Ronsard- 'Les Amours'

Question 1

Amours 5- poet takes the active role, repetitive use of ‘je’

Answer 1

j’égale, ‘j’adore’

Question 2

Amours 5- hyperbole in the second quatrain

Answer 2

heureus cent fois

Question 3

Amours 5- ends with focus on the poet himself rather than Cassandra (passion of Christ reference)

Answer 3

removes his own heart and pins it with nails of fire ‘clous de feu’ onto ‘le froid de la glace’

Question 4

Amours 12- reference to Prometheus, sees himself as a hero, heroic martyrdom

Answer 4

un Promethée en passions je suis,/et pour aymer perdant toute puissance

Question 5

Amours 12- Trojan war reference? liking being free but wanting to be captured

Answer 5

J’ayme estre libre, et veulx estre captif

Question 6

Sonnet 16- what happens at the volta of this poem?

Answer 6

(turning around of the tercets and quatrains) the lover disappears from the tercets and the poet’s pain becomes foreground

Question 7

Sonnet 16- turns himself into elements of nature, love as a human weakness

Answer 7

Je veulx changer mes pensers en oyseaux,/Mes deux souspirs en zéphyrs nouveaux

Question 8

Sonnet 16- references her voice but blocks it out deliberately

Answer 8

la voix de ma Sereine

Question 9

Sonnet 16- wants to turn himself into a statue/trunk? so he can’t respond to the siren’s call

Answer 9

Mes piedz en tronc

Question 10

Sonnet 16- what does every stanza start with

Answer 10

Je veulx

Question 11

Sonnet 16- purifying his heart?

Answer 11

Mon coeur en feu

Question 12

Sonnet 16- flower as his work, importance of his own name, also includes a palindrome, appropriates femininity

Answer 12

Dessus le loyr enfanter un fleu,/Qui de mon nom et de mon mal soit peinte.

Question 13

Sonnet 20- anaphora at the start of each stanza, confined to the imagination in the conditional tense

Answer 13

Je vouldroy bien

Question 14

Sonnet 20- Cassandra as passive, he is possessive of her

Answer 14

‘ma belle Cassandre’, she receives ‘pluye d’or’ upon her breast and sleep is ‘glissant’ across her eyes

Question 15

Sonnet 20- Jupiter metaphor, bull

Answer 15

finement la prendre

Question 16

Sonnet 20- semantic field of transformation

Answer 16

‘jaunissant’, ‘me transformer’, ‘estre’

Question 17

Sonnet 20- passive, contrasts with physical presence of Jupiter

Answer 17

aiser ma peine

Question 18

Sonnet 20- theme of sexual desire

Answer 18

‘sein’, ‘prendre’, ‘ravissant’, ‘plonger’

Question 19

Sonnet 20- turns from being Jupiter to Narcissus, fountain he can plunge into but also shows his own image

Answer 19

Estre un Narcisse, et elle une fontaine

Question 20

Sonnet 20- link of flowers to literature

Answer 20

reference to his love as being amongst ‘mille fleurs’

Question 21

Sonnet 129- eternal youth

Answer 21

printemps nouvelle

Question 22

Sonnet 129- sense of her painting his art, comparison with April

Answer 22

Il peint les champs de dix mille couleurs,/Tu peins mes vers d’un long esmail de fleurs

Question 23

SARA STURM-MADDOX, ‘M’APPROPRIER QUELQUE LOUANGE: RONSARD, PETRARCH AND THE AMOURS’: on inner experience

Answer 23

major love poetry in 16th century France ‘all respond to Petrarch’s preoccupation with the poet’s inner experience’