Rumination #2: If I were Elizabeth Boyle I Would Have Been Wooed Too

There seems to be a trend when looking at literature, which is that as time progresses, so does the literature of the time. To point out the obvious, writing has to evolve. As we move through this course we can slowly start to see the changes made to certain styles, rhetorics and literary genres. Edmund Spenser is one of those authors that dabbled in poetry and played with the preconceived notions about what sonnets and songs should represent, although he stayed true to their natural form. His sonnet Amoretti and his song Epithalamion hold true to these standards.

First of all, Amoretti was written as a petrarchan sonnet, which means that it follows a pattern of writing, including an octave and a sestet. Sticking to tradition, Edmund Spenser followed the typical sonnet’s form, but his topic was generally not discussed. Amoretti is a poem for his beloved wife Elizabeth Boyle, instead of the sonnet in which we hear the speaker yearn almost pathetically for love. In Edmund’s case he already has his lover’s affection and he is detailing their courtship, their romance and eventually in his song, he expresses their everlasting love. Edmund Spenser took a chance as a writer veering away from the norms of accepted literature at the time. Although the selected works we were assigned were not written about taboo topics, he attempted to do something different with what people knew, which was risky. As an artist taking a chance like that can be suicide to a career, example, Mary Wollenstonecraft, but if you do not offend society or insight revolution within the society, the literature will obviously be more whole-heartedly accepted. Amoretti and Epithalamion, although, different pieces, were beautifully written and have clearly been adored by generations as Norton has so nicely stated, “The greatest threat is the force over which the poem exercises its greatest power: time” (903).

The song Epithalamion that is included in this excerpt purposefully differs from his sonnets, which it is meant to, but it also differs from the traditional wedding songs that were sung before entering the bedchamber. In sonnets it is not uncommon to read a lot of pronouns referring to the speaker, but it is uncommon to hear them in an epithalamion. Through this song Edmund Spenser veers away from the tradition of the wedding song, by making himself, the groom, the speaker. He refers to himself in numerous stanzas in the song transforming another part of the wedding ceremony into a declaration of love for his wife. Thus, he revolutionized his Epithalamion to be even more personal and romantic because he combined it with the traditions of ceremony, but placed himself at the heart of its truths.