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Amoretti LXXIX: Men Call you Fair
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Amoretti LXXIX: Men Call you Fair is a sonnet written by English poet Edmund Spenser during the renaissance period. First published in 1595 by William Ponsonby as part of the volume Amoretti and Epithalamion, Men Call you Fair is the seventy ninth poem in the Amoretti sonnet cycle, and addresses the second year of Spenser's courtship of Elizabeth Boyle.
Synopsis
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Men call you fair, and you do credit it,
For that your self ye daily such do see:
But the true fair, that is the gentle wit,
And vertuous mind, is much more prais'd of me.For all the rest, how ever fair it be,
Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue:
But only that is permanent and free
From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue.
That is true beauty: that doth argue you
To be divine, and born of heavenly seed:
Deriv'd from that fair Spirit, from whom all true
And perfect beauty did at first proceed.
He only fair, and what he fair hath made,
All other fair, like flowers untimely fade.
—Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser's Amoretti LXXIX: Men Call you Fair discusses the poet's notion of true beauty. The octave begins with the speaker addressing his love, observing that men have told her that she is fair. He states that she acknowledges this because she can see her beauty daily in the mirror. The speaker proceeds to argue that true beauty is a gentle wit and virtuous mind because all outer beauty will fade over time. In the sestet, the speaker states that true beauty is divine, coming from the “fayre spirit” that is the source of perfection. Inner beauty is to be valued higher than outer beauty, and originates from heaven.
Analysis
[edit]The critical consensus according to Peggy J. Huey is that the poem "blends Christian and Neoplatonic terms to express the poet's vision of the force and meaning of love." Spenser states that true beauty comes from God, intelligence and morality are the two qualities that should be held in one's highest praises. Outer beauty fades, but inner beauty lasts forever and in the end touches more people. The speaker tells his beloved that men call her "fayre" (fair/beautiful) and she believes it, because she looks herself in the mirror daily and can see that she is beautiful. The speaker tells her that her beauty is not the fairest thing about her; rather it is her "gentle wit" (intelligence) and "virtuous mind" (moral, chaste) that make her beautiful. It is her wit and virtuousness that are the two qualities that the speaker praises above all others.[1] The poem has been categorised as pertaining to themes of "love, living, relationships, time and brevity, and realistic and complicated"[2] by the Poetry Foundation website.
In Amoretti, Spenser revises the traditions from which he draws upon. Though many of the poems (including sonnet 79) can be categorised as love poetry, Spenser innovates upon conventions of the Petrarchan sonnet by addressing a woman who is romantically available. Elizabeth Boyle was unmarried at the time of the volume’s publication, whereas most sonnet sequences provided conflict through adultery due to the intended recipient being already married. [3] Edmund Spenser's courtship of Elizabeth Boyle would eventually lead to their marriage in 1594, which is celebrated in Epithalamion. Boyle became Spenser's second wife, after the death of his previous spouse, Machabyas Childe in 1579.
Poetic Structure
[edit]The sonnet is written in Spenserian form, which can be distinguished from other forms by the rhyme scheme and the division of lines. Like other sonnets, Men Call You Fair contains fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, resulting in five iambic feet (iambs) per line. The scheme Spenser chose was adapted from the rhyme model he used in his famous epic poem The Faerie Queen and follows the pattern 'abab bcbc cdcd ee.' Here we have the sonnet divided into three 'quatrains' (segment of four lines), followed by a rhyming couplet. Spenser's form is also commonly referred to as a linking sonnet because the 'b' and 'c' rhyme elements weave the quatrains together.[4]
| Stress | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syllable | Men | call | you | fair, | and | you | do | cred- | it | it, |
See Also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Sophia Brookshire,Analysis of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti: Sonnet 79
- ^ The Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174457#about
- ^ Prescott, Anne Lake. “Spenser’s Shorter Poems.” The Cambridge Companion to Spenser. Ed. Andrew Hadfield. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 153
- ^ Joshua Wimmer, Spenserian Sonnet: Definition, Form & Examples, http://study.com/academy/lesson/spenserian-sonnet-definition-form-examples.html