Assignment 02

Class Sonnets - Creativity and FUNdamentals
*02 Origin of Sonnets*

Class Sonnets - Creativity and FUNdamentals
02  Origin of Sonnets

by Demented Sonneteer on Jul 06  

The story structure behind each sonnet is usually the same, with the slightly modification of presentation in respect the to physical structure of the sonnet. All are arguments, symbolism, metaphors, imagery, or situations wrapped up by some form of resolve or conclusion.

Assignment 1

Search on-line for a sonnet that has some great, personal meaning to you and explain why in a short paragraph. Being the assignment, this will be a virtual freebie in case you bomb future assignments or quizzes. Also, please refer to class board to learn how to submit your work.

Sonnet 75

by Edmund Spenser

A old poem from Oldpoetry.com (focus on old poems)
Author Category: Olde English.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
"Vayne man," sayd she, "that doest in vaine assay.
A mortall thing so to immortalize,
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize."
"Not so," quod I, "let baser things devize,
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

This is a Spenserian Sonnet, brought to fame by Edmund Spenser, with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcd/efefgg. The first four lines we are introduced to the first speaker who is questioned about immortality being wiped away on earth by the transactions of the waves and tides of the water, the cycle of life.  A second speaker is introduced, and this is the reason why I like this particular sonnet, for the first time in history, the second speaker is the voice of a woman, who tells her friend that it is man’s vainness to be remembered by the rhythms of the earth.  Not so, replies the man, for a woman is more vain, when the man writes about her immortality in the stars of the skies.   Which brings us to the conclusion, that they both have achieved immortality through the words written within this poem.  The conflict is metaphorically presented through the complex metaphors of the cycles of mortality and immortality through the time and seasons of the earth.