1/2/07 - English Literature - Spenser's 'Amoretti' and 'Epithalamion' and Donne's Secular Lyrics

Donne's poems are used for private expression. Spenser's are a very public attempt to achieve a public persona.

Spenser was born in London to a low class family. He became a scholar on reduced fees and later became the secretary to Sir Philip Sidney. Spenser dedicated some of his works to Sidney. He was made courtly secretary in Ireland, a place remote from power which Spenser resented and complained about frequently. In his 50s he was given a job more central to power.

Donne was slightly younger than Spenser. He was born a Catholic in a low class family. From an early age he aimed the achieve a civic career. He became Egerton's secretary, but eloped with Egerton's niece Ann and fell out of favour. They had twelve children together. Donne was fired and became poor. His religion was also out of favour and gave him no advantage, so he changed his faith to Church of England to try for better career prospects. His poems were published posthumously.

Earlier in the Renaissance, writing poetry had been a private accomplishment. It was normal to recite one's poems between friends as this was a sign of gentlemanliness. Spenser's more public works were the start of a new convention. Donne disagreed with this and refused to publish his poems although he paid money to keep the poems from being burned after he died.

In his poetry, Donne had the ability to change stances between and within poems. He held the neoplatonic belief that the soul is the true self and that the body is simply a shadow of it.

Air and Angels takes a Petrarchan reverence for a lover, but it iterates that he should not overemphasise her beauty. The poem shows awareness of itself. Donne changes from saying that the woman is an angel to saying that he is himself the angel, i.e. that men are purer than women because men make women.

In The Flea the woman challenges one of Donne's arguments. Contrary to Donne's theory, neither person is harmed after she kills the flea. Although the poem is about the narrator persuading the woman to go to bed with him, Donne is more interested in the argument and thought processes of the poem, rather than the seduction.

The Canonisation addresses a third party who is not his mistress. The poem puts two conflicting ideas of love together: love as an enlightening experience versus love as a distraction. He compares love to a phoenix, i.e. love is self-repairing and resurrecting. Donne may be trying to convince himself as well as the third party. "Alas, alas, who's injured by our love!" Donne may be talking about his financial ruin after marrying Ann More. He puns on her name in many poems, e.g. "one more man." He refers to his poems as "hymns", perhaps a sign that he had a desire to put them out in the public domain.

Spenser's Amoretti is a poem about Spenser's courtship and marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. It is meditative and Petrarchan in style - it uses the metaphor of light and a harbour to describe women. Spenser emulates Sidney by imitating, in a sense, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella. Amoretti is unlike Petrarchan poetry in that it addresses the woman he marries rather than bemoaning an unattainable woman.

In Spenser's Sonnet 62, he asks that the lovers change their minds; at this point, the love seems to be unattainable. The next sonnet uses nautical language to indicate that the woman is becoming attainable. He breaks away from the Petrarchan tradition of using nautical language to express unattainability and loss.

There is some blasphemous language here, too. Spenser states that he will spent lent in service to his beloved Elizabeth instead of to Christ.

Sonnets 22 to 62 are about lent and not getting what he wants. by the end of lent there is hope. In Sonnet 67 Spenser reiterates the Christian calendar as well as the months. There are echoes of Petrarch's sonnet when Spenser uses a deer to embody the idea of a woman. The imagery of the river is symbolic of baptism and Easter time, a renewal of Christian faith. Elizabeth and Christ are expressed as figures of each other - both are metaphorical of hope in time of need, in terms of love and religion respectively. Spenser shows interest in the experience of love bound by time; his sonnets progress through time and never have a completely happy ending.

Epithalamion also tries to suspend time by going in detail through every part of his wedding day.

Donne reinvents Petrarchan-style poetry and Spenser also acknowledges time and how it changes everything. The lady in the poem is controlled by the poet and the extent to which the poem is meant to be public or private. We must put them together to find modes, voices, and more, of the time.