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ELIZABETHAN SONNET CYCLES
Five Major Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences by Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser.
A collection of five major sonnet sequences from the Elizabethan era by Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel and William Shakespeare. Each sonnet cycle is love poetry, and some of the finest verse in the English language: Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella', Daniel's 'Delia', Drayton's 'Idea', Spenser's 'Amoretti', and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'.
This edition prints each poem cycle on its own, without notes or editorial intrusions. And each poem has a page to itself. It's a useful edition for students.
MICHAEL DRAYTON, SONNET 4, FROM 'IDEA':
BRIGHT STAR of beauty, on whose eyelids sit | A thousand nymph-like and enamoured graces, | The goddesses of memory and wit, | Which there in order take their several places; | In whose dear bosom, sweet delicious love | Lays down his quiver which he once did bear, | Since he that blessed paradise did prove, | And leaves his mother's lap to sport him there | Let others strive to entertain with words | My soul is of a braver mettle made; | I hold that vile which vulgar wit affords; | In me's that faith which time cannot invade. | Let what I praise be still made good by you; | Be you most worthy whilst I am most true!
About the author
Charles Ross, a graduate of Harvard College and a former Fulbright-Hays Scholar in Italy, is Professor of English and Director of the Comparative Literature Program at Purdue University. He studied Sidney at the University of Chicago with Professor William A. Ringler, Jr. His books include the first English translation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's romance Orlando Innamorato and a verse translation of L. Paninius Statius's Thebaid. He is the author of The Custom of the Castle from Malory to Macbeth as well as Elizabethan Literature and the Law of Fraudulent Conveyance: Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare. His editorial work includes two volumes of the California Lectura Dantis, a collection titled Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace, and two Modern Fiction Studies special issues, one on Vladimir Nabokov, the other titled Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Chinese Fiction. In 2016 he served as chair of Modern Language Association's selection committee for the Scaglione Prize for a Translation of Literary Work.
