The Literature Workbook

Clara Calvo, Jean Jacques Weber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415169868
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134700318
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire

The Literature Workbook is a practical introductory textbook for literary studies, which can be used either for independent study or as part of a taught class. Laying the ground for further study, The Literature Workbook introduces the beginning student to the essential analytic and interpretative skills that are needed for literary appreciation and evaluation. It also equips the teacher with practical tools and materials for use in seminars or when setting written assessments and projects.
Arranged according to genre and chronology, the chapters acquaint the reader with a range of key figures in English literaure and encourage the reader to think about them in their historical and cultural contexts.
Adopting a user-friendly case-study approach, each chapter contains
* exercises and activities
* discussion hints
* project work
* suggestions for further reading
The Workbook also includes:
* a glossary
* a subject and name index.

1
MINIATURE POEMS
Reading the Elizabethan Sonnet as a Jewel

In Elizabethan England, miniature portraits were worn as jewels. Miniatures were collected and treasured. They were first hidden in cabinets, in the most private of rooms, the bedroom, and were only shown to intimate friends. When Elizabeth I wanted to single out some foreign ambassador— to indicate, for instance, that his suit would have a chance to progress if he argued it persuasively—she would show him, perhaps to the dismay of competing ambassadors, her collection of miniatures. At first, miniatures were simply kept wrapped in paper. The fondness for display of the Tudor court, however, soon had them taken out of private cabinets. Miniatures, placed inside a very elaborate precious metal case, often adorned with pearls and precious stones, began to be worn as pendants, hanging from chains or ribbons from the neck or the waist. Yet the miniatures themselves, particularly miniatures of one’s beloved, remained hidden in their ornamented cases: the Lilliputian portraits were there, within reach, but not to be seen.

The miniature-wearing fashion is parallel in time with the sonnet-writing fashion. In Elizabeth I’s court, courtiers wrote sonnets to impress the Queen. The sonnet was, like the miniature, a jewel, an artifice, a display of the poet’s ability. Sonnets were not openly displayed, however, since they were not intended for the press and were not published at first. Instead, they circulated in manuscript form for the eyes of a happy few: friends, patrons, lovers. Sonnets, like miniatures, belonged to intimacy. Today, when Elizabethan sonnets can easily be reproduced and obtained, they may still seem to resemble miniatures, as their meaning remains hidden in their beautiful formal cases of quatrains and couplets and complicated rhyme-schemes. Sonnets often express complex thoughts which have been compressed and twisted to fit the well-defined boundaries of fourteen short lines, just as the human portraits in miniatures are artificially confined to a tiny oval shape. This can sometimes prove a very artificial constraint, forcing the poet to make unusual syntactic choices that produce obscure sentences. Sonnets often present difficulty of another sort: just as the white faces of Elizabethan miniatures are usually surrounded by elaborate ruffles, Renaissance sonnets often clothe feelings and ideas in the artifice of Petrarchan love rhetoric. This chapter will aim to show you how to open the richly decorated case, once you have admired it, so that you can see and understand the picture hidden inside.

THE AGE OF THE SONNET

The Renaissance was, in Europe, the Age of the Sonnet. The sonnet appeared first in the Sicilian court of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor between 1208 and 1250, and Giacomo da Lentino is the writer who is usually credited with its invention. From Sicily, it went to Italy, and it was the Italian writer Francesco Petrarch who strongly contributed to make it popular. Between 1530 and 1650 there were in Italy, France, Germany and England about 3,000 writers who produced 200,000 sonnets and to this we have to add the Spanish writers and the considerable number of sonnets they wrote until well into the seventeenth century. In England, the sonnet fashion reached its peak between 1580 and 1610. Writers began to produce sonnet-sequences, collections of sonnets thoughtfully arranged according to subject-matter, sometimes even spinning a narrative. Sonnet-sequences were sometimes interspersed with other poems or ‘songs’, as in Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, or they could be followed by a long poem placed at the end of the sequence, as in Samuel Daniel’s Delia, Spenser’s Amoretti and, possibly, Shakespeare’s Sonnets. A curious version of the sonnet-sequence is the crown sequence, as in Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, which includes a sonnet-sequence in which each new sonnet begins by repeating the last line of the previous sonnet and the last sonnet ends with the first sonnet’s first line.

sonnet-sequence

crown sequence

In Tudor England, the sonnet soon became a useful tool to move within the system of patronage—and this can partly explain its success amongst those close to the crown or willing to please noble patrons. The sixteenth-century courtier does not need to give counsel or advice to the monarch. He needs instead to please, to make himself agreeable in order to be first on the monarch’s list for a post or a privilege. One way of achieving this is to display one’s artistic abilities. It is hardly surprising therefore that the first sonnets in England are the work of two courtiers and aristocrats: Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–42) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517?–47), both of whom lived and wrote in the reign of Henry VIII. Neither Wyatt nor Surrey published their poems, but they appeared in a collection of ‘songes and sonettes’ by several authors which is known today by the name of Tottle’s Miscellany (1557). Tottle’s Miscellany contains fifteen sonnets by Surrey and twenty-seven by Wyatt.

a) Compare the following two sonnets by Wyatt and Surrey and jot down some notes about their differences regarding their subject-matter and their rhyme patterns.

b) Renaissance sonnets are often accused of being artificial, static, hieratic (like the faces in the miniatures which have no wrinkles or lines). They are seen as expressing not real feeling but idealized emotions. To what extent does this apply to the following two poems?

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Who so list to hount I knowe where is an hynde
but as for me helas I may no more
the vayne travaill hath weried me so sore
I ame of theim that farthest cometh behinde
yet may I by no meanes my weried mynde
drawe from the Deere but as she fleeth afore
faynting I folowe I leve of therefor
sethens in a nett I seke to hold the wynde
Who list her hount I put him owte of dowbte
as well as I may spend his tyme in vain
and graven with Diamondes in letters plain
There is written her faier neck rounde abowte
noli me tangere for Césars I ame
and wylde for to hold though I seme tame

GLOSSARY

line 1		Who so Whoever; list likes, wishes; hount hunt; hynde hind
line 2		helas alas; may can
line 3		vayne travaill vain effort; weried wearied; so sore so much
line 4		theim them; cometh comes
line 5		meanes means; mynde mind
line 6		drawe withdraw; Deere deer (and dear); fleeth flees; afore in front
line 7		faynting fainting; folowe follow; leve of leave, stop
line 8		sethens since; nett net; seke seek, try; wynde wind
line 9		owte of dowbte out of doubt
line 11		graven engraven
line 12		faier fair; abowte about
line 13		noli me tangere for Cesars I ame do not touch me because I belong to the King; noli me tangere were the words Christ addressed to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (see John 20:17) but they are also said to have been the motto which Caesar’s deer wore in their collars to keep hunters away; Cesars I ame echoes the gospel ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s’ (Matthew 22:21).
line 14		wylde wild; seme seem

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Norfolk sprang thee, Lambeth holds thee dead,
Clere of the County of Cleremont though hight.
Within the wombe of Ormondes race thou bread
And sawest thy cosin crowned in thy sight;
Shelton for love, Surrey for Lord thou chase,
Ay me, while life did last, that league was tender:
Tracing whose steps thou sawst Kelsall blaze,
Laundersey burnt, and battered Bullen render,
At Muttrell gates hopeles of all recure,
Thine Earle halfe dead gave in thy hand his will:
Which cause did thee this pining death procure,
Ere summers four times seaven, thou couldest fulfill.
Ah, Clere, if love had booted, care, or cost;
Heaven had not wonn, nor earth so timely lost.

GLOSSARY

line 1		sprang gave birth to; thee you; holds thee dead Clere was buried in Lambeth
line 2		though hight though called (your name is Cleremont although you are called Clere)
line 3		within the wombe of Ormondes race thou bread Clere was born (‘bread’ i.e. bred) in the Ormond family
line 4		sawest saw; thy cosin your cousin; Anne Boleyn, who married Henry VIII and was crowned in 1533, was Clere’s relative.
line 5		Shelton Clere’s wife was Mary Shelton; thou you; chase chose
line 6		league bo...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• USING THIS BOOK
• 1. MINIATURE POEMS: READING THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET AS A JEWEL
• 2. WHAT’S SYNTAX GOT TO DO WITH POETRY?: ON PURITAN MIND-STYLE AND ROMANTIC WORLD-VIEW
• 3. WOMEN’S POETRY: SAME OR DIFFERENT?
• 4. DEATH ON STAGE: LEARNING TO DIE IN A REVENGE TRAGEDY
• 5. SHERIDAN’S SCHOOL FOR MARRIAGE: THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION AND THE NATURE OF COMEDY
• 6. DEGENERATE APEMEN OR HEROIC DREAMERS?: ON CULTURAL STEREOTYPES AND SYNGE’S THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
• 7. TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER: EMMA AND THE SOCIAL WEB OF DIALOGUE
• 8. OF ELEPHANTS, SERPENTS AND FAIRY PALACES: SIMILE AND METAPHOR IN DICKENS’ HARD TIMES
• 9. LAUGHTER IN PATRIARCHY AND COLONIALISM: LEXICAL REPETITION AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA
• 10. POINT OF VIEW AND ITS EFFECTS: RESISTING BRIAN MOORE’S LIES OF SILENCE
• GLOSSARY