Class test 9-12-2010

ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME

The composition is a sonnet written by E. Spenser: it follows the PETRARCHAN model, because it is composed of fourteen lines, organized into TWO quatrains and a final SESTET. The title refers to the first line of the sonnet.

Throughout the composition two main characters are involved: a man, appearing first, and a woman, talking to the man from the 5th line. Through the first quatrain the poet, identified with the lover speaking, is describing his personal experience: he tells the reader he wrote the name of his lover upon the strand twice, but it was washed away from THE waves and THE wind.

The poet produces an image of “pains” (at line four) in the mind of the reader: he tried to fix his feelings by writing them upon the strand, but that image didn’t last.

Therefore, in the second quatrain, the woman claims that he can’t immortalise “a mortal thing” (referring to line six); every time he will write her name, it will be wiped out. Love is portrayed as something people can’t fix, it is supposed to come to an end like any mortal thing in the world, according to the woman. But the poet/lover does not agree with her viewpoint: in the SESTET he states she will live, because his verse will immortalise her qualities. She “shall live by fame”, therefore he will write about her: thus the poet finds a way to immortalise his love, it will not die like mortal, secular things.