Amoretti Sonnet 57 and 67 by Edmund Spenser

 

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 )

 

 The sonnet  number 57 is sweet warrior is one of the best known sonnet from amoretti 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 89^th 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.