Letteratura inglese 2

THOMAS CAMPION

Good examples of this genre

He’s talking about a woman he loves.

A final refrain, something is being repeated

A garden…..

Take a part of the forest and turn it into a garden, the very beauty of the garden it’s his interaction with both the humans and the nature

A garden must be protected from the outside world

Almost a heavenly garden

Roses: red, colour of love

Lilies: colour of youth

This woman is delectable

Orient pearl: coming from the east and are very luxurious

When you are pregnant you could lose your teeth

Cherries: lips enclosing the pearls (teeth)

Face and body harmonious: beauty

Rosebuds tend to appear in may

If these cherries are the lips, you can not buy them (doesn't matter who you are) until they shout “cherry ripe”. As cherries are so precious and don’t last a long time, women have to hurry up

Is she selling her lips?

Her eyebrows are beautiful but at the same time are threatening

Come nigh: come close

Angels: angels in heaven and a

time of coin that existed in england

Dividing a woman in multiple parts as if she is something to be sold

SONNET IX FROM SIDNEY’S ASTROPHIL AND STELLA

Astrophil: a star lover, the liver of stella

Names are in different language as if it’s impossible for them to communicate

In this sonnets, she’s representing through the imagine of a house

This is a court, so it’s an imagine of wealth, harmony and beauty

She was a big woman (she could have many children)

It’s described her face

As if nature itself has chosen the things to describe this woman

Front made of alabaster

Roof gold: blonde hair

Door: her mouth made of a red stone and a lock of pearl (teeth)

Porches: cheek marble mist red and white 15

LETTERATURA INGLESE 2 A-L 2022-2023 ZENNARO GIADA

This woman is old

Windows: eyes supposed to be the mirror of the soul. Through her eyes you can see her soul. They are blue

Blue eyes and blonde hair: white=right, black=wrong

Eyes made of touch: a black stone, so stella has black

SHAKESPEARE SONNET 129

An answer to sonnet 116

Love as lust in action

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame: spirit as sperm

Lust: wasting your sperm in a way of shame (bacino, fianchi)

He inverts the order of words, so he is expressing something (last action, action last=chiasmo in which you have a repetition of words) ………

This insult are thrown randomly without an order

As soon as you have sex, you are disgusted by it

Men have this moment of extreme pleasure when they have sex and then it’s over. So you enjoy it for a moment and then you hate it

Swallowed bait: un’esca

The woman drives you to madness

You are extreme, unreasonable when you had what you wanted, when you're having what you wanted and when you’re about to have it

Bliss in proof:

Woe: evel, pain what you feel when somebody you love dies

Moment of desire transforms women into heaven but this will lead to

HellHell: LA RESURREZIONE DELLA CARNE

It belongs to the 2nd group → the 1st one is a group of sonnets from 1 to 120 in which Shakespeare refers to a young man and in the very first sonnets, he asks this man to get marriage because he is so beautiful that he must perpetuate his beauty through his children, since his individual beauty will not last long, it is very important that they should get married and imprint this beauty on following generations. Then 16 LETTERATURA INGLESE 2 A-L 2022-2023 ZENNARO GIADA the sonnets moved to a more contemplative or a more passionate declaration of love from the narrator (the I of the poem) to this young man - Then there's the 2nd group where he seems to be addressing a woman and this is the woman (→ sonnet 130, the dark hair woman who was loved in spite of being human - not being perfect → we might think that we're talking about the same woman but again we have no idea whether this sonnet were put together an ordered put in order.

by Shakespeare or by somebody else → it allows us to read the forms from what they are.

It’s about love but in a different kind of love.

There is quite a different tone and also quite a complex text.

The rhyme scheme is still in ABABA CDC DFEFGG and there’s the couplet standing on its own and providing a strong conclusion.

However, the 3 quarters do not seem to be as clearly divided as happened before and especially from 1 - 9 to the other, we have an enjambment = is a figure of speech which in English is also called “run on lines” that is when the sense of the sentence asks us to unite the end of the line with the beginning of the following life → in this case he's asking us to have a pause (because it is at the end of the line) but at the same time we are waiting for the verb → sense of wait.

However, once we have the verb, we have been tricked because in line there’s the direct object and in the 2nd one there are the

verb and then the subject. - So, this is a poem that presents a word that is upside down = is the word that is no longer fixed. - Here, he is saying that something wrong is going to happen → it is so bizarre that it is upsetting the whole rhythm of the line.

Lust = accidia, which is one of the capital sins according to the Christian religion → there are 7 several capital sins that tempt us → pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth → some of them, they have to do with the body while others with the mind. All these capital sins are natural impulses which become overwhelmed. For example, with gluttony, it means the moment in which your mind is so obsessed with food that you forget anything else, you're not actually hungry → it is just that you want food you want to put things in your mouth → pathological condition that makes you forget all rules. The same goes with lust: it is not simply desire or sexuality or the joy of sex; it is a desire.

had already the little baby inside the woman during the sexual act does not provide anything towards the creation of the baby but simply provides a receptacle.

So, there is this wrong idea in early modern medicine (ignorance) that main sperm already has everything, so the waste, the uterus is the receptacle - so in the sperm there is already the soul of the little baby and so lust of action = the act of love without feelings, is the expensive spirit in a waste of shape - this 1st sentence expresses all the disgust felt and the idea of sex without love.

Lust is obsessing desire, so lust in action that finally makes love is expensive spirit, but before actions lust is bloody, cruel etc. - we can hear that by the enjambment. This sequence of adjectives expresses horror, repulsion and disgust - these adjectives can also be read as a climax.

BUT what is important is that their accumulation is

what gives strength to these two➔ lines → it is an enumeration which works by accumulation and it is so strong that it goes on in the next stanza in which we continue not with enumeration itself but by describing last until action.

- No sooner you make love to a person you don't love out of this obsession that you➔ despise yourself the other person and lust itself → you look for it beyond no reason, but no sooner you have had it that you hated like a “swallo’d bait” → this image is important to understand = a bait is “esca” (when you fish, you put a beta, the fish sees it and wants to eat it so it swallowed it → by swallowing the bait, it swallowed also the hook which must be extremely painful and of course the fish dies → so you have one moment in which you hate this bait you swallowed → your own desire has given you → this image expresses this idea that you hunt but once you are➔ satisfied you hate it.

- This poem

expresses meaning through its rhythm which started with enjambment, enumeration and then continued to be breathless, in a way imitating the rhythm of the person who is making love in an obsessive way.

Now we are extreme - beyond reason when our last is had (past), when it's heavy (present) and when it's in the quest to have = when we are looking for it.

When you want to make love, you think of it as a bliss - as a moment of joy. It's interesting because the word lust, today and in Shakespeare's time, is one of the capital sins; but in Anglo-Saxon it meant joy. So in a way, Christianity takes and destroys this joy, transforming it into a capital sin.

This is a bliss when you think about it, but once you have to prove it, you prove a woe, which means trouble.