Love, that doth reign and live within my thought, by Henry Howard:
BASIC FACTS:
Title: Love, that doth reign and live within my thought.
Author: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
Date of publication: 1557.
Collection: Tottel’s Miscellany. Songes and Sonnettes Written By the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Horward, Earle of Surrey, and Others.
Poetic genre: Translation of a Petrarchan sonnet (‘Rime 140’) into English.
Metric: It follows the pattern of the Shakespearian sonnet: three quatrains followed by a final couplet. It is written in iambic pentameters with very few metrical deviations (only the first foot in the first verse).
Rhyme: Masculine: abab cdcd ecec ff.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Major Themes:
- Unreturned, non-reciprocal love.
- Individualism: Men can also show their feelings during the Renaissance.
Symbols:
- Love as war.
- Love as hunting.
- Association of love with thought instead of heart. ‘Intellectualisation’ of love.
- Conquering the beloved’s love becomes an ‘enterprise’.
Literary devices:
- Military semantic field: ‘banner’, ‘fought’, etc.
- Personification of love as male.
