Sonnet XXXIV, by Edmund Spenser:
BASIC FACTS:
Title: Sonnet XXXIV.
Author: Edmund Spenser.
Date of composition: 1592-1594.
Date of publication: 1595.
Collection: Amoretti and Epithalamion
Poetic genre: Spenserian Sonnet: octave + sestet in a unique rhyme scheme. A mark of Spenserian Sonnets is that verses 8 and 9 run together in rhyme c / c. This is called the ‘Volta’ and separates the octave from the sestet.
Metric: Fourteen iambic pentameters.
Rhyme: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Major Themes:
- The poet does not know how to share his love with the lady.
- Poet’s wooing of a lady (in the case of the sonnets in Amoretti and Epithalamion, Spenser woos Elizabeth Boyle).
- Hope for better times for his love.
Symbols:
- Poet as a ship lost in a storm.
- Dismay and vulnerability.
- Beloved as a star.
- Clouds.
Literary devices:
- Lexical repetition: ‘Sorrow’ and ‘sad’.
- Conceit: A metaphor which is generally used throughout the whole poem: Ship.
- Metaphors:
- SHE is a STAR, as her love guides his life in the same way stars guide a ship.
- HIS SADNESS for him is like the clouds for the ship: They do not allow it to see the stars so that these can guide it.
