Poetry Context

Question 1

Who So List To Haunt

Answer 1

• RENAISSANCE ERA
• Love poetry was typically about courtly and unrequited love (Put women on pedestals and glorified amorous passion)
• Read in court (humorous)
• Wyatt is largely credited as the first English poet to write in the sonnet form.
• Wyatt was a courtier and diplomat in the court of Henry VIII
• The Christian Church was collapsing, and political correction was ambiguous and taboo, so poets used conceits and metaphors (e.g the deer)

Question 2

Non Sum Qualis

Answer 2

• DECADENT MOVEMENT
• self-indulgence, eroticism and rebelliousness.
• Poem is about his obsession with a 10-13 year old girl.
• There are 3 aspects of the poem which define Dowson’s poem as Decadent: perversity, love of excess and egotism.
• The Decadent movement shook the Victorian establishment with its sensuality and political experimentation.

Question 3

Sonnet 116

Answer 3

• SHAKESPEAREAN
• Petrarchan sonnet
• Considered one of the Fair Youth sonnets, addressed to an unnamed young man (Earl of Pembroke or Southampton)

Question 4

Remember

Answer 4

• Grew up surrounded by Italian poets and literature
• Classic Victorian sonnet
• Health issues

Question 5

The Scrutiny

Answer 5

• CAVALIER POETS
• focused on pleasure of the moment “carpe diem”
• beauty, nature, fellowship, honour and social life.
• written in a time of political turmoil
• humorous, song-like form

Question 6

La Belle Dame

Answer 6

• The poem is infused with Keats’ personal life and conflicts, seen in the predicament of the dying medieval knight.
• transferring human emotions onto supernatural characters.
• 1819 (close to his death)

Question 7

To His Coy Mistress

Answer 7

• METAPHYSICAL POET
• satirist and politician in the house of commons
• 1650s
• highly intellectual, strange imagery, frequent paradox, complicated thought, witty and elaborate.
• breaking body into parts typical of Petrarchan sonnets.