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Considers lyrical works and the reception of Petrarch's poetry in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It explores these themes in the light of development of literary canons, poetic imitation, and production, from Thomas Wyatt to William Shakespeare.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Thomas Wyatt
- 2: George Gascoigne
- 3: Philip Sidney
- 4: Sonneteers
- 5: Courtiers
- 6: William Shakespeare
- Appendix A. Astrophil and Stella: Utrum Copularentur
- Appendix B. The Afterlife of Petrarch, Canzoniere 23
- Appendix C. The Trionfi
About the author
Gordon Braden is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Virginia where he began teaching in 1975. He was chair of the Department 1997-2000 and 2003-06, and retired in 2014 as Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English.
Summary
This book surveys English love poetry, primarily, though not exclusively, sonnets and sonnet sequences that show the influence of Petrarch, from the early sixteenth century to the publication of Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus in 1621. It incorporates a range of new scholarship and thinking into narrative history, with a focus on particular poets including Thomas Wyatt, George Gascoigne, Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, Samuel Daniel, Wroth, Walter Ralegh, and Shakespeare, as well as particularly notable poems such as "They flee from me", "Gascoigne's Woodmanship", and "The Ocean's Love to Cynthia".
The self-absorption of Petrarchan lyricism is brought into a more populous environment and is linked to the ambitious and intense world of the English court, within which many of these poets lived and worked. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Petrarchan theme of love for a powerful but distant woman was literalized in the politics of the realm, in ways that the queen herself recognized and exploited. A final chapter offers a new model for the implied narrative of Shakespeare's sonnets.
