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.
Inquisitive Muse 