The subject matter of the seventeenth century reflects the crisis of the growing chaotic atmosphere of the English Civil War in its darkening themes in comparison to earlier sixteenth century works that emphasized more on stylistic and exuberant subject matter, as the growing chaotic atmosphere that the 17th century writers were accustomed to didn’t trouble the 16th century writers. Earlier English Renaissance literature in the sixteenth century such as Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan style Amoretti Sonnet 74 reflects a bright tone as does William Shakespeare’s Elizabethan style of his Sonnet 18, but his Sonnet 147 has a darker aspect and as time transitioned into the seventeenth century, John Donne’s Metaphysical style of poetry found in his number 7 of his Holy Sonnets and John Milton’s flexible Petrarchan style sonnets “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” similarly reflected more darker aspects.
The sixteenth century and seventeenth century English Renaissance literature differed in how their sonnets are styled. The sixteenth century writers, Spenser and Shakespeare, wrote their sonnets in the Elizabethan style where the prominent theme is often love. Spencer’s diction is written in Chaucer’s form of English compared to the other three’s diction that are closer to modern English. For example, in his Sonnet 74, some of his diction are: “fran’d”, “desynd”, and “guifts” (988-989). Amoretti was written as a way to immortalize Spencer’s recent courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. Milton’s themes differ from Spencer and Shakespeare as its theme is religious based on a historical event. Furthermore, in the Norton Anthology, it states, “the form of… [Milton’s] sonnets is Petrarchan [Elizabethan]…., but in the later sonnets especially….the sense runs on from line to line, overriding the expected end-stopped lines and the octave/sestet shift” (1939). Milton played with the Petrarchan style and partially made it his own. Then the seventeenth century writer John Donne who used the metaphysical style, which differs from the Elizabethan styled sonnets of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. His Holy Sonnets’ main theme is about religion and has an idiosyncratic syntax reflecting progress of thought, which is shown in lines 1-4 of his poem Holy Sonnet 7 where there’s no punctuation mark for more than two lines (1411). This syntax is similar to Milton’s style of his sonnets where he changed the Petrarchan normal syntax so that he could “create meaning and [an] emotion[al] strive within and against the formal metrics of the Petrarchan sonnet” (1939). This running on of the lines without a punctuation mark at the end for several lines are seen with Donne’s and Milton’s sonnets, but not with neither Spenser’s nor Shakespeare’s. Stylistic differences wasn’t the only difference in the sonnets of these four writers.
There is a tone difference of change between the sixteenth century writers and seventeenth century writers. In Spenser’s Amoretti Sonnet 74, the tone is bright and thankful. In line 3, Spenser states that: “The which three times thrise happy hath me made”. He’s happy by the letters he’s received. There are three women in his life who share the name of the three most important women in his life that he honors, Elizabeth, and seeing the name in his letters brings him a sense of happiness. In addition, things in tone starts to waver in Shakespeare’s Sonnets as we get into the late sixteenth early seventeenth century. In looking at his male lover in Sonnet 18, Shakespeare is happy and compares him to a summer’s day where he’s viewed as lovely by Shakespeare himself (1172-1173). This brighter tone of love in Shakespeare contrasts with his darker tone in his later sonnets. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147 has a dark tone as his thoughts and discourse express how terrible his dark lady love truly is. He goes from happy in Sonnet 18 to “who art as black as hell, as dark as night” in Sonnet 147, angered by the deception of his thoughts as he thought that his dark mistress was fair and bright, but he was clearly mistaken (1186).
From there, it starts to become darker and more introspective with Donne’s 7th Holy Sonnet. Donne believes that it’s too late to ask for God’s grace for his sins, and so he asks God to teach him how to repent, and if Donne is pardoned, it would be through God’s blood (1441). Donne’s sonnet is still looking at his individualistic self, but through a religious point of view almost in a dialogue with God as he prays for pardon.
Lastly, in the seventeenth century, Milton’s sonnet also has religious aspects, but is much darker than Donne’s sonnet. Milton’s sonnet “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” is a sonnet based on a historical event that took place in the twelfth century. Dark in tone, Milton calls on God to avenge those who were massacred by the armies of the Catholic duke of Savoy within the first two lines of the sonnet: “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones / Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold” (1942). Milton talks of vengeance, which is extremely different from earlier sixteenth century writers who wrote on love. Milton apparently wrote this poem in 1652 soon after losing his sight. The English had been through a civil war recently, which Milton had been politically involved but escaped prosecution due to his blindness.
Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton differs in stylistic and tone differences. The stylistic differences were between Elizabethan and Metaphysical styles with their particular flexible additions. The tone differences between them differ between bright and introspective, dark.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Stephen Greenblatt. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Ninth Edition, Volume B. 2012.
Inquisitive Muse 