MB UNIUD

Option 1

The sonnet is a lyrical form of poetry. It developed in italy first and later it entered England. It proposed different kinds of women from the ones of Medieval ballads.Discuss with reference to:

• addressee
• structure
• use of language
• values of the two different periods
• kind of women
• narrator

The sonnet is a lyrical form of poetry. It developed during the Renaissance, a period that began with the accession of the house of Tudor to the throne, in 1485. The sonnet entered England later than in Italy, probably because England is an island so it's distant from the rest of Europe.

The name "sonnet" derives from the Occitan "sonnet" and the Italian "sonetto". Both names mean "little song", so we know it was accompanied by music. It was introduced into Italy by Petrarch and in England by Thomas Wyatt, an English aristocratic, in the 16^th Century, but his sonnets were simple translations of the Petrarchan sonnet, until the Earl of Surrey fixed the rules that characterized the sonnet form.

As a matter of fact Italian and English sonnets differ in their structure but they both consist of fourteen lines arranged into two stanzas: the first one is made up of an octave (made up of two quatrains) and a sestet (made up of two tercets);  the second one is organized into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet (the three quatrains have the function to pose the problem in his different aspects, the final couplet to give a possible solution in an epigrammatic style).

The main theme of the English sonnets was courtly love, a love born at Court, as a matter of fact several poets lived at Court during the Renaissance.

Courtly love was love for an idealized and unattainable woman, a fair haired woman that had the physical appearance of an angel.

William Shakespeare, an English sonneteer, took distances from that woman, and crated his "dark lady", who men loved in her concreteness.

We can see the changes from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance considering the ballad form in comparison to the sonnet and their features.

First of all the ballad was an oral form of poetry, handed down orally from generation to generation and it was a popular form of poetry.

The sonnet was an aristocratic form of poetry because it was written by Sonneteers at Court. The main themes of the ballad were tragic love stories, the supernatural and the battles on the border between England and Scotland. On the contrary as I've just told, the theme of sonnet was courtly love.

In the ballad there were two different kinds of woman: the mother (The mother of Usher's well) and the tempter (Lord Randal); in the sonnet all women are perfect and unattainable but Shakespeare's dark lady. In the first type of poetry there were specific models of man: the knight, a realistic man because he really existed but unrealistic because he was perfect in flash and body; and the Lord. In sonnets men suffered and they had spiritual problems.