The Golden Way The Hebrew Sonnet during The Renaissance and Baroque Periods
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'The Book of Psalms and the Early Modern Sonnet', Renaissance Studies, 29 (2015), 632-49.
Psalms and sonnets were the most popular lyric genres in early modern English writing. Little scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the common ground between the two forms, largely because they have been perceived as incompatible, with one epitomizing the sacred, and the other, the secular, literature of their day. Nonetheless, sixteenth-century writers often moved from one genre to the other; the first sonnet sequence in English (Anne Lock's A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, 1560), takes the form of a translation of Psalm 51; and paraphrases of other psalms appear in sonnet sequences by Barnabe Barnes and Henry Lok. The figure of David as psalmist and poet is invoked in sonnets as well as psalms, and the diction of the biblical texts was harnessed and remade for the secular tradition. This essay argues for a close relationship between psalms and sonnets, and through an examination of the influences exerted on both genres, including contemporary poetics and Petrarchism, it suggests that both the biblical Book of Psalms, and the broader tradition of psalm translation, provided an important model for the early modern English sonnet sequence.
SONNET: A Journal of Poetry, 2018
The Early Italian Sonnet, SONNET: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, August Academic Press, Inc., 2018.
Obscure Configurations of Desire. Notes on the Baroque Mythological Sonnet
Seventeenth-century Spain produced an impressive amount of mythological poetry with virtually every lyrical genre and all poetic registers represented. In this poetic treasure house we find mythological canciones, sonnets, and letrillas alongside minor poetic forms, and serious as well as burlesque versions of famous classical myths such as those of Apollo and Daphne, Narcissus, Ganymede, Venus and Adonis, Pyramus and Tisbe, Hero and Leander. On the grounds of this generic and tonal diversity, supposedly, and because individual authors vary considerably from one another in terms of style and emphasis, scholars usually approach this material from a highly specialized, microscopic point of view. Indeed, this modus operandi produces splendid fundamental research; yet it is not the only possible way of approaching the material. A different and complementary kind of results may be obtained from a generalist approach to the material. From the macroscopic perspective applied in the present essay, baroque mythological poetry is not a loosely bound bouquet of autonomous lyrical flowers, but a coherent corpus of texts which, despite their differences, answer to the same aesthetic laws. Comparative studies consist exactly in the pursuit of general characteristics, constants, or common denominators, often with an eye to how these relate to the culture that produced them. And indeed, pursuing the poetic laws of the baroque mythological corpus yields interesting insights into seventeenth-century patterns of thought regarding a series of issues that were at odds with contemporary ideology, but could be related to and explored through classical myth. One such issue was sexual desire, a topic whose representation in literature the theologians at Trent had recently prohibited. The period’s fundamental interrelation of myth and desire is eloquently documented in contemporary art, which explored the amorous adventures of the pagan gods to create a peculiar kind of erudite erotica. Literary authors were not far behind their artistic colleagues. Mythological poetry, epic, and drama generally exploited the stories about the loves of the gods related by ancient poets such as, notably, Ovid. However, one genre in particular cultivated the relation between myth and desire: the sonnet. Considering the lyrical heritage of Petrarch, who made this particular poetic form the principal medium for exploiting amorous sentiment and unfulfilled desire, this was not really surprising. Although they also used the genre to other poetic ends, seventeenth-century Spanish poets generally followed the author of the Rime sparse in relating the sonnet form to the theme of desire. Indeed, it appears that seventeenth-century poets could not imagine a more arousing combination of material, form, and theme than the one provided by the mythological sonnet. However, seventeenth-century mythological poetry was not a simple pretext for exploiting matters that were else liable to censure. The combined facts that Trent had banned books dealing with lascivious and obscene issues and that erotically frank myths had always been attributed allegorical significations so as to comply with Stoic and Christian morality, made things slightly more complicated. In the 17th century, classical myth was by no means an innocent or neutral material. Quite to the contrary, it entailed an array of highly problematic connotations (paganism, immorality, lasciviousness, and so forth). Authors who used myth as the basis of their compositions were aware of this and cannot reasonably be believed to have considered mythology a comfortable shortcut to bypass censure. They must be understood, rather, as consciously playing with, simultaneously affirming and challenging the precarious double bind in which they found themselves.
Invented in Italy in the thirteenth century, the sonnet was brought to a high form of development in the fourteenth century by Francesco Petrarch , Italian poet and humanist best remembered now for his sonnets dedicated to an idealized lady named Laura glimpsed in a church, and with whom he fell in love at first sight, or so the legend goes. Laura's true identity is unknown; supposedly, she married someone else and, being ideally virtuous as well as beautiful, was permanently unavailable. There's no evidence Petrarch ever talked to her.
The Sonnet ‘Cure’: Renaissance Poetics to Romantic Prosaics
Reading and Mental Health, 2019
This chapter traces the therapeutic value of literature to Renaissance poetics. For Samuel Daniel (Defence of Rhyme, 1602), the poet made form out of human chaos through the creation of structured rhythmic patterns, a holdfast against disorder. George Puttenham (Art of English Poesy, 1589), drew a direct analogy between poet and physician: a poem offers, cathartically, ‘one short sorrowing’ as ‘the remedy of a long and grievous sorrow’. These concerns were reintroduced into the modern lyric tradition, the authors suggest, through the work of Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, for whom ‘the turnings intricate of verse’ effected ‘a sorrow that is not sorrow … to hear of’.
The Protestant Reformation and the English Amatory Sonnet Sequence: Seeking Salvation in Love Poetry
2017
Author(s): Shufran, Lauren | Advisor(s): Keilen, Sean | Abstract: When he described poetry as that which should “delight to move men to take goodnesse in hand,” Philip Sidney was articulating the widely held Renaissance belief that poetry’s principal function is edification. Scholars have tended to observe a tension between Sidney’s description and the English sonnet sequence, as though didacticism and love poetry are fundamentally in opposition. But Petrarch’s Canzoniere–from which these sequences derive–is a conversion narrative; and the perceived opposition between amatory poetry and didacticism dissolves when we read English Petrarchism as a conversion genre. This dissertation begins with the suspicion that the theological infrastructure of these sequences is underplayed in the criticism. It is interested in what happens when we encounter these collections awake to the historical fact that Petrarchism and the Protestant Reformation came to England at the same time.A.E.B. Coldiro...
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As well as being one of the oldest and best known of all poetic forms, the sonnet is also one of the most widely travelled. Critical studies of the sonnet in English have traced its historical development from its Italian predecessors, through its domestication in Elizabethan England, to its remarkable popularity among modern British, Irish, and American poets. There is still much to learn, however, about the geography of the sonnet. This essay looks at some of the ways in which the sonnet has been shaped in places distant from its familiar European cultural domain: in Roy…
Notes on Hebrew Baroque Poetry
The present discussion offers some observations concerning the treatment of several Baroque qualities in Hebrew Baroque poetry. It will focus on the work of three poets that brought that poetry to its peak in Italy, namely, Moses Zacuto (c. fluent in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese and the learned among them, being well-versed in those literatures became easily familiar with their Baroque styles. These styles, however, were not only readily available, and as "state of the art" poetry highly attractive, but also easily adoptable, having much in common with Hebrew literary traditions. Immanuel Frances summed up his ars poetica "Meteq Sefatayim" or "Sweetness of lips" arguing, that a poem, even if perfect in prosody, that lacks "sharpness" is nothing more then a body without a soul. 4 He thus coined the characteristic quality of Hebrew Baroque poetry: "sharpness", or ḥarifut in Hebrew. In this term he wrapped together agudeza, acutezza, cultismo, conceptismo, and meraviglia with no distinction, attesting to its triple roots, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Hebrew. The term ḥarifut or sharpness is a commonplace in the field of Talmud, where ḥarif denotes a sophisticated scholar; and an extremely sophisticated method of study is called pilpul -meaning peppering, or savoring with hot spices. The
5 PHILOSOPHICAL SONNETS Through a baroque lens
The Routledge Research Companion to the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. London & New York: Routledge . 164-175., 2017
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote very few sonnets with moral and philosophical content. In his edition of the Obras Completas (Complete Works), Méndez Plancarte includes a total of eight in this category. In a more recent edition, González Boixo selects six of those sonnets, but adds four others not chosen by Méndez Plancarte, for a total of ten. These new additions, however, remain highly debatable, since they can be logically inserted into other categories. The nun's restricted use of sonnets as a vehicle for deeper reflection is surprising, considering that many critics agree that these compositions, despite being so few, are some of the best poems that Sor Juana ever wrote and are among the best-known. Octavio Paz states, "Some of Sor Juana's moral sonnets are among her finest work" (Traps 299), a critical assessment that, unfortunately, did not translate into an expanded commentary by the Mexican poet and critic, who devoted scarcely two pages to the eight sonnets selected as philosophical by Méndez Plancarte. We must also reflect on the category of "philosophical sonnets" and how it has been conceived by the most important editors of Sor Juana's works. What is philosophical about these sonnets? What are the critical parameters used in order to group them together under a "moral and philosophical" heading? In his edition of the complete works, Méndez Plancarte organizes the first volume (Lírica personal; Secular Poetry) by poetic meter, stating that chronology would be impossible and that thematic considerations will result in unevenness and confusion. However, in the case of the sonnets, he divides them thematically and begins the section with the eight "filosófico-morales" I already mentioned (numbers 145 to 152 in his edition). Unfortunately, he does not provide critical parameters for his selection. In her edition of Inundación Castálida (Castalian Flood), Georgina Sabat de Rivers points out the absence of a rigorous sequence of texts in the original edition of 1689. She also reflects on the difficulties of grouping poems by thematic content due to the fact that many begin with an initial topic but end up shifting to another, making it hard to select a single topic as an organizing principle ("Introducción" 31-32). Sabat de Rivers decides to follow the existing sequence in the original volume of Inundación, but does not relinquish her desire for a logical scheme based on specific topics. In her introduction to the edition she groups together all the texts in the volume under different thematic clusters. She identifies as philosophical six of the eight sonnets chosen by Méndez Plancarte. However, she adds a different sonnet with a religious topic, a poem that refers to Pontius Pilate, #78 in her edition, which Méndez Plancarte includes in the category "Sacred Sonnets" (#207). Sabat de Rivers also includes as philosophical a romance, a glosa, and