Sonnet 30 - Edmund Spenser - Poetry Flashcards
What is Sonnet 30 about?
The speaker has an unrequited love for the woman (she is possibly playing a game - courtly love?) but the more she rejects him, the more he desires her and vice versa, much to the speakers confusion.
What form is Spenser’s Sonnet 30?
An english sonnet - it is a good form for hypothesising about love.
What is Sonnet 30’s message about love?
Spenser uses the juxtaposition of ice and fire to show the confusing struggle of an unrequited love; one that is unattainable seemingly by nature, but that cannot be deterred.
The speaker sees his love as like fire to her cold rejections of him, but he is confused as to why he can’t ‘melt’ her with his passion - why won’t she return his love? The first quatrain.
“My love is like to ice, and I to fire; / How comes it then that this her cold so great / Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, / But harder grows the more I her entreat?”
Spenser continues the conceit of ice and fire into the second quatrain, becoming more confused at the failure of the woman to return his love. He uses quite an arrogant tone in his self-important metaphorical assertions.
“How comes it that my exceeding heat / Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold”
Couplet at end of poem - The speaker comes to a realisation: love is powerful and as such can “alter” the “course” - or destiny - of mankind.
“Such is the power of love in gentle mind / That it can alter all the course of kind.”
