Difference between revisions of "BM1 - Introduction to Literature - Assignment 4: Research Paper Outline:Example"

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This is only a guideline, not a perfect example. Please note that the text is not part of our curriculum.

Title

The Role of Power in W. Percy’s Sonnet Sequence Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia

Table of Contents

1 Explanation of the term Petrarchism based on a comparison between the Petrarchan model and the English sonnet

2 The ambiguity of power in W. Percy’s sonnet sequence

2.1. The power of speech

2.1.1. The oppressor and the oppressed

2.1.2. Coelia’s passiveness

2.2. Male subjectivity

2.2.1. The speaker’s helplessness against Coelia’s scornfulness

2.2.2. Coelia’s role as a mere object of love

3 Female sonnet writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century and their image of the female lover

Written Outline

First of all it must be said that there is a myriad of secondary literature concerning Elizabethan sonnets or the widely known English poets and their main work, such as Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Amoretti or Samuel Daniel's Delia. Yet little has been written about William Percy's sonnet sequence Coelia. Thus my paper about the role of power and its interpretation by the male speaker in these particular sonnets rather relies on the primary source and only implicitly on some chosen pieces of secondary work.

As an introduction to the topic I would start with an explanation of the term Petrarchism and the changes it has gone through from the Italian, Petrarchan model to the English or Shakespearean sonnet. The discourse between these is described in Pfister's essay published in Seeber's Englische Literaturgeschichte. This would give me the chance to introduce the structure of the sonnet and to give a definition of the sonnet sequence as discussed in Spiller's The Sonnet Sequence.

By speaking of the ambiguity of power I refer to the two power models expressed in Percy's sonnets. On the one hand the speaker's role of a victim of love and on the other hand his power to use this love and the object of love for his own purposes. This ambivalence is not shown explicitly but can be read between the lines.

As poetry is based on the creation of and play with words, the main aspect is the power of speech. The speaker describes his falling in love with Coelia, his courtship with all its ups and downs and the final game of conqueror and conquered from his point of view. He is the author of the image created in this sequence.

The speaker chooses a wide range of such images to describe his position as the oppressed and the role Coelia plays in his story as the oppressor. Among these contrasting pairs are the images of judge and accused, divine creature – simple man, hunter – prey (sonnet I), executive power – prisoner, ruler – bondman (sonnet VI). Such oppositions are emphasized by the use of oxymora ("the sweetest sour") and antitheses ("Oh happy hour, and yet unhappy hour", sonnet II). Coelia is the personification of such contrasts: she is sweet but callous, shows "first Love, and then Disdainfulnes" (sonnet VI). Here I should refer to Manfred Pfister, who deals with this inconsistency in his essay mentioned above. In her studies about Sidney's female characters Fair Ladies, Katherine J. Roberts also discusses this moodiness.

Speaking of the power of speech one should bear in mind that this impression given by the speaker changes as soon as we look closer into Coelia's role. It strikes the reader that she is almost speechless. Contrary to other poets of the sixteenth century, Percy includes two short dialogues between the loved and the lover (sonnets IV and XVII) but Coelia's part is more like a mirror of the speaker's imagination than a real, individual voice. Ina Schabert speaks of the poet as ventriloquist (1996:140) when dealing with this phenomenon. Coelia's passiveness is found even stronger as she is thought as the addressee but in fact the poems are not really directed at the loved person bur rather at a third, or in this case fourth person, the reader. The third person would be the god Amor, whose speech (sonnet II) shows more individuality and strength than Coelia's. In the second main point I would deal with male subjectivity and the way the speaker creates his own misery to gain the power of compassion as a desperate romantic.

The speaker is absolutely helpless against Coelia's scornfulness (sonnets I, XVIII vs. III, XVI). He offers her everything, she rejects it all. She has the power to leave him in his pain, to abuse his love. And yet, no matter how scornful she may be, he does not want to give up.

But in spite of these presumable power relations as shown on the surface, the real conditions reveal Coelia's role as a mere object of love. This is where I would have to agree with Ina Schabert's conceptions from a gender perspective. Coelia is a construct, an ideal created by the speaker, which serves his purposes as a tool serves a craftsman. The woman is the means to an aim.

Taking everything into consideration I would conclude with a description of female sonneteers around the turn of the century and show different power models on the example of Lady Mary Wroth concepts in her Pamphilia to Amphilanthus with reference to Ina Schabert's Englische Literaturgeschichte aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung.

Bibliography

• Berry, Philippa. "Mirrors of Masculinity. Renaissance Speculations Through the Feminine and Their Genealogy." Of Chastity and Power. Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen. New York: Routledge, 1989. 9-37.
• John, Lisle Cecil. The Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences. Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature 133. New York: Russell, 1964.
• Low, Anthony. The Reinvention of Love. Poetry, Politics and Culture from Sidney to Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.
• Pfister, Manfred. "Die Frühe Neuzeit: Von Morus bis Milton." Englische Literaturgeschichte. Ed. H.U. Seeber. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991. 92-103.
• Roberts, Katherine J. "Social and Literary Images of Women." Fair Ladies: Sir Philip Sidney's Female Characters. Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts 9. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 1-28.
• Schabert, Ina. "Das Begehren der Geschlechter und die Liebesdichtung." Englische Literaturgeschichte aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung. Stuttgart: Kröner , 1996. 123-144.
• Spiller, Michael R.G. The Development of The Sonnet. An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1992.
• Spiller, Michael R.G. The Sonnet Sequence. A Study of Its Strategies. Studies in Literary Themes and Genres. New York: Twayne, 1997.