Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion Edmund Spenser

During the Elizabethan age, love sonnets traditionally told the story of men in love with unattainable women. However, Spenser's sonnets from his sonnet sequence "Amoretti" defy the general pessimism and give an optimistic look at love. In fact,...

Serene landscapes and seductive relationships are key themes throughout Edmund Spenser’s work and are major assets to the plot and character development in “The Faerie Queene” and “Epithalamion.” Spenser’s early works are all in the pastoral...

Though his poetry was largely ignored and dismissed during his time, John Donne is known today for being one of the best poets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He gained this reputation by creating poetry that was different, that made...

Though he is by no means a single-minded man, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti focus largely on the beauty and physical form of the woman he addresses these poems to. In seven of these sonnets, he calls this woman’s beauty her “hew”, or in the modern...

In the period of Early Modern English, romantic love was a major subject in literature. From Hoby’s translation of The Courtier to the various sonnets written during this time, everyone seemed to have something to add regarding their opinions on...

Originally used to signify a shield or a coat of arms, the term 'blazon' transformed it meaning through the description of virtues or positive attributes, usually of a woman, in late sixteenth century poetry. 'Blazon' can either denote a noun,...

The relationship between power and love brims with conflict. Introducing a dominant and a surrendering role within the interactions of men and women unequivocally creates opposition between the two. In three different sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt,...

English sonnets often explore the theme of love and the lady’s eternal beauty. Edmund Spenser was one of the best known Elizabethan sonneteers during the 16th century. In 1595, he composed a total of eighty-nine sonnets in his sonnet cycle “...