Literary Renaissances
Tips on Reading Poetry
We are about to explore the Renaissance tradition in literature. That means reading some poetry. Remember our tips for keeping your head above water reading verse.
- Read aloud, listening for rhythms, patterns.
- Recognize the plain sense of the words before looking for hidden meanings.
- Who talks to whom about what? Clearly seeing this dynamic can open many poems.
- Track themes and patterns of meaning that flow from the above.
The Renaissance also transformed literature. Patrons of the visual arts such as the Medici also patronized scholarship and literature which drew on the newly re-discovered Classical tradition. The great poets of the day emulated Greek epics and absorbed Greek myths. Yet these literary Renaissances looked forward as well as back. Francesco Petrarch was an Italian scholar, philosopher, and historian. He was also a poet who, along with his contemporary Dante, reached a wide audience by doing something that shocked the scholarly community who wrote everything in Latin. The two poets wrote verse in the contemporary language of Florence, the linguistic ancestor of modern Italian. Petrarch used the vernacular “for the representation in verse of his personal meditations on love and religion” (Petrarch). Drawing on the Courtly Love tradition, many of the poems in his Il Canzonieri dwell on a woman named Laura whom he admired from afar.
Petrarch. (1368). Sonnet VII, Il Canzonieri [1]
Those eyes, ’neath which my passionate rapture rose,
The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile
Could my own soul from its own self beguile
And in a separate world of dreams enclose,
The hair’s bright tresses, full of golden glows
And the soft lightning of the angelic smile
That changed this earth to some celestial isle,
Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.[2]
And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,
Left dark without the light I loved in vain,
Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.
[1] Our text of course is translated from the Medieval Italian by T. W. Higginson.
[2] What do we learn in this line? It’s important!
Last week, we explored the rhythmical bases of English poetry, especially Rhyme. We saw that a Rhyme Scheme divides the text into Stanzas that operate like prose paragraphs. OK, let’s apply those concepts to Petrarch’s lyric. What structure do you find? I’ll bet it wasn’t hard for you. We see that the poem is divided into two Stanzas: an Octave (A-B-A-B-A-B-A-B) and a Sestet (C-D-C-D-C-D). But what does that tell us? And do you recognize this pattern?
Well, notice the title: Sonnet VII. You’ve heard the word, but we need to recognize that, like Haiku, a Sonnet obeys a fairly strict structural rule: 14 lines. Since Petrach innovated the sonnet form, his structural version is named for him: the 14 lines of a Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet is divided into an Octave (or two Quatrains) and a sestet (Sonnet).
Remember how we said that poetic forms always contribute to the poem’s thematic richness? Let’s follow that lesson and explore the significance of a sonnet’s structure. Start with the poem’s voice: a somber, introspective reflection by an apparently sorrowing individual. The first two stanzas caress in the imagination the beauty of a beloved who is apparently distant, unapproachable. But how? Why? Well let’s look at lines 8 and 9, those that bridge the poem’s stanzas:
And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn, …
Hmmm. Apparently, the beloved who is adored in the 1st two stanzas is dead, leaving the Persona alone with grief and self-loathing. The poem has made a profound Turn from a problem in the first 8 lines to a resolution, albeit a tragic one, in the final 6. This thematically shifting Turn is a sonnet Convention. In an Italian Sonnet, “the transition from octave to sestet usually coincides with a turn (Italian, volta) in the argument or mood of the poem” (Sonnet).
When reading sonnets, recognizing the Turn injects life into the form. The boundary between the two thematic emphases helps us process its meaning and the decisive shift packs the energy of a change in direction. Don’t miss the Turn in every sonnet!
The Shakespearean Sonnet
The term English Renaissance is reserved for the literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth (16th-17th Centuries). Several of the poets of the day tried their hand at Petrarch’s form: Michael Drayton, Sir Phillip Sydney, and, of course, Shakespeare. Being the poetic master that he was, Shakespeare decided to make a change to the Italian Sonnet form.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair[3] sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
[2] For more information on Shakespeare’s poetry, see this summary discussion.
[3] Fair from fair: for Elizabethans, the word fair suggested beauty, health, moral correctness, and a light coloring, especially of skin
After last week, you are probably in a position to recognize the Rhyme Scheme and Stanza forms. And the Iambic Meter is as usual in English verse. There is a metrical wrinkle: Shakespeare’s lines have five Feet. We call this Iambic Pentameter. In the audio recording, listen for that subtle interplay between the meter and the normal rhythm of the language.
But wait. Petrarch’s pattern—Quatrain, quatrain, Sestet—is altered in Shakespeare’s Sonnet. Three quatrains are followed by a final, stinger Couplet: “The English Sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet) comprises three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. … The Turn comes with the final couplet” (Sonnet). This is the formula for a Shakespearean Sonnet, also called an English Sonnet because so many English poets have used it.
To fully grasp the structure and turn, let’s try to make sense of the poem. What is the plain sense of the words? You’ll notice some apostrophes that trim the words to fit the meter (see below). But the language isn’t too hard, right? The poem’s persona addresses Thou, obviously a beloved. In the tradition of courtly love verse (last week), the poem flatters by comparing the beloved’s beauty with that of a summer’s day. Not hard to follow, eh?
But what theme do we see in those comparisons? Quatrains one to three claim for the beloved a beauty superior to the flaws the poem finds in nature’s splendor. The poem seeks to impress the beloved with Hyperbole, exaggerated expressions of flattery. OK, lots of courtly love poems make outlandish comparisons between the beloved’s beauty and nature. But this one is different. Art the world over has celebrated human beauty while poignantly remembering its rapid slide into decay. This poem promises, apparently absurdly, that it can preserve the beloved’s beauty forever.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
How can the poet credibly promise eternally persistent beauty? The Turn into the final Couplet explains. Commemorated in verse, the beloved’s reputation for beauty will be read age upon age. Arrogant? Perhaps. But in Shakespeare’s case, no idle boast. The sonnet has lasted, now, over four centuries. Of course, we really don’t know anything decisive about the beloved!
Shakespeare’s English Sonnet form uses structural imbalance to multiply the power of the turn into a final theme: twelve lines over and against two lines with the impact of a punchline. The compression of that stinger Couplet packs more punch than the leisurely reflection of a final sestet in an Italian Sonnet.
Figures of Speech and the Sonnet Tradition
In English poetry, the sonnet has proven to be flexible and tenacious. Many great poets have composed sonnets: Milton (17th Century), 19th Century Romantics—Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats—, 20th Century innovators like e. e. cummings. Let’s sample three very different sonneteers. As we approach these poems, let’s introduce the concept of Figurative Language:
Figures of Speech
Figures of speech are usually divided into two major groups:
- Scheme: patterns of sound or idea (Schemes)
- Trope: figures that play on the meaning of words and expressions (Tropes)
Note: You may use the word Trope in the context of the world of social media. Traditionally, a trope is “uses words in senses beyond their literal meanings. … Tropes change the meanings of words, by a “turn’” of sense” (Trope).
Analysts count scores of rhetorical figures. However, there are only a few Tropes you need to understand to follow sophisticated conversations.
- Simile: “an explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words ‘as’ or ‘like,’ as in Wordsworth’s line: I wandered lonely as a cloud” (Simile)
- Metaphor: “a figure in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another … so as to suggest some common quality … assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison: e.g. referring to a man as that pig. … Everyday language is made up of metaphorical phrases that pass unnoticed as “dead” metaphors, like the branch of an organization ( Metaphor)
- Paradox: “a statement or expression so surprisingly self-contradictory as to provoke us into seeking another sense or context in which it would be true. … Wordsworth’s line ‘The Child is father of the Man’ and Shakespeare’s ‘the truest poetry is the most feigning’ are notable literary examples”( Paradox)
John Donne
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| Oliver, Isaac. (before 1622). Portrait of John Donne. |
John Donne (1572–1631) was a widely travelled courtier and diplomat for Queen Elizabeth who composed knotty, sometimes amorous verse. At 49, he became a Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, composing devotions on mortality and religious verses called Holy Sonnets. For a century or so, Donne has been a favorite with literature teachers for thorny, hard-to-follow verse that can drive students batty. (For more information on John Donne, explore Hester’s note) Indeed, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great 18th Century critic, complained about metaphysical poets (Dr. Johnson’s term) like Donne:
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty[4] surprises; but … though [readers] sometimes admire, they are seldom pleased (Johnson).
[4] Subtilty: 18th Century spelling of subtlety.
So, have I scared you off? You’re brave, right? Let’s tackle one of Donne’s thorniest Holy Sonnets. Maybe this reading will help:
John Donne, Holly Sonnet, #10.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;[5]
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d[6] town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy[7] in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,[8]
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall[9] me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish[10] me.
[5] But knock: Compare Revelation 3.20, Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
[6] Usurp’d: i.e. usurped, another way of saying a city under siege by an enemy.
[7] Viceroy: a governor ruling on behalf of a king
[8] Fain: i.e. gladly willing
[9] Enthrall: i.e. enslaved
[10] Ravished: in this case, raped
Try reading the sonnet aloud, listening for the rhythms and the rhyme scheme. Which is this: an Italian Sonnet or a Shakespearian Sonnet? I’ll bet you can tell!
Now, the footnotes point up the difference in diction separating us from the Age of Elizabeth. Still, even with the glosses provided, can we make sense of this challenging text? Before looking for secret codes, start on a small scale. Who is talking to whom? About what?
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God”—clearly, the poem’s voice directly addresses the Trinity—the Christian God in three persons. The sonnet is a prayer. But what sort of prayer with such harsh images of destruction? The difficulty of the verse matches the daunting challenge that Christians have faced through the ages, articulated by the Apostle Paul:
Donne gives anguished voice to the great challenge of repentance: how does a person of faith break the habits of sin and rebellion and learn to obey God’s will? Donne captures the apparent impossibility of it all in a series of metaphors and paradoxes.
- Stanza 1: God’s quiet invitations to faith seem inadequate to a sinner who feels he must be destroyed to find new life.
- Stanza 2: the poet invokes the metaphor of a walled city laboring to admit the besieging God but remaining captive to sin.
- Stanza 3: the metaphor is that of a would-be lover who must break the bonds of marriage to an evil spouse pleading with God to set him free by imprisoning him.
- Final Couplet: a burning paradox—one can only be free by being enslaved to God, chaste by being “ravished.”
These metaphors and paradoxes open the sonnet and a new perspective on Romans 7. Remember: poetry uses everyday figures of speech. It just uses them more creatively!
Gerard Manly Hopkins: God’s Elusive Grandeur
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| Gerard Manley Hopkins. (1918). Photograph |
An Anglo-Catholic priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins felt that, as a sacrament, he should stop writing poetry. Then, in 1875, five German nuns perished aboard a sinking passenger ship, Hopkins commemorated their faith in The Wreck of the Deutschland and the poetic floodgates opened, often in sonnets.
Gerard Manley Hopkins. (1877) God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?[11]
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade;[12] bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this,[13] nature is never spent;[14]
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods[15] with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
[11] Reck his rod: that is recognize God’s rod of authority
[12] Trade: in Victorian society, trade was the engine of economic growth, but it was nevertheless despised as a sign of social inferiority. The aristocrat and the gentleman or woman had independent means and did not dirty their hands with trade.
[13] For all this: the word for in this case means despite—even though all this is true …
[14] Spent: i.e. depleted
[15] Broods: i.e. sitting protectively over unhatched eggs, as does a mother hen
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. This is Hopkins’ great theme, one easy to misread. Hopkins never writes of God’s grandeur as a glaring coat of enamel. The word “charged” should be read as elusive potentiality, a compressed, unreleased electrical force.
The first Stanza in this Sonnet poses a problem: why do men not recognize God’s glory? The striking images suggest that divine splendor only rarely emerges from hidden places. Light suddenly flashes from shaken foil. The iridescence of oil flashes only as it gathers “to a greatness” before dropping. One must have faithful eyes to catch these glimpses, and Stanza 2 laments the life conditions that blunt our spiritual sensitivity: the trudging, tiresome routine of life, labor and commercial trade. We can’t even feel the soil through the shoes we wear.
In Stanza 3, the Sestet, the sonnet’s Turn leads to redemption. Deep down in all things lies a “dearest freshness” connecting us to spirit. Dawn brings new life following darkness and over all lies the warm, loving protection of the Holy Ghost, the third divine member of the Christian Trinity.
Hopkins always experimented boldly with untraditional metrical rhythms. Read the poem aloud or listen to the audio. Feel the force of stressed syllables. A Spondee is a foot in which both syllables are stressed: shook foil; bleared, smeared; foot feel; brown brink, world broods, warm breast, bright wings. Each spondee slows the verse and confers weight on themes.
Claude McKay
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| Claude McKay. (N.D.) Photographic Portrait. |
Born in Jamaica, Claude McKay emigrated to Harlem and became associated with the Harlem Renaissance. As a poet, he composed in highly traditional verse forms, often the sonnet. However, unlike other writers within that movement, McKay made little effort to adopt a sophisticated cool. He raged in a full-throated roar while retaining a poet’s sense of the complexity of things.
Claude McKay (1921). “America”
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
What do you think? Do you find this easier reading? How does McKay use figurative language and the structure of a Shakespearean sonnet to rage against the social forms that bind his people? How does he use numerous Metaphors to process his ambiguous relationship to the “cultured hell” which he also loves? How does he see America’s future?
References
Donne, J. Poem #74. In Holy Sonnets. (1633). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god.
Hester, M. T. (2006). Donne, John. In D. S. Kaslan, D. S. (Ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001/acref-9780195169218-e-0141?rskey=lSIn2y&result=7.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. (1877). “The Caged Skylark.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44391/the-caged-skylark.
Irony. (2015). [Article]. In C. Baldick (Ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443-e-615?rskey=Dq616h&result=9
Johnson, S. (1779). Excerpt from “Preface to Abraham Cowley.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69382/from-lives-of-the-poets.
Oliver, I. (before 1622). Portrait of John Donne. London: National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1849. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Donne_by_Isaac_Oliver.jpg.
Paradox. (2015). [Article]. In C. Baldick. (Ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443-e-834.
Petrarch, F. (1368). Sonnet VII T. W. Higginson [Trans.]. In T. W. Higginson (Ed.) Fifteen Sonnets of Petrarch. New York: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1903. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50307/50307-h/50307-h.htm.
Petrarch. (c. 1420-1430). Il Canzoniere. Folio #: fol. 001r. [Manuscript Illustration]. Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library. https://library-artstor-org.ezproxy.bethel.edu/asset/BODLEIAN_10310369599.
Picone, M. (2002). Petrarch, Francesco. In P. Hainsworth & D. Robey (Ed.s), The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780198183327.001.0001/acref-9780198183327-e-2435.
Rhyme. (2015). [Article]. In C. Baldick (Ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443-e-983?rskey=1uILGa&result=4.
Saville, J. (2006). Hopkins, Gerard Manley. In D. D. Kastan (Ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001/acref-9780195169218-e-0225?rskey=8BCH16&result=1.
Trope. (2015). [Article]. In C. Baldick (Ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443-e-1172.
Yeats, W. B. (May, 1889). Down by the Salley Gardens. In The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. London: Kegan Paul & Co. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50311/down-by-the-salley-gardens.
language and culture associated with broad, often less educated folk culture. E.g. pop vs. classical music.
an idealized conception of passionate love with strong influence from Arab verse and developed among the troubadours in 12th Century Southern France. The “adored lady is modelled on the dependence of feudal follower on his lord; the love itself was a religious passion, ennobling, ever unfulfilled, and ever increasing” (Courtly Love). A conception of sexual love that remains pervasively influential in modern culture and its arts.
within a poem, the repeated pattern of rhyme that defines stanzas and shapes the poem’s themes. Designated for analysis by letters: e.g. A-B-A-B, where the end sounds of the A lines rhyme with each other as do the B lines. Yeats' short poem "A Coat" begins A-B-B-A:
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat ...
divisions of a poem rather like a prose paragraph. Stanzas are labelled according to their number of lines.
a verse stanza of 3 lines.
a verse stanza of 6 lines.
a Japanese poetical genre dating from the 17th Century in which 17 syllables deftly evoke a poignant scene contrasting sabi (loneliness) with karumi (lightness) through a cutting syllable which both continues and shifts the poem’s theme.
A short rhyming lyric poem, usually of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.
(Petrarchan sonnet) a (Shakespearean sonnet) a 14 line sonnet with two quatrains and a final sestet, rhyming abab-cdcd-efefef. … The thematic turn comes in line 9, between the 2nd quatrain and the sestet.
verse stanzas of 3 lines
the assumed identity or fictional ‘I’ (literally a ‘mask’) assumed by a writer in a literary work; thus the speaker in a lyric poem, or the narrator in a fictional narrative (Persona).
A shift, often a contrast, between the themes of the opening and closing stanzas in a sonnet.
an established practice—whether in technique, style, structure, or subject-matter—commonly adopted in artistic works by customary agreement or precedent rather than by natural necessity (“Convention”).
a division of the poem rather like a prose paragraph and characterized by patterns of rhyme or meter. Stanzas are labelled according to their number of lines.
in English verse, a metrical pattern of feet with two syllables, the second stressed: ta-DA.
pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse (Meter). In English verse, a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables: e.g. Jack Spratt could eat no fat//his wife could eat no lean.//And so betwixt them both, you see,//The licked the platter clean.
groups of syllables taken as units of poetic meter regardless of word-boundaries. Usually defined by patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables
in English verse, a metrical pattern with 5 feet per line.
a verse stanza of 3 lines.
a verse stanza of 2 lines.
(Shakespearean sonnet) a 14 line sonnet with three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab-cdcd-efef-gg. … The thematic turn comes with the final couplet (Sonnet).
a figure of speech that makes a point by asserting an obvious exaggeration. E.g. I must have jogged a million miles this month.
an expression that departs from the accepted literal sense or from the normal order of words, or in which an emphasis is produced by patterns of sound.
“a general category of figurative language that includes any artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words” (Mann). Figures of speech comprised of repeated sounds, words, ideas or sentence patterns: e.g. alliteration, anaphora, catalogue, parallelism.
a figure of speech involving a play on the meaning of words or expressions. E.g. hyperbole, irony, metaphor, paradox, simile.
“an explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words ‘as’ or ‘like,’ as in Wordsworth’s line: I wandered lonely as a cloud” (Simile).
“a figure in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another … so as to suggest some common quality … assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison: e.g. referring to a man as that pig. … Everyday language is made up of metaphorical phrases that pass unnoticed as “dead” metaphors, like the branch of an organization.” (Metaphor).
“a statement or expression so surprisingly self-contradictory as to provoke us into seeking another sense or context in which it would be true” (Paradox). E.g. Wordsworth: The Child is father of the Man (“My Heart Leaps Up, 1802).
(English sonnet) a 14 line sonnet with three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab-cdcd-efef-gg. … The thematic turn comes with the final couplet (Sonnet).
a metrical foot pairing stressed syllables: e.g. JACK SPRATT … Spondees are generally exceptions to the dominant metrical pattern and serve to slow the rhythm for emphasis.
“figures in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or ex-pression normally denoting another … so as to suggest some common quality … assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a com-parison: e.g. referring to a man as that pig. … Everyday language is made up of metaphorical phrases that pass unnoticed as “dead” metaphors, like the branch of an organization.” (Metaphor).