The Sonnet in the Renaissance

Spring 2007 English 430, Section 1 The Sonnet in the Renaissance

M, 3-5:30, Friends 204 Course Instructor: Dan Breen Office: Muller 302 Phone: 274-1014 Office Hours: Mon. 1-2; Tues. 9:30-10:30; Wed. 2-5; Thurs. 9:30-10:30 and by appointment Email: [email protected]

Course Texts: Available at the Ithaca College Bookstore: --Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova trans. Mark Musa (Oxford, 1999), ISBN 0192839357.

--Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford, 2002), ISBN 0192840800.

--Robert M. Durling, ed. and trans., Petrarch's Lyric Poems, 2nd edition (Harvard, 2005), ISBN 0674663489.

--Josephine A. Roberts, ed., The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth (LSU Press, 1992), ISBN 0807117994. NB: This text is on back order, and will not be available in the bookstore until mid-February at the earliest.

Available at the English and Politics Administrative Office, 309 Muller: --Course reader You MUST purchase the course reader for this class. Course readers are available in 309 Muller Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9-11 am and 1:30-4pm, and on Tuesday and Thursday from 9-1 and 3-4. 309 Muller is not equipped to handle electronic transactions, and so you must bring either cash or check. The cost is $7.

Aims and Goals:

One of the most influential forms in English poetry over the past five centuries, the sonnet first rose to literary prominence during the Tudor period. English authors read and translated the works of French and Italian sonneteers and experimented with the form in their own compositions. These formal transformations went hand in hand with important conceptual developments. Writers such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare used the sonnet as a medium for rich, complex explorations of philosophy, spirituality, and most crucially, of the effect of erotic desire upon psychology. This course presents a vigorous survey of the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century sonnet from Wyatt to Milton, and focuses primarily upon the ways in which lyric speakers attempt to represent and understand erotic desire. We will also consider thoroughly the ways in which understandings of desire in the sonnet are conditioned by love’s ever-present shadows, namely loss and absence.

In addition, we’ll devote attention to questions of artistic and historical context. This is especially appropriate because the word “sonnet,” when it enters the English language in the mid-sixteenth century, is not used to identify only the fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with which we are familiar. “Sonnet” can also be used in a broader sense, and applied to any short poem that addresses love in some way. A sonnet can, then, be any small poetic fragment of erotically charged emotion, and shows itself throughout the Renaissance in numerous forms: as translations of existing poems; as enclosures sent along with letters; alongside longer, unrelated pieces in poetry collections; and as units within (quasi-) narrative sequences. We will spend time discussing these different material manifestations of the sonnet, and comparing some of the sonnets we read with other poems, treatises, and works of visual art in order to attempt to locate the broad cultural outlines that define thinking about love and desire in the Renaissance.

Requirements:

1. Class Participation: This is an advanced class, and so most of this should go without saying. All students must attend class regularly and bring the required texts to each meeting. The course is designed as a seminar and as such the bulk of each meeting will consist primarily of our discussions of the assigned reading. It is therefore essential that each of us comes to class having read the material carefully and prepared to discuss it thoughtfully.

Your class participation grade will be based on your contributions to our weekly discussions and on an in-class presentation.

2. Written Work: Your written work for this course will consist of two short (2-3 pages) response papers; a midterm essay (5-6 pages); and a term paper (10-12 pages). You may if you choose submit drafts of the midterm essay and the term paper (but not of the short response pieces). There will be no exams or quizzes.

Final Grades:

Your final course grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:

Class participation and presentation: 20% Short response papers: 20% Midterm essay: 20% Term paper: 40%

Attendance Policy:

Because this class meets only once a week, it is important that everyone attends. However, since unforeseen circumstances can arise over the course of three and a half months, you are allowed to miss TWO meetings. Beginning with the third absence, however your final course grade will drop two increments (ie, from B+ to B-), and continue to drop two increments for each additional absence.

Class Schedule The readings for this course are divided into three categories: 1. Primary texts: These are the poems, letters, treatises, etc., that will serve as our main focus from week to week. Careful reading of the primary texts is essential. 2. Recommended reading: These are usually secondary or critical readings designed to present the reader with a more solid fundamental grounding that can help him/her through the primary texts. It may be helpful to think of them as introductory readings. 3. Suggested reading: These readings are more highly specialized, and are offered to help the reader deepen his/her knowledge of specific themes or subjects within the primary texts for the week. Note: All readings marked with an “R” on the Class Schedule are included in the course reader. Note: All “DNB” entries are available upon request from the instructor.

January Mon. 22—Course introduction

Mon. 29—Love in Medieval Lyric: Fin’amour Primary texts: 1. Andreas Capellanus, Treatise on Love (photocopy, handed out in class) --Book I, chs. 1-6 --Book II, chs. 1-6; 8 2. The Troubadours (R) --Guillaume IX of Aquitaine --Comtessa de Dia --nos. 4, 6-9 --no. 33+ --Marcabru --Bertrand de Born --nos. 10, 14, 16 --nos. 43, 45 3. Early Italian poets (R) --Giacomo da Lentini --Guido Guinizzelli --Guittone d’Arezzo --Guido Cavalcanti --Bonagiunta da Lucca Recommended reading: --Teodolinda Barolini, “Dante and the Lyric Past,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff, Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 14-33. --David Coward, A History of French Literature: from chanson de geste to cinema Blackwell, 2004, pp. 1-25. --Michael R. G. Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet: an Introduction, Routledge, 1992, ch. 2. Suggested reading: --Linda Paterson, “Fin’amor and the development of the courtly canso,” in The Troubadours: an Introduction, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay Cambridge UP, 1999, pp. 28-46.

February Mon. 5—Dante Primary texts: 1. Vita nuova 2. Purgatorio 30-31 (R) 3. Paradiso 31 (R) Recommended reading: --Robert Pogue Harrison, “Approaching the Vita nuova,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff, Cambridge UP, 1993, 34-44.

Mon. 12—Petrarch Primary texts: 1. Epistle to Posterity (1351) (R) 2. Letter to Fr. Dionigi da Borgo San Sepulcro (April 1336) (R) 3. Rime Sparse nos. 1-3; 21-23; 71-73; 194-197; 200-203 Recommended reading: --Morris Bishop, Petrarch and His World, Indiana UP, 1963, ch. 8. --Petrarch, Secretum [The Secret], pp. 108-125.

Mon. 19—Petrarch Primary texts: Rime Sparse nos. 211; 237; 249-254; 264; 266-268; 324-326; 336; 347; 348; 359; 363-366 Recommended reading: --Bishop, ch. 5. --Spiller, ch. 4. Suggested reading: --Lynn Enterline, Rhetoric and the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare, Cambridge UP, 2000, ch. 3. --Nancy Vickers, “Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme,” in Elizabeth Abel, ed., Writing and Sexual Difference, University of Chicago Press, 1982, 95-110. Mon. 26—The Sonnet in England: Wyatt and Surrey Primary texts: 1. Wyatt, Surrey, and Petrarch (R) 2. Wyatt (R) 3. Surrey on Wyatt’s death (R) Recommended reading: --DNB entries on Wyatt and Surrey --Spiller, ch. 6. Suggested reading: --Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, University of Chicago Press, 1980, ch. 3. --Greg Walker, Writing Under Tyranny, Oxford UP, 2005, chs. 12, 16.

March Mon. 5—Daniel ***MIDTERM ESSAY DUE*** Primary texts: --Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (R) Recommended reading: --DNB entry on Daniel Suggested reading: --Ilona Bell, Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship. Cambridge UP, 1998, ch. 7.

Mon. 12—SPRING BREAK

Mon. 19—The Courtier-Poet Primary texts: 1. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, selection from Book IV (R) 2. Sidney, Astrophil and Stella Nos. 1-2; 5-6; 9-12; 18-19; 25-28; 32-34; 37-40; 42-44 Recommended reading: --DNB entry on Sidney --Spiller, ch. 7.

Mon. 26—The Courtier-Poet Primary texts: Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 1. Sonnets no. 47; 52; 55-56; 60-61; 65-67; 70-72; 73-74; 79-81; 86-90; 103-108 2. Songs no. 2, 4-6; 9-11 Suggested reading: --Thomas P. Roche, Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequence, AMS Press, 1989, ch. 4.

April Mon. 2—Spenser Primary texts: Spenser, Amoretti and Epithalamion 1. Amoretti (R) Nos. 1; 3; 7-8; 10-12; 15-17; 21-23; 27-28; 30; 34-35; 37; 42-43; 45; 48; 54; 62-69; 74-75; 87-89 2. Epithalamion (photocopy, handed out in class) Recommended reading: --Anne Lake Prescott, “Spenser’s Shorter Poems,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spenser, ed. Andrew Hadfield, Cambridge UP, 2001, pp. 143-161. --Spiller, ch. 8. Suggested reading: --Bell, ch. 8.

Mon. 9—Shakespeare Primary texts: Shakespeare, sonnets Nos. 1-18; 20; 22-23; 29-30; 38-42; 46-47; 55; 60; 62-65; 71-74 Recommended reading: --Greenblatt, Will in the World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), ch. 8. Suggested reading: --M. L. Stapleton, “Making the Woman of Him: Shakespeare’s Man Right Fair as Sonnet Lady,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 46 (2004): 271-295.

Mon. 16—Shakespeare Primary texts: Shakespeare, sonnets 1. Nos. 78-80; 82-83; 86-87; 91-94; 96-99; 104-110; 113-116; 123-126 2. Nos. 127-130; 132-136; 137-138; 141-142; 144-146; 150-152 Recommended reading: --Spiller, ch. 9. Suggested reading: --MacD. P. Jackson, “Francis Meres and the Cultural Contexts of Shakespeare’s Rival Poet Sonnets,” Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 224-246.

Mon. 23—Wroth Primary texts: Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 1. Sonnets 1-6; 13-18; 25-30; 37-48 2. “A Crowne of Sonnetts dedicated to Love” 3. Songs 1, 3, 5, 7 Recommended reading: --DNB entry on Wroth Suggested reading: --Michael G. Brennan, “Creating Female Authorship in the Early Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson and Lady Mary Wroth,” in Women’s Writing and the Circulation of Ideas, ed. George L. Justice and Nathan Tinker, Cambridge UP, 2002, pp. 73-93. --Heather Dubrow, Echoes of Desire, Cornell UP, 1995, ch. 4.

Mon. 30—Milton Primary texts: Milton, poems (from 1673) (R): 1. Elegia sexta 2. “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” 3. Sonnets 4. “Lycidas” Recommended reading: --J. Martin Evans, “Lycidas,” in The Cambridge Companion to Milton, ed. Dennis Danielson, Cambridge UP, 1989, pp. 39-53.

***TERM PAPER DUE IN MULLER 302 BY 5 PM, FRIDAY MAY 11***