Death and the Sonnet
Date
2017
Authors
Addison, Catherine
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS)
Abstract
This article argues that the fundamental theme of the sonnet
is not love but death. Though some sonnets have from the
beginning focused explicitly on death, the majority from the
late Middle Ages to the Renaissance are love poems. Petrarch may be regarded as the prototypical sonneteer and idolizer of love; but on close analysis his focus is found to be more on the ephemerality of love than on love itself. The structure of the sonnet supports – even creates – a predisposition toward death. Both the Italian and the English varieties display a fixed and intricate structure of extreme terseness, offering space for an utterance of concentrated force and complexity, but one whose
principal feature is brevity. While complexity of structure allows
for the conflicted or self-reflecting consciousness that Paul
Oppenheimer claims of this form, brevity brings its discourse
to a point, in Michael Spiller’s sense, all too quickly. The
bringing to a point of a short-lived dilation reflects in miniature
the confrontation of the individual consciousness with its own
point or full-stop. The article demonstrates that death sonnets
are not exceptions to a more erotic rule but explicit statements
of what is present in all sonnets, implicit in the form itself.
Description
Keywords
Middle Ages -- Periodicals. , Renaissance -- Periodicals. , Middle Ages. , Renaissance.