Sonnet Exercise

ENGL 513/622

Dr. Fike

Consider groups of poems, along with what you learn from Second Defence, the biographies on pages 6-28, and Aubrey's biographical sketch, to flesh out Milton's life and times. Focus your individual attention on the sonnets assigned to you or to your group. I include below an old handout that will help those in group 5. Those in other groups might take my questions on 19 and 23 as a model for working up their own sets of questions and comments. The handout concludes with two sonnets that suggest Milton's influence on the Romantic period and on the sonnet. Note that there are two sonnets numbered 17 and that there are no sonnets numbered 20 and 22; numbering, apparently, was a moving target. Milton wrote 23 Petrarchan sonnets: the numbered sonnets + number 17 twice + the sonnet to Cyriack Skinner on page 29 = 23. Editors also count as sonnets the canzone on page 81 and Milton's 20-line tailed sonnet, "On the New Forcers of Conscience."

Group 1: Pages 78-84, sonnets 1-6 and the canzone (love)

Group 2: Page 87-88, sonnets 9 and 10; page 252-54, sonnets 13 and 14 (praise of friends)

Group 3: Page 86, sonnet 8; pages 254-55, sonnet 18 (civil war; Piedmont massacre)

Group 4: Pages 256-58, sonnets 17 and 21 (on recreation)

Group 5: Page 29, sonnet to Skinner; page 85, sonnet 7; 255-56, sonnet 19; pages 258-59, sonnet 23; page 53-54, "On Time" (work, blindness, time); cf. letters to a friend and to Leonard Philaras, 1049-50 and 1055-56); assign multiple people to this group

Group 6: Pages 250-52, sonnets 11 and 12; page 265-66, "On the new forcers of Conscience under the Long PARLIAMENT" (religious matters)

Group 7: Pages 29, 289-92, sonnets 15-17 (political/military leaders)

Sonnet 19

1.  Structure:

• Why does Milton not use a semicolon after "chide"?  It should be a semicolon.  How does knowing that fact alter your view of the poem?
• Where does the major turn in the poem come?
• Where does the poem come to a full stop?
• What two voices are there in the poem?

2.  The following words can help you understand the flow of meaning in sonnet 19:  resignation, grief, questioning.  Put them in the correct order and be able to identify, by line numbers, the parts of the poem that they sum up.

• First,
• Second,
• Third,

3.  Find parallels in the sestet to the following words in the octet:  "talent" and "labour."

• "talent" parallels ________; what pun is Milton making?
• "labour" parallels________

4.  What does the last line of the poem mean?  Would you understand it differently if you knew that Milton is alluding to "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and He shall strengthen thy heart. . . .  Wait, I say, on the Lord" (Psalm 27:14)?

5.  What is the moral of sonnet 19?  In other words, how would you sum up its meaning in one sentence?

Sonnet 23

6.  How does Milton's attitude toward blindness in sonnet 19 contrast with that in sonnet 23?  It may be helpful to look back at the stages in question 2 above.

7.  How does sonnet 23 conflate the Admetus-Alcestis myth and the Orpheus-Eurydice myth?  See page 259, note 1.

8.  When Milton writes PL 3.40-55, how is his attitude toward blindness like or unlike what he expresses in the two sonnets?  Do you see any parallel to sonnet 23, especially in line 44?  Is the epic invocation in some way a solution to the problem the sonnets describe?

9.  Sink your teeth into the following critical problem:  Milton is writing about his first or second wife:  Mary Powell or Katherine Woodcock.  Consider the evidence in the poem and the following information in order to make an argument that he had one woman or the other in mind.

• Mary Powell abandoned him a few weeks after their marriage, but years later they reconciled.
• Mary died in childbirth.  Katherine lived for four months after the birth of her child.  Leviticus 12:2-5 (re. the period of purification after childbirth) is relevant here.
• Chronology:  Mary returned home in 1645 and died in 1652, 3 months after Milton's blindness was total.  He married Katherine Woodcock in 1656.  Katherine died in February 1658.  This sonnet was written in 1658.
• Milton's will:  "Brother, the portion due to me from Mr Powell, my former wife's father, I leave to the unkind children I had by her; but I received no part of it, and my will and meaning is they shall have no other benefit of my estate than the said portion and what I have beside done for them.  And all the residue of my estate I leave to the disposal of Elizabeth [Minshull] my loving [third] wife."
• "Katherine" means "pure" in Greek.
• Milton had never seen Katherine.
• Campbell and Corns 269: " . . . in the ceremony of the churching of women, it was customary that the woman wear a white veil. . . . The ceremony of churching established a 'ritual closure' to the period of physical recovery allowed after childbirth, 'allowing the resumption of sexual relations between husband and wife.'"
• Milton's daughters sold some of his books without his knowledge or permission.
  
  

  Scorn not the Sonnet

  Scorn not the Sonnet

  Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,

  Mindless of its just honours; with this key

  Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody

  Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;

  A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;

  With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;

  The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf

  Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned

  His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,

  It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land

  To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp

  Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

  The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew

  Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!
  --William Wordsworth

  
  
  
  
  

  London, 1802

   Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:

  England hath need of thee:  she is a fen

  Of stagnant waters:  altar, sword, and pen,

  Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

  Have forfeited their ancient English dower

  Of inward happiness.  We are selfish men;

  Oh! Raise us up, return to us again;

  And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

  Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

  Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

  Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

  So didst thou travel on life's common way,

  In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

  The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

   --William Wordsworth

   

   

  To Wordsworth

  Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know 

  That things depart which never may return:

   Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,

   Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn,

   These common woes I feel.  One loss is mine

   Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

   Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine

   On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

   Thou hast like a rock-built refuge stood

   Above the blind and battling multitude:

   In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

   Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--

   Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

   Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

   --Percy Bysshe Shelley