Death and the Sonnet

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dc.citation.epage21
dc.citation.spage1
dc.contributor.authorAddison, Catherine
dc.contributor.editorHouliston,Victor
dc.date.accessioned2019-11-13T18:26:44Z
dc.date.available2019-11-13T18:26:44Z
dc.date.created2017
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractThis 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.
dc.description.abstract
dc.description.librariannlewinen_ZA
dc.description.urihttps://sasmars.wordpress.com/sasmars-journal/
dc.identifier.issn1017-3455
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.sasmars.wordpress.com
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12430/549219
dc.journal.titleSouthern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
dc.journal.volume27
dc.language.isoEnglish
dc.publisherThe Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS)
dc.subjectMiddle Ages -- Periodicals.en_ZA
dc.subjectRenaissance -- Periodicals.
dc.subjectMiddle Ages.
dc.subjectRenaissance.
dc.titleDeath and the Sonnet
dc.typeJournal Article
local.PlaceUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein , Johannesburg
local.dctitlejournal.AbbreviationSAJMRS
local.roman.epage21
local.roman.spage1
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SAJMARS 27
The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Vol. 27 (2017)