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Poetry

The Renaissance was a time of explosive growth for poetry. Renaissance poets revived the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome and expanded the medieval* traditions of religious poetry. They also developed a new poetic form—the sonnet*—that swept through Europe.

CLASSICAL POETRY

As part of the educational backbone of humanism*, Greek and Latin poetry played a central role in the Renaissance. During this time, the word poetry referred to the verse of ancient Greece and Rome rather than to vernacular* poetry.

Access to Classical Poetry. Anyone who hoped to study classical* poetry first had to learn Latin and Greek. Latin had been the language of learning throughout the Middle Ages, but the version that many scholars of the early Renaissance knew differed from the Latin of ancient Roman poetry. Scholars had to relearn elements of the language in order to study the poetry on its own terms.

The Italian scholar PETRARCH (1304–1374) realized that ancient Greek literature would be essential to the rebirth of classical culture that he hoped to create. However, like most people west of Greece, he had not mastered Greek. Instruction in Greek had begun to spread throughout Europe by the 1400s, but the majority of Europeans never became skilled in the language. Still, the recovery of ancient Greek literature is one of the great achievements of Renaissance humanism.

Many people had an in-depth knowledge of a great deal of classical literature during the Renaissance. Most of these people learned to read ancient Greek and Roman poetry in humanist schools. Cheap printed editions also helped to make classical texts accessible. Other people became familiar with classical stories and ideas indirectly. For example, they might learn the elements of a story from paintings or sculptures.

Interpretation and Imitation. Renaissance schoolmasters often instructed their students to keep two notebooks, called commonplace books, while studying classical literature. In one notebook, students copied lines that explained virtues, common feelings, and social practices. In the other, they listed expressions that they might use in their own writing. This practice may have affected the way that students approached classical texts. Notes that they made in their books suggest that they were on the lookout for items for these notebooks as they read. Allusions* to classical poetry became a common language for Renaissance artists and authors and artists. Writers who composed in Latin and in the vernacular expected their readers to know the classical texts that formed the basis of their works. Even the English playwright William SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616), who wrote for all levels of society, could be confident that his audience would understand basic references to classical literature.

RELIGIOUS POETRY

English Protestant writers produced a great deal of religious poetry. Their writings reflected English literary trends as well as the issues of the time. The first publication of English Protestant religious songs was Miles Coverdale's Ghoostly Psalms and Spirituall Songes (ca. 1538). Coverdale based it on German reformer Martin LUTHER's book of hymns (1524). Verse translations of the Psalms began to appear in the 1570s. These works aimed to make Scripture accessible to people from all levels of society.

Thomas Wyatt's Certayne Psalmes (1549) brought Renaissance verse forms—especially the sonnet—to English sacred poetry. In the 1590s the popularity of English sonnet sequences inspired collections of religious sonnets. Biblical translation remained another major type of sacred poetry. Many of England's Renaissance poets tried their hands at verse translations of the Psalms, including Philip SIDNEY, Francis BACON, and John MILTON. Their works often included experiments in meter and personal expressions of faith.

Some religious verse combined secular forms and religious themes. In the 1570s the French poet Guillaume Du Bartas created two epics* based on biblical stories, La Judit and La Sepmaine. Both works were translated into English and inspired a series of English biblical epics. In another popular form, the sacred complaint, biblical sinners tell the stories of their lives and explain how their misdeeds led to guilt and pain. Edmund SPENSER (ca. 1552–1599) brought Christian allegory and the Italian romantic epic together in The Faerie Queene (1596). Later poets drew on Spenser's religious themes, especially those of inner spiritual conflict.

The 1600s saw two distinct styles emerge in religious verse. The first was the passionate style of John DONNE's Poems and George Herbert's The Temple, both published in 1633. These works include detailed, deeply personal reflections on the soul. Sacred verse in the Baroque* style, by contrast, focused on complex issues of theology*. It also used highly emotional language. For example, in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail God, King of the Jews; 1611), Aemelia Lanyer described Saint Lawrence, "Yielding his naked body to the fire, / To taste this sweetness, such was his desire." Poets such as Herbert and John Milton (1608–1674) also wrote in this style.

In the mid-1600s the English monarchy collapsed and the Church of England temporarily ceased to be the nation's official church. These changes helped to bring the period of Renaissance sacred verse to an end. The religious works of Robert Herrick (Noble Numbers, 1648) and Henry Vaughan (Silex Scintillans, 1650, 1655) show a defeated attitude. Their poems speak of the lost innocence of Eden, of infancy, and of England.

SONNETS

First created in the 1200s, the sonnet form spread across Europe during the Renaissance. It enjoyed popularity of one kind or another for almost 500 years. Although it began as straightforward love poetry, the sonnet had become a highly technical form of rhetoric* by the end of the Renaissance.

The First Sonnets. The sonnet began as the invention of Giacomo da Lentino, a member of the court of Holy Roman Emperor* Frederick II, in the first half of the 1200s. Lentino's sonnet had two parts—an octave (a group of eight lines) followed by a sestet (a group of six lines). Lentino may have used either an Italian peasant song or an existing poetic form as the basis for the octave. In each of the fifteen sonnets that he wrote, he used only four or five different end-of-line rhymes.

The sonnet's history as an important literary form began in the last decade of the 1200s, when the Italian poet Dante Alighieri chose to include sonnets in his The New Life. He combined the poems with a prose story to declare his narrator's love for Beatrice, a beautiful and virtuous woman. In the story, Beatrice never returns the poet's love, and she dies young.

Petrarch soon set out to surpass Dante in writing sonnets. His Canzoniere (Book of Songs) told the story of his unreturned love for Laura, another beautiful and virtuous woman who died early in life. Beatrice and Laura quickly became the models for sonneteers across Italy, as poets grieved the death of nearly perfect women who had not returned their love. Petrarch's friend, the Italian poet Giovanni BOCCACCIO (1313–1375), and the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1342–1400) became some of Petrarch's earliest imitators. More than 170 versions of the Canzoniere went to print between its first edition (in 1470) and 1600.

In all of these sonnet sequences, readers learn more about the hopelessness of the poets' love for these women than about the women themselves. In fact, it is difficult to identify most of these ladies historically. Today's scholars see these poems not as true accounts of love and devotion but as displays of the poet's skill. While these poems outwardly focused on love, many poets used their works to point out moral issues—especially the greed of the court and the church.

Petrarchan Sonnets. Petrarch's name soon became an adjective—Petrarchan—to describe sonnets about a lover whom the poet could not have and the poet's resulting agony. Two major Petrarchan writers surfaced in Italy in the 1400s and 1500s. The first, Il Cariteo, and his followers put many of Petrarch's sonnets to music and also composed original sonnet sequences. However, it was Pietro Bembo's Rime (1530) that set the standard for Petrarchan imitation in a sonnet. In 1545 nearly 100 writers published Petrarchan sonnets in the style of Bembo in a collection called Diverse Rimes. The book sold well—especially to foreign travelers. It also made the Petrarchan sonnet the accepted form for Italian sonnets.

During the early 1500s, writers in France, Spain, Portugal, and England began creating sonnets in their own languages. In 1552, another Italian sonnet collection appeared in Naples: Rimes of Various Illustrious Neapolitans. After its publication, a rush of sonnets spread across Europe.

Birth of the English Sonnet. English writers began experimenting with the sonnet form around 1527. As a young man, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) began writing English sonnets after a trip to France. In these first English sonnets, he changed the sestet by making its last two lines a couplet*. His friend Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (ca. 1517–1547), revised the English sonnet further. He divided the octave into two quatrains (groups of four lines). The first four lines of the sestet made a third quatrain. Like Wyatt, he ended each sonnet with a couplet. This became the accepted form of the English sonnet.

Wyatt's and Surrey's sonnets did not appear in print during their lifetimes. Their first publication was in 1557, when publisher Richard Tottel included them in his enormously popular Songes and Sonettes. The book popularized the sonnet as an English literary form.

The Sonnet Craze. Around 1582, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) wrote Astrophel and Stella. In this Petrarchan sequence, Sidney pined for "Stella"—his name for a real woman, Penelope Devereux. In 1591, five years after his death, the publication of Astrophel and Stella kicked off a craze for English sonnet sequences that lasted for nearly twenty years. The fashion for sequences, in turn, made individual sonnets popular. Philosophical, moral, and satiric* sonnets, as well as sonnets for special occasions, often appeared in small groupings or as independent works.

The most popular writers immediately following Sidney were Samuel Daniel (Delia, 1592) and Michael Drayton (Ideas Mirrour, 1594). Both had a mournful quality that other writers imitated. As time went on, however, Drayton adopted a more sarcastic and self-mocking tone.

Edmund Spenser's complicated Amoretti (1595) won much admiration in its time. In this sequence to his fiancée, Spenser revised the English sonnet's rhyme scheme and forced himself to rhyme more lines with the same sounds. Spenser's new form proved to be too difficult for most poets to imitate.

In some ways, the Sonnets of William Shakespeare, published in 1609, were traditional. Although his wordplay was especially witty, it clearly reflected the rhetoric of his time. He also used Sidney's form and Petrarch's themes. However, he questioned established ideas by twisting some Petrarchan elements. For instance, instead of yearning for one person in his sonnets, Shakespeare addressed his poems to two different people. The first is a young man. Today's scholars still debate whether the sonnets that Shakespeare wrote to him are about a close friendship or a romantic relationship. The second is a woman, but she has few of the qualities of Beatrice and Laura. She is married to someone else, yet she and the speaker are involved in a bitter, sexual relationship. Because of Shakespeare's fame, the English sonnet also became known as the Shakespearian sonnet.

Decline of the English Sonnet. After Shakespeare, only a few major writers continued to write sonnets. These poets experimented with the form. Scottish poet William Drummond mixed the Italian and English forms of the sonnet. George Herbert and John Donne (1572–1631) both wrote religious sonnets. Their works introduced new techniques, such as running sentences across the ends of lines and placing words in an unusual order.

The poems of John Milton were the final burst of brilliance for the sonnet form in Renaissance England. Milton wrote sonnets mostly to friends or to public figures. Unlike other English writers, he usually used the Italian form of the sonnet. Milton was also one of only a few British Renaissance authors who wrote sonnets in Italian. Instead of writing as a suffering Petrarchan lover, Milton often spoke as a humanist in his poems. After his death, the sonnet fell out of fashion in England for a century.

(See also English Language and Literature; Humanism; Italian Language and Literature.)

* medieval

referring to the Middle Ages, a period that began around A.D. 400 and ended around 1400 in Italy and 1500 in the rest of Europe

* sonnet

poem of 14 lines with a fixed pattern of meter and rhyme

* humanism

Renaissance cultural movement promoting the study of the humanities (the languages, literature, and history of ancient Greece and Rome) as a guide to living

* vernacular

native language or dialect of a region or country

* classical

in the tradition of ancient Greece and Rome

* allusion

indirect reference to historical or fictional characters, places, or events

* epic

long poem about the adventures of a hero

* Baroque

artistic style of the 1600s characterized by movement, drama, and grandness of scale

* theology

study of the nature of God and of religion

* rhetoric

art of speaking or writing effectively

* Holy Roman Emperor

ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, a political body in central Europe composed of several states that existed until 1806

* couplet

pair of rhyming lines that appear together, as at the end of a sonnet or stanza of verse

* satiric

involving the use of satire, the ridicule of human wickedness and foolishness in a literary or artistic work

Sonnets and Politics

Like other art forms, sonnets became an important measure of culture in Renaissance courts. Therefore, rulers took an interest in the poets of their nations. In Scotland, James VI (who later became James I of England) wrote a sonnet sequence (Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, 1584) and encouraged Scottish poets to do the same. In England, it became fashionable for the nobility to support poets.