CHAPTER: AMORETTI SONNET (67)
( By : Edmund Spenser)
Amoretti sonnet no. 67 by Edmund Spenser is well
known for its new images and novelty of thought. Here the poet likens himself
to a hunter and his beloved to a dear. The hunter is chasing the dear both are
tiered while running .The hunter comes
to a place where there is shade of trees .he rests himself their for something .The dear when it finds the
hunter resting also rests for sometime. Instead of running away it comes back
to the hunter . The hunter looks at the deer everted eye. He feels to
understand why deer has come to him .The deer is also amazed why the hunter is
not trying to catch it .Both look at each other with everted eyes .Both are in
a mood of surrender but who will
surrender first is not known .This image of hunter and deer has been presented with newness .The hunter is Edmund
Spenser himself and deer is Elizabeth Boyle .The poet feels that he has become
extremely tiered in making Elizabeth Boyle
love him .she fails to understand why the poet is showing so much love to her
.The poet recalls all his attempts to win the lady he has not given up any hope
of union with his beloved .He is waiting for the chance when she will be his at her sweet will.
The sonnet is beautiful it has freshness of
address no where to be found by any poet .Before Edmund Spenser .Thomas Wyatt
tried his hand with the same image of
hunter and deer but the freshness which we get in this sonnet is definitely
enchanting .The image are new and the
poet has left no stone unturned to make it interesting .In this rhyming scheme
it is like the sonnet of Shakespeare with a difference in the second quatrain
the problem which has been analyse until the second tercet .There is also
freshness in the word and diction of the sonnet .Most of the words are homely
so very easy to understand .every line of the sonnet shows the poets struggles
to gain the love of his beloved.
Chapter : amoretti sonnet (57)
(by : Edmund Spenser )
Amoretti sonnet are 89 in numbers and were
published in 1595 just after Spenser returned from Ireland .these sonnets have
been addressed to Elizabeth Boyle the lady whom Spenser loved much .He
expressed his love for her by writing 88 sonnet and at last 89th
sonnet united them.
In previous sonnets the lady is very weak and the lover is very strong
.He is a hunter and she is the hunt .but here she is the strongest and he the
weakest .Here she is the warrior and he is the slave or a humble man .But the
warrior unlike any conventional warrior of battle is sweet .A conventional
warrior is brave and is cruel to his enemies .He makes attack on them causing
the deeper wounds .here the warrior is also attacking the poet not with spear
or swords but with the arrows from her eyes .The poet makes it clear that a
cold war is going on between him and his beloved .he is
tiered of this cold war and wants to make peace with his beloved .he has made
several attempt to put end to this war but his attempts have proved futile .She
has shot so many arrows from her eyes that he has become wounded at heart .Here
neither the arrows are visible nor the wounds of heart is visible .But the
lovers are enough to tell us that he has been rendered all helpless and weak
.He is craving for peace or compromise with her .He thinks that the beloved is
not just justified in attacking him for he is now a weak person and he has
surrendered himself at her feet .It is no use (flogging the dead ) hors .there is no
greatness or glory in it .She will be dishonoured for doing so .She is a lady of honour and she
must maintain her honour by making peace with him .
The sonnet is one of
the best known Edmund Spenser .Here he has altered the conventional image of a
warrior .generally we have a brave warrior who is young solider .He fights
against his enemies bravely and mercilessly .Here we have the beloved as a
warrior but instead of being brave she is sweet .It mean she is a warrior but
she has all feminist qualities within her – an oxymoron .The wounds made by a
brave solider on the body of his enemies can be seen .He used traditional
weapons .But here the wounds which the warrior makes on the poet are invisible
.The arrows from her eyes can not be seen but felt . The lover has humbled
himself and craves for peace or compromise with the beloved .Here the poet alters the medieval conception of
heroism as ‘only the brave deserve the fair ‘ as only the brave women deserve a
handsome young man .There are examples of apostrophe , pan, alliteration
,personification and metaphor figure of speech in the sonnet .The rhyme scheme
of the sonnet is like that of a Shakespearean sonnet with some variation in the
second quitrent .The diction of the sonnet is very simple .homely world and
beauty to the meaning of the sonnet.
