Study Questions for Petrarchan Poets

• Identify the meter and form of all the poems we read, including Petrarch's Italian (do the best you can--you should at least be able to identify the rhyme scheme).  (See also Norton 2944ff.)
• How is an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet different from an English (Shakespearean) sonnet?  Why did English poets find it necessary to change the form of the sonnet?  
• In what ways do these poets have similar attitudes about love?  In what ways do they have different attitudes about love?  
• Try to identify as many of the following Petrarchan conventions in the poems we read:  blazon (lady described as a catalogue of body parts), antithesis (icy fire), lady never speaks, the lover's psychomachia, love as a hunt, puns on the lady's name, lady as the means by which the poet achieves fame (because everyone will read his poems about her).

Petrarch

• How do Petrarch's love poems compare to other love poems you have read?
• How does Petrarch describe love?  How does he describe the object of his desire (Laura)?
• How would you characterize Petrarch's relationship to Laura?

Wyatt and Surrey

• Wyatt was a courtier in the court of Henry VIII.  In what ways do his poems reflect the life of a courtier?  What is Wyatt's attitude toward court life?  (Look at "They flee from me" and "Mine own John Poins" in particular.)
• Compare Wyatt's "Whoso list to hunt" to Petrarch's Canzoniere 190.  Is Wyatt translating Petrarch?  Where is Wyatt faithful to Petrarch, and where (and how) does he alter Petrarch's poem?  How does this change the effect and meaning of the poem?
• Compare Petrarch's Canzoniere 140 to the translations by Wyatt and Surrey.  Are the translations faithful to the original?  What do the English poets change, and how do these changes affect the meaning of the poem?

Sidney

• Read the following poems:  1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 53, 72, 108 (please also read Song 8--not in the Norton Anthology).
• In what ways is Sidney self-conscious about the act of writing poetry?
• In what ways is Sidney self-conscious about his debt to Petrarch and other Petrarchan poets?
• How does the idea of the court affect Sidney and his poetry?
• What happens in Song 8 that hasn't happened in any of the other Petrarchan poems we have read (a violation of one of the Petrarchan conventions listed above)?

Shakespeare

• Read the following sonnets:  1-20, 55, 73, 94, 116, 129, 130, 135, 138.
• To whom are Shakespeare's sonnets addressed? 
• Is Shakespeare a Petrarchan poet?  Where does he follow Petrarchan conventions, and where does he violate them?
• Is Shakespeare a courtier poet like Wyatt and Sidney?  Make an argument pro or contra.