Wednesday, April 24, 2013

I need more detailed information on Spenser's Epithalamion.

Amoretti is a sonnet-cycle tracing
the suitor's long courtship and eventual wooing of his beloved. The work begins with two
sonnets in which the speaker addresses his own poetry, attempting to invest his words
with the power to achieve his goal (the wooing of Elizabeth Boyle). From the third
sonnet through the sixty-second sonnet, the speaker is in an slmost constant state of
emotional turmoil and frustrated hopes. His beloved refuses to look favorably upon his
suit, so his reaction ranges from desparing self-deprecation to angry tirade against her
stubbornness. Most often the speaker dwells upon his beloved's beauty, both inner and
outer, and the overpowering effects this beauty has upon him. He uses a variety of
motifs to explicate his feelings and thoughts toward the subject of his ardor: predator
and prey, wartime victor and captive, fire and ice, and hard substances that eventually
soften over long periods of time. Each of these is intended to convey some aspect of his
beloved's character or his own fears and
apprehensions.



In Sonnet 63,
the Amoretti undergoes a drastic change in tone. The long-sought
beloved has acceded to the speaker's request, making her his fiancee. Several sonnets of
rejoicing occur, followed by several expressing the speaker's impatience at the lengthy
engagement prior to the wedding day. Here, too, the speaker turns his attention from his
earlier aspects of the beloved's physical beauty--her eyes and her hair in
particular--and begins to be more familiar with her, to the point of describing in
detail the scent of her breasts. From Sonnet 63 through Sonnet 85, the speaker revisits
many of his earlier motifs, changing them to suit the new relationship between himself
and his beloved. Now he is the hunter and she is the game; he is the victor, and she the
vanquished. His earlier criticisms of her pride and stubbornness also change to become
admiration for her constancy and strength of
mind.




 

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