The Development Of The Concept Of Love In Poetry From Petrarch To Donne
...was, we are told, a great frequenter of plays' in his youth. As an ambitious young man of social standing he would not have considered writing for the players, and his work is too personal, wilful, and idiosyncratic for us to imagine him doing so with any success. But his strong dramatic imagination of particular situations transforms the lyric and makes a metaphysical poem more than an epigram expanded by conceits." (Gardner 1985:23)
Personality and idiosyncrasy are a good starting point to describe the poems of John Donne. Also his love poetry which will be investigated a little bit closer in this work shows many personal elements.
But John Donne did not start a whole new poetry from the scratch, therefore this paper will give an overlook how and where the poetry developed and how it was picked up and changed to meet the requirements of the metaphysical poets.
The sonnet as a lyrical form became popular in the time of Petrarch. His kind of love poetry came into fashion in England in the sixteenth century. It became very influential throughout Europe in the following centuries. The sonnet was brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Mainly his achievements were the introduction of the petrarchan sonnets into the English society and their translation into the English language. Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey established a new rhyme scheme that he had developed out of the petrarchan rhyme scheme.
Today the so called Shakespearean sonnet follows the rhyme scheme that the Earl of Surrey invented. Like the Petrarchan sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet is not named after the inventor, but after its most famous representatives.
Shakespeare and Donne wrote their love poems approximately around the same time. But they still differ in their form and matter.
Overall this work wants to prove that the love poetry of Donne is more complex and much more differentiated...
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