Elizabethan poetry伊丽莎白时期诗歌

Elizabethan poetry

Elizabethan poetry. Three chief forms of poetry flourished during the Elizabethan Age. They were (1) the lyric, (2) the sonnet, and (3) narrative poetry.

The lyric. A lyric is a short poem that expresses private emotions and moods in a songlike style. Thomas Campion wrote many beautiful lyrics in his Books of Airs (1601 to about 1617).

The sonnet is a 14-line poem with a certain pattern of rhyme and rhythm. Elizabethan poets wrote two types of sonnets, Italian and English. The two types differed in the arrangement of the rhymes. Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet from Italy into English literature in the early 1500's. The Earl of Surrey modified the form into the English sonnet. Their verses were published in a collection commonly called Tottel's Miscellany (1557).

Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare wrote sonnet sequences, groups of sonnets based on a single theme. Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney wrote sequences of love sonnets. Shakespeare wrote a sequence addressed to a nobleman who was his patron and to an unknown "dark lady."

Narrative poetry. A narrative poem tells a story. In addition to sonnets, Shakespeare and Spenser wrote narrative poems. Shakespeare based his Venus and Adonis (1593) on a Roman myth and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) on an event from Roman history.

Perhaps the most ambitious Elizabethan narrative poem is The Faerie Queene by Spenser. The poet borrowed heavily from medieval romances to invent an imaginary land representing British and Christian ideals. The style of the poem is allegorical. In allegorical writing, people and objects are used to represent abstract ideas, such as holiness and justice. The Faerie Queene combines those abstract moral meanings with striking visual imagery.