Spenser\'s Amoretti Assignment.docx

ASSIGNMENT
Question: Critically analyze both the sonnets in your syllabus and evaluate the metaphors which denote love and yet use the language of violence, hunting and warfare.

"Ye cruell one, what glory can be got,
In slaying him that would live gladly yours?"

Amoretti, meaning "little love offering", by Edmund Spenser is a sequence of sonnets that are for his fiancé Elizabeth Boyle. Indebted to the Petrarchan sonnets, Amoretti celebrates the courtly love rampant in the Elizabethan Era, that would finally culminate into marriage which is socially sanctioned. From the above two lines of Sonnet 57, a delicate and tender idea of love is expressed that is, surrendering to your passion. Spenser explores this idea of passion through his sonnets with imagery of warfare and hunting particularly in Sonnet 57 and Sonnet 67.

"Petrarch's Rime had established the mode in which poems employ a number of what were to become conventional topoi", as stated by Kenneth Larson. One such essential topoi is the theme of antagonism. The lover is in constant unease and turmoil, almost symbolic to war and hunting, due to the unrequited love and rejection from his beloved, who is cold and unattainable. The subject-object relation in Petrarchanism remains unresolved with a sense of chasing an idyllic notion, thus remaining exasperated.

Sonnet 57 follows this topoi where the central idea of courtship is likened to a war on a battlefield. The beloved is said to be a "Sweet Warrior", who constantly assails the lover by merely existing. The beloved's stoic treatment to the lover's advances sting him like wounds on a battlefield. The "powers" of masculine prowess seems to be futile in front of her as, it is she who has the power over him. The power dynamics of masculinity and femininity seems to be reversed just as an opponent overpowers the defendant, as suggested by Natasha Distiller. This friction is necessary to prove the poet's worth. As Distiller says, "the mistress' wilderness and cruelty are necessary to the worth of the poet's victory". As Sonnet 25 rightly states "for easie things that may be got at will, most sorts of men doe set but little store". The unattainability of the beloved bestows her the capability to reverse the power dynamics. Thus it can also be seen that this power that the beloved exercises makes the warfare worth fighting. "She proves her worth by playing hard to get".

"The central stylistic signature of Petrarchan poetry is the Petrarchan antitheses, which further reinforces this tendency towards instability". Righty pointed by Reed Way Dasenbrook, Sonnet 57 has the paradoxical metaphor of a "Sweet warrior". The beloved is likened to a warrior who can charge and strike but these assaults would be "sweet" and accepted by the lover without any defence. The lover's endurance of her rejection is like "battry" to him, from which he pleads "peace". His plea for surrendering implies the submission of his beloved to his desires and passion. Also, it can be seen as the beloved relenting her exercise of power over him, since "so weak my powers", he wishes to reinstate his power of dominance. The imagery of "wounds", "battry" allude to the battlefield where it is her eyes that shower "thousand arrows". The pun on "hart" is evident, claiming his heart to be slain and him being a powerless deer in front of her. The idea of warfare is quite evident in the imagery of a heart lanced by cupid's arrow. What invokes the passion even amidst this tumultuous scenario is the idea of a one-sided war that the lover pleads the beloved to end. For the lover, it is the beloved whose mere presence ambushes him, exacerbated by her constant refusal in order to earn "glory".

But the lover claims to have already submitted his life to her. Thus, this one-sided warfare can transform into requited passion by establishing peace with her divine "grace". There is an expectation to "win" her in this battlefield symbolic of love and courtship, where "the courtier speaks a language of love that is directly linked to a language of political power, since to love and serve…is to exert moral-political influence". Also, an act of warfare earns eternal glory for its participants, by equating love to warfare the poet might suggest eternalizing the love he has for his beloved.

The allusion to hunting is apparent in Sonnet 67, creating an image of a huntsman chasing a deer. Hunting is another stock imagery used in the courtship tradition. The lover is the hunter, who is relentlessly chasing his beloved likened to a deer. The sonnet echoes the myth of Diana and Acteon. Here the myth is reversed where the beloved is the deer who looks at the hopeless hunter. The savage "game" of hunting as Anne Lake Prescott states, "hints at the inevitable anxiety about captivity and dismemberment". It is this tiring chase that arouses the hunter to pursue it, and the beloved to entertain him. The moment the chase is halted, the deer willingly bestows herself to the hunter's captivity.

The lover is seen as a huntsman with "masculine huntsmanship". It is also the selfsame hunter who stands hunted by his passion to possess the beloved deer, "with panting hounds beguiled of their prey". An interesting point is made by Christopher Warley about the second quarto. By forsaking the chase, the hunter lets go of his "masculine huntsmanship" and takes up the strategy of his beloved, by not pursuing "vaine essay". Warley considers this as an instance that disrupts the rigid gender structure present in the sonnet.

"The gentle deare" is again a pun on the deer being dear to the hunter. Initially, the hunter had the agency in the hunt, now it is the will of the beloved to return to the very hunter she was evading. The desire of possession become highly evident when she is "firmly tyde", indicating betrothal and her capitulation, almost like taming "a beast so wyld". In this sonnet, Spenser modifies the Petrarchan structure by concluding it with a socially sanctioned betrothal. The persistent courtship is finally brought to fruition through this betrothal.

In both the sonnets it is the lover who has the agency to act or expect the response of the beloved. The beloved is merely reduced to a figment of his inspiration that make such glorious love poetry possible. Also, the power dynamics between the subject-object relation emerge as being fluid and instable. At one point the beloved exercises her power to batter her lover whose powers grow weak in front of her. Another point it is the lover, on stepping back from the chase, has the power to retrieve the deer/dear. Perhaps, love as expressed by Spenser in Amoretti locates power, will and desire, necessary ingredients for the fruition of passion.
-INDIRA DASAN, ROLL NO. 90
ENGLISH HONS. FIRST YEAR.

Bibliography:
1.Introduction to Edmund Spenser by Kenneth Larsen
2.Petrarchism in Early Modern England by Natasha Distiller
3.Ireland, capitalism and class in Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion by Christopher Warley
4.The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti by Reed Way Dasenbrock
5.Love Canonized: The poetry of Spenser and Donne