Context - Types of Poetry

Question 1

who was petarch

Answer 1

• Petrarch (1304-1374) was a poet and humanist of the Italian Renaissance
  o Met Laura, inspired by her beauty and virtues, wrote poems about her

Question 2

typical Petrarchan poems

Answer 2

-	Typical Petrarchan poems
o	Addressed to one single lady, earthly representation of God’s divine grace
o	Idealised mistress, poet-lover praises his mistress’ superlative qualities, conventional description 
o	Catalogued in blazon 
o	Ocular imagery, hyperbolic language 
o	Conceits structure poetry 
o	Absent mistress
o	Chaste mistress

Question 3

Poet lover

Answer 3

o Lesser status, ardent and impetuous
o Continually at work
o Dwells on subjective experience

Question 4

Elizabethan poetry

Answer 4

• Sonnet dominates in 1590s
• Blazon
• Ocular language
• Calm of nature contrasted with torment of love
• Man is distressed by love
• Lover is chaste and admired from afar, cruel in her sexual refusal
• Ideal of courtly love, societally sanctioned way of discussing and regulating animalistic impulse of sex = icy distance between lovers.
• Domestic settings in poems e.g. The Flea are provocative and challenging
• Break with grammar of emotion, use same words and images as Petrarchan poetry but in their own idiosyncratic way, emotion becomes more honest

Question 5

meta poetry

Answer 5

• Dismantles Elizabethan poetry
• Secular concerns
• Vigour and elaborate conceits
• Question the relationship between the spirit and senses
• Style heightens personality, expresses individuality
• JD – physical, wants a physical manifestation of God. Impatient, attention seeking in secular and religious poetry
• Focus is on poet lover, rather than mistress. Interest in psychological states.
• Shifting tone and mood, rhythmical variety
• Direct address, abrupt, personal and dramatic openings (Drama is dominant form of literature)
• Erotic life is central value of life, love is no longer platonic
• Careful rhythmical patterns and smoothness of Eliz poetry changed to deliberately rough verses
• Frank sexuality and expectation of success – dismantles icy distance between poet and beloved
• Tradition of devoted and submissive male goes, ad does chaste mistress
• Use of paradox
• Use of puns/world play. Wit and ingenuity = important part
• Analogies from different branches of learning
• Tension between strict meter and natural rhythms of speech. Irregularity of patterns of stress mirror speech patterns
  Obsessive awareness of death and mortality – memento mori vs. carpe diem. Vanitas art – skull was often painted to remind the viewer of the brevity of human life e.g. Holbein The Ambassadors

Question 6

meta poetry origins

Answer 6

Term coined by Samuel Johnson, contemporaries referred to meta poetry as ‘strong lines’ – term of disapprobation

Question 7

cavalier poetry

Answer 7

• Inc. Carew, Lovelace, Vaughan – engaged in the social round
• Linked to court of Charles I, court milieu sustains and validates Cavalier verse
• Idealises Platonic love
• Concerned with how to cope and neutralise the threat of time
• Virtues of friendship, love and beauty in world of pleasure
• Pastoral setting
• Conservative outlook – loyalty to king and church and law, provide social basis for integrity
• Courtly, sophisticated, complementary

Question 8

civil war

Answer 8

• Did not produce much poetry but influence evident in choice of metaphor and vocab of destruction and decay
• 1648 Regicide
  1650-1660 Civil War and Interregnum