POETRY

1. Early sixteenth century poetry: the Tudor

Sarah Abdussalam
I. MAJOR FEATURES
‣ The Tudors ruled England from 1485 to 1603.
‣ Henry VII, was the first Tudor monarch. Seven years after he became a king, Columbus
discovered America, and a few years later Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around
the Cape of Good Hope.
‣ In the 16th century, the English became great colonizers and merchant adventurers.
‣ England, which has always been a sheep-raising country, was by now manufacturing and
exporting significant amounts of cloths.
‣ People were driven off the lands to the cities.
‣ About a decade before Henry VII won his throne, the art of printing from movable type, a
German invention, was introduced into England by William Caxton (1422-1419), which
increased literacy and made books cheaper and more plentiful.

II. POETIC FORMS

‣ Translating Petrarch works, Italian poet, introduced the sonnet 1 into England. With Petrarch
the sonnet had 14 lines and was divided into 2 parts:

octave sestet

‣ the octave containing 8 lines ‣ the sestet, containing 6 lines

‣ expressed the first half of an idea ‣ expressed the second half
‣ posed the question ‣ gave the answer
‣ expressed a theme ‣ contradicted it
‣ the rhyme scheme was strict: abba abba ‣ cde cde or cdc dcd or any other similar
combination of two or three rhymes.

‣ English poets found it hard to stick to the Petrarchan form, and so invented rhyme
combination of their own.
‣ Blank verse, ten syllables to a line, five stresses, no rhyme.

III.MAJOR THEMES AND TECHNIQUES

‣ Satire, a work of literature that mocks social conventions, another work of art, or anything
its author thinks ridiculous.
‣ Writers start inforce their feelings in their writings
‣ The ability of an individual to think on their own, to stir away from the common norm of
society; which was to believe in what the church said.

1 From the Italian sonetto, which means "a little sound or song,"
IV.OUTSTANDING WRITERS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION

Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542)

‣ He was born in Kent, England.

‣ His mother was Anne Skinner and his father, Henry Wyatt, had
been one of Henry VII's Privy Councillors, and remained a trusted
adviser when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509.

‣ Thomas Wyatt followed his father to court after his education at St

John’s College, Cambridge.
‣ He married Elizabeth Brooke (1503-1550), in 1522, she gave a birth
to a son, Thomas Wyatt, the younger. A few years later he was
separated from his wife on the grounds of adultery.
‣ It’s believed that the young, unhappily married Wyatt fell in love with
the young Anne Boleyn in the early-to-mid 1520s. In his poetry,
Thomas calls his mistress Anna, and often embeds pieces of
information that correspond with her life into his poetry. In May 1536
he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for allegedly committing
adultery with her. He was released from the Tower later that year,
thanks to his friendship or his father's friendship with Thomas
Cromwell, and he returned to his duties. But she was executed.

‣ None of Wyatt's poems were published during his lifetime—the first

book to feature his verse was printed a full fifteen years after his
death.

‣ Introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England in the early sixteenth

century. So, he’s called “the father of English poetry.”

‣ The Petrarchan, or Italian, is the first and most common sonnet.

‣ Named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet

Petrarch.

‣ The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the
first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines).
The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd, is
suited for the rhyme-rich Italian language, though there are many fine
examples in English. Since the Petrarchan presents an argument,
observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the
octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines.
This turn marks a shift in the direction of the foregoing argument or
narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument,
clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.

‣ His famed translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, as well as his own

sonnets, drew fast attention to the form.

‣ He was strict to the original form.

‣ Examples of his work: Farewell Love, Whoso List to Hunt.

FAREWELL LOVE2 FORM
Rhyme scheme:
1. Farewell love3 and all thy laws4 forever; abbaabbacddcee

2. Thy baited hooks5 shall tangle me no more. Sonnet:

3. Senec and Plato 6 call me from thy lore
4. To perfect wealth, my wit for to endeavour.
5. In blind error when I did persever,
6. Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
7. Hath taught me to set in trifles 7 no store
8. And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
9. Therefore farewell; go trouble younger hearts
10. And in me claim no more authority.
11. With idle youth go use thy property
12. And thereon spend thy many brittle darts,
13. For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
14. Me lusteth no lenger rotten boughs to clime
Italian, octave + sestet
Meter:
iambic pentameter
Scan:
farewell/, love, and/ all thy/ laws for/
ever.
Structure:
he uses the octave, turn, and then sestet.
The first eight lines of the sonnet are
about how his love has left him, but he
doesn't seem too upset because he
believes it is for the best and that he can
now improve himself. He speaks as
though he is already smarter for knowing
that it is okay, and claims that, "Thy baited
hooks shall tangle me no more." (Ln. 2).
Then, the turn occurs in line 9 that brings
the sonnet to a new position: He speaks
as though he feels that he is now past
love or too old or even wise to fall for its
crafty tricks again; he feels deceived and
spent.
Theme:
trial of romantic love
Title:
He’s departing his love and this give as
pessimistic atmosphere.

CONTENT
2 The aim: the poet’s message may intentionally be being conveyed to others at court, pointing out that the
various relationships and complications within the social environment of the court often distracted officials
from their true courtly duties.
3 Apostrophe, he’s addressing love.
4In renouncing the ‘laws’ of love, the poet is rejecting the rules of court and society as well as the emotional
effects of intense relationships.
5 The metaphor of ‘baited hooks’ works as an allegory for fishing, but also presents as an oxymoron in the
‘bait’ being the pleasure and the ‘hook’ being the painful consequence of the former.
6 Senec and Plato are Greek philosopher, and they calling him away from love to the real riches of wit and
intellect. Because they believed that one must choose either having wealth of mind or wealth heart.
7trifle in Old English means a false tale that told just to fool someone. So, here is a metaphor of love
comparing it to a trifle that deceive someone while he’s thinking it’s good but it turns him to be fool.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 - 1547)

‣ He was born in Hunsdon, England

‣ the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his
second wife, the former Lady Elizabeth Stafford.
‣ In 1532 Surrey married Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the Earl
of Oxford; the couple had a son, Thomas, in 1536.
‣ He was an English arisocrat and one of the founders of English
Renaissance.
‣ He wrote the first blank verse in his translation of the second and
fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid.
‣ After Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English poetry in the first
quarter of the sixteenth century, the Earl of Surrey improved on it in
the secont quarter of the sixteenth century.
‣ He gave the sonnet the rhyming meter and the division into
quatrians that now characterizes the sonnets variously named
English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets.
‣ The Italian sonnet presented a b a b, he changed it to a b b a.
‣ Also, instead of using octave and sestet, he used 3 quatrians and a
couplet.
‣ He was the first to emphasis his own feelings.
‣ The majority of Surrey's work was not published during his lifetime,
but circulated in manuscript.
‣ Examples of his works: He authored numerous poems, sonnets,
and elegies, the most famous of which, “Wyatt Resteth Here,”
memorializes his friend, with whose name and critical reputation he
has been inextricably linked. And “The Soote Season.”
‣ Henry VIII, consumed by paranoia and increasingly ill, became
convinced that Surrey had planned to usurp the crown from his son
Edward. The King had Surrey imprisoned - with his father -
sentenced to death on 13 January 1547, and beheaded for treason
on 19 January 1547 (his father survived impending execution only by
it being set for the day after the king happened to die, though he
remained imprisoned).
THE SOOTE SEASON 8 FORM
Rhyme scheme:
1.The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, ababababababaa
syllabic monotony results because there
are only two rhymes, 'a' and 'b.'
2. With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
Sonnet:
3. The nightingale with feathers new she sings9, English sonnet, 3 quatrians + couplet

4. The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Meter:

iambic pentameter
5. Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
Scan:
6. The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, the soote /season/ that bud /and
bloom/ forth brings
7. The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,

8. The fishes float with new repaired scale, Structure:

9. The adder all her slough away she slings,
10. The swift swallow pursueth the flyës smale,
11. The busy bee her honey now she mings--
12. Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
each line symbolize the change from old
generation to a new one. There’s a volta
in the 5th line and the 12th line. the
couplet has a very declare sense of
sorrow and paradox presented by the
speaker. Everything in Nature has
changed for the better but the poet's
personal "sorrow" remains the same.
He’s lamenting the death of his beloved.

13. And thus I see, among these pleasant things Theme:

fertility vs. Sterility
14. Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. lamenting of his beloved

Title:
soote means sweet or nice.
Another title for this poem is “Spring
Lament”

Tone:

sad, the sadness of the couplet

overcome the whole poem.

CONTENT
8 The aim: the poem is a picturesque description of the English countryside just when winter is over and
spring has begun. Each item symbolises the shedding of the old and the regeneration of the new: the green
vegetation of the hills and the vales, the new feathers on the nightingale, the turtle dove making love to its
mate, the hart has a new pair of antlers and the buck a new coat, the fishes new scales and the snake a
new skin, and the bee is busy collecting honey from the newly blossomed flowers. All these symbols are in
sharp contrast to the sorrow of the poet who has not been able to win the love and affection of his lover.

9 in this line he changes the word order into (S+O+V) to make the sonnet more musical this technique is
called hyperbaton or anastrophe.