ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME

“One day I wrote her name” is a sonnet because it is arranged into 14 lines. It belongs to a collection, indeed the title resumes the beginning of the sonnet, especially it is part of Spenser’s Amoretti. The structure is not the typical one used by the English sonneteers named Elizabethan structure, in fact “One day I wrote her name” follows the Petrarchan structure: it consists of an octave and a sestet. The main theme of the sonnet is the immortality of love. Spenser organized the sonnet emphasizing the different position of man and woman in respect to love. In the octave the problem is posed and the woman’s position is explained. The main character wants to write his beloved’s name upon the strand, but the waves remove it. Therefore he tries to do it again but all that is in vain. So, the woman interrupts and says that his effort is useless: it is impossible to immortalize a mortal thing, as his name and she invites him not to try again. The solution of the problem is given into the sestet by the answer of the man: mortal things will die, whereas she will live forever because his lines will make her famous and eternal. He wants t try and write her name again and not to surrender; his aim is also to write it in the heavens, so even when everybody will die, his love will be able to survive: nobody will defeat it. Therefore, Spenser wants to underline the different position of man and woman. The woman does not believe love is eternal, instead the man ….