Courtly Love Essay

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The theme of the 16th century sonnets was courtly love. It is the traditional love which is not necessarily lived and derived from the love conventions as set in Petrarch’s sonnets to his beloved Laura. The central point or core in any courtly love sonnet is a complaint of the speaker towards something in his beloved. The major themes of courtly love sonnets are: the speaker’s sleeplessness, the cruelty of the beloved, the renunciation of love, the fire of the speaker’s feelings contrasted by the ice of the speaker’s feelings contrasted by the ice of the beloved’s feelings, and, finally, the unattainability of the beloved. I will discuss Sidney’s “Come sleep!” whose major theme is sleeplessness, Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” whose major theme is the renunciation of love, Spenser’s “Of this World’s Theatre” whose major theme is the fire of the speaker’s feelings versus the ice of the beloved’s feelings, and Spenser’s sonnet 75 “One day I wrote her name upon the Strand” whose major theme is the beauty of his beloved and the eternity of his poetry. In Sidney’s sonnet “Come Sleep”, the speaker unable to get any sleep that will release him from the evil wars inside him, that is from his feelings of despair. After composing sleep to enjoyable things such as a knot of piece, a balm of woe, the wealth of the poor etc., and after saying that sleep comes to all, the speaker asks sleep to come to him and release him from his feelings of despair. He is trying to bribe sleep promising to compensate him with soft pillows, a comfortable bed, a calm and dark room, a festoon, and a tired head. Then in the sestet, there is a turn in the sense in a way that when we are awake, our mind is busy working, so sleep imprisons the mind to free her from her continuous thinking so the mind will enjoy relax and will be able to see Stella’s image livelier than anywhere else. This sonnet
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