SONNETS Created by Mrs. D. Wittmann http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/evolvingenglish/accessvers/index.html
Petrarch Petrarch was born Francesco Petrarca on July 20, 1304, in Arezzo, Tuscany. He was a devoted classical scholar who is considered the "Father of Humanism," a philosophy that helped spark the Renaissance. Petrarch's writing includes well-known odes to Laura, his idealized love. His writing was also used to shape the modern Italian language. He died at age 69 on July 18 or 19, 1374, in Arquà, Carrara.
Petrarch's Laura Laura, the beloved of the Italian poet Petrarch and the subject of his love lyrics, written over a period of about 20 years, most of which were included in his Canzoniere, or Rime. Laura has traditionally been identified as Laura de Noves of Avignon (now in France), a married woman and a mother; but since Petrarch gives no clues as to who she was, several other Lauras have also been suggested, and some critics believe there was no actual Laura at all. Petrarch was supposed to have seen Laura for the first time in St. Claire Church in Avignon on April 6, 1327. In his poetry she appears to give him little encouragement, but his love for her became a lifelong obsession, even after her death on April 6, 1348. Laura, illustrated by her virtues and well-celebrated in my verse, appeared to me for the first time during my youth in 1327, on April 6, in the Church of Saint Claire in Avignon, in the first hour of the day; and in the same city, in the same month, on the same sixth day at the same first hour in the year of 1348, withdrew from life, while I was at Verona, unconscious of my loss.... Her chaste and lovely body was interred on the evening of the same day in the church of the Minorites: her soul, as I believe, returned to heaven, whence it came.
Sir Thomas Wyatt Sir Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington Castle, Kent, in 1503, the son of Henry Wyatt and Anne Skinner. He was educated at St. John's College Cambridge, become a diplomat in the service of Henry VIII about 1526 and travelled to Italy first in 1527. After a brief imprisonment for his affair with Anne Boleyn in 1536, the king's second wife who was executed for treason, Wyatt went to Spain as English ambassador to Charles V from 1537 to 1539. In 1541, after the fall of Thomas Cromwell, Wyatt was arrested again and charged with treason but his release followed shortly. He died October 11, 1542, and was buried at Sherborne. Having separated from his wife Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, Wyatt was survived by his mistress Elizabeth Darrell and their son Francis.
Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser published his first important work, The Shepheardes Calender circa 1580. He also worked for courtiers Robert Dudley and Arthur Lord Grey, deputy of Ireland. It is in Ireland that Spenser wrote most of his masterwork, The Faerie Queene, a multi-part epic poem which glorifies England and its language. The poem pleased Queen Elizabeth I, who gave Spenser a small pension for life.
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. From roughly 1594 onward he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of theatrical players. Written records give little indication of the way in which Shakespeare’s professional life molded his artistry. All that can be deduced is that over the course of 20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the complete range of human emotion and conflict.
William Shakespeare: The Bard Bardology The Sonnets 1 - 154 1 - 17 PROCREATIC SONNETS Meaning to produce an heir (procreate) The idealized man, fair youth, young, chaste (possibly Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton) 18- 126 IMMORTALITY Immortalized through the Arts - Can writing overcome temporality? The lasting effects of writing, the buffer against the limitations of the world 127-154 THE DARK LADY Rougher, painful, agonized, unchaste There are scholars who believe that the dark lady could be one of three historical women: Mary Fitton, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth; Lucy Morgan, a brothel owner and former maid to Queen Elizabeth; and Emilia Lanier, the mistress of Lord Hundson, patron of the arts
Sonnet by Billy Collins All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans. How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.