the faithful follower of Petrarch’s tradition.
His poems were mostly concerned with love and lovers, also many of
them were based on sonnets of Petrarch.

In his poems like ‘whoso list to hunt’ we can see that how Petrarch’s
women were portrayed as a chaste and unattainable thing, which could
be grazed upon from far but can’t be reached to. In the poem, speaker
compares love to a hunt not only this he also compares the chased
women with an animal [deer] that is being hunted, [‘whoso list to hunt,
I know where is an hind’ [1]]. The poem hints that these expressions of
devotion are threatening and even violent to its object. These lines
portray the theme of ‘sexism’ where women had very low self-esteem
and respect in the society. They were only treated as an object for male
desires.

In his another poem, ‘They flee from me’, lines like;

‘I have seen them gentle tame and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember [3- 4]’

He describes women as wild because they have shed the traditional

expectations of their gender. The woman is considered to be wild,
unpredictable and even dangerous as she doesn’t behave with some
set of behavior. The poem also takes turn from portraying a male
dominated relation in the first stanza to female dominated in second
which can be seen in the pronouns used by the poet. He hints at sexual
approaches given by the other women at that time. Later, poet also
compares himself with the slave who is pleading in front of her beloved
to accept his proposal. This can clearly depict that how women didn’t
have freedom to even say no to men otherwise they were forced by
them like in this poem.

By analyzing these poems we can clearly see how women were treated
under the Petrarchan tradition. At that time the society was fully male
dominated and women had no freedom. They were just objects for
men for their sexual desires and pleasures. They had no identity or
authority to make any decision for them. In the Petrarchan tradition,
their beloved had control on them which directly made them voiceless.
They also compared their beloved beauty with the materialistic things
like jewels, precious stones etc. instead of seeing inner beauty or heart
of their lover. Another problematic thing was comparison of love with
the hunt which was very common in the poetries. Also, not respecting
women decisions and chasing them continuously after getting rejected
was completely nuisance shown in the poetries. By the poetries, we can
easily analyze that there were set standards for the good women that
they needed to follow and if they didn’t they were not respected and
were treated as the women of the street. They were expected to stay
quite no matter what and do household works whereas men had all the
freedom to do or say anything they wanted. There were some poets
like Isabella Whitney who stood strong enough against it and published
her poems under her name. She wrote many controversial poems
which talked about the women desires and betrayal of men.

References:
 ‘Petrarchan’- in the oxford dictionary of literary terms[3]
 Edited by Harriett Raghunathan, renaissance poet: A selection of
worldview, 2021- including poems by renaissance writers and
critical essays by several authors.