1、My comments on sonnet 75 by Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser (c. 1552 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queen, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its
2、 infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language. As to his sonnet 75, it is a short poem but conveys the authors thoughts and emotions, which is regarded as a represent of his achievements.Though the English sonnet is greatly popularized by Shakespeare, the Spenser form in fact deman
3、ded more skills and dexterities of language which was named “the Spenserian stanza. “Sonnet 75 was according to this structure, which is special in the rhyme abab bcbc cdcd ee:One day I wrote her name upon the strand, (a)But came the waves and washed it away: (b)Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
4、 (a)But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray. (b)“Vayne man,”, said she, “that does in vain assay,” (b)A mortal thing so to immortalize. (c)For I my selve shall lyke to this decay, (b)And eek my name bee wiped out lykewize.” (c)This kind of interlocking pattern made the two quatrains connect c
5、losely, which is consistence with the romantic dialogues between poet and his lover. And the main theme of the poem was expressed naturally. Romantic dialogues, fluent structure made the whole poem more like a prose. Exactly, it became a prose poem. Sonnet 75 was also according to the tradition of i
6、ambic feet, emphasizing on unstressed syllable and stressed syllable which is corresponding with tides fluctuation. When readers read it, as if they were in the shore and have watched the scenes by themselves.Looking into the contents of this sonnet, we find that Spenser claims to give her wife immo
7、rtality in his verse. Line 1 tells of how the man wrote his beloveds name on the beach, Line2 of how the wave washed them away, Line 3 and 4 of how he rewrote them and the tide erased them again. Line 5-8wrote is about his beloved words. She criticized the man saying all these are in vain. Like she
8、herself will die and vanish, her name also can not stay on the beach forever. The first four lines of the octet have described the action of the sea; the second four lines then quote the beloved as drawing a moral from that action. Spenser thus makes explicit the parallel between the transitory word
9、s and mortal human life. The octet contains a step-by-step argument. And then in the sestet Spenser made a claim that his verse will bestow immortality upon the beloved.Edmund Spenser is a representative English poet in the period of the Renaissance; it is obvious to find that the author displayed h
10、umanitys desire in pursuing of truth, goodness and beauty in this sonnet. For example:“Not I”, quod I, “let baser things devize,”To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame;Here, poet first made a contrastHis lover and “baser things”. Different people had different results depending on one thingcharac
11、ter. What were characters of “baser things”? They were impudent, despicable and vacuous. The result of baser things is to “devize”. Poet thought his lover was opposite to baser things. Therefore, it is easy to know what characters of his lover were. She must have not only the beautiful appearance, b
12、ut also have rare virtues. Compared with “baser things”, his lover has dazzling brilliance. Therefore, in the following line, poet said:” My verse your virtues rare shall eternize”. “Virtues rare shall eternize”. That is right. The body of human is destined to disappear whereas the spirit, the virtu
13、e of human can be immortal. The true love can be immortal. In a word, Sonnet 75 has two aspects. One is that poem can keep his lover perpetual. As a kind of genuine art creation, poem can contend with time. His lover can exist forever in his poems and his poems can exist in the world forever. The other is that his poems expressed the main ideas of humanism, which means considering human beings as the true master of fate, putting human in the core position of the universe. All of these embodied the humanity fully.
