Textuality » 4A Interacting
A favourite form in courtly love was the Sonnet. The name recalls the sound level of the poem that is strictly connected to music. Thomas Wyatt introduced it into England With is translation of several sonnets by Petrarch.
While a Petrarchan model consisted of fourteen lines arranged into an octave and a sestet. Wyatt divided the final six lines into a quatrain and a final couplet: the quatrain has the function to present an aspects of the same problem and the couplet has the function to give a possible solution.
In the sonnet poets expressed their passion for unattainable lady a distant idealized woman that represented desire and also they expressed various aspects of their own emotions.
Shakespeare broke the conventions of the form: some of his sonnets are addressed to a young man and a dark lady mot to unattainable lady.
There are two kinds of woman: the courtly woman that is described in the sonnets and the earthly woman that inhabits ballads.
The courtly woman is unattainable, she represent the desire. Her physical appearance recalls an Angel. In the Reinaissance the courtly woman was considered means to arrive to God so to reach salvation. The earthly woman described in ballads (Lord Randal) and in the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales ( The Wife of Bath) represent a dangerous woman. She isn’t an unattainable lady but she is a tempter both in body and spirit. The Wife of Bath isn’t a conventional woman, she likes go out with man and go on horse; she doesn’t represent the mother.
The mother in the Middle ages as well as in the reinaissance was a stereotype of the woman’s good values. The unattainable lady is more concrete than a dark lady ( earthly woman).Although she is an idealized woman, the unattainable lay is more concrete because she was create by the man and so they know the physical appearance of her instaid the earthly woman is a mistery for the man; there are a lot of earthly woman in the world and every single woman differs to the other.