Hi! I would really appreciate it if anyone had any ideas about the relationship between time and love, and between reason and love, in fifteenth and sixteenth century poetry. i am supposed to write an essay on both relationships or just one. sonnets, songs, and poems by shakespear, donne, thomas wyatt, spencer, etc.
any ideas about these relationships in generall or specific to poetry would be great.
Hi Kate,
Some of the most romantic sonnets by Shakepeare deal with relationships and the issue of time and love together.
Check out [www.poetry-archive.com]
Sonnet #18 is probably the most popular, but #16 might help too. (#16 isn't as blatant of a love sonnet, but it still has that theme.)
I know very little about 15th Century poetry, and can't find any of it reproduced on the Internet, though there are plenty of references to 15th Century poets and to the titles of their poems. Probably haven't googled well enough.
Judging only by the titles, there doesn't seem to be much on the subjects of time, love and reason in the 15th Century, but there's one poem by John Lydgate titled 'Reson and Sensuality' which sounds promising, if you can get hold of the text.
The poems I know in the genre sometimes called 'carpe diem' poetry, urging youth to engage in lovemaking while there is still time, belong mostly to the 17th Century, but the following is a 16th century one (said to have been written by Queen Elizabeth I) that reflects that theme:
When I was fair and young, and favour graced me,
Of many I was sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore,
'Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere
Importune me no more.'
How many weeping eyes I made to pine with woe;
How many sighing hearts I have no skill to show.
Yet I the prouder grew, and answered them therefore,
'Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere
Importune me no more.'
Then spake fair Venus' son, that proud victorious boy,
And said, "Fine dame, since that you be so coy
I will so pluck your plumes that you shall say no more
'Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere
Importune me no more.'"
When he had spake these words, such charge grew in my breast
That neither night nor day since that, I could take any rest.
Then lo, I did repent that I had said before,
'Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere
Importune me no more.'
If you are looking for a good 16th Century quote on the theme of reason and love, there's
'Tell me where is fancy bred
Or in the heart or in the head?'
from Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' which is thought to have been first performed in 1596 or 1597.
IanB
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2008 08:11AM by IanAKB.