Renaissance poetry, which included the works of such poets as Samuel Daniel, Edmund Spenser, and Francesco Petrarch, began in 13th-century Italy and spread throughout much of continental Europe. By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Renaissance ideals had begun to shape the literary compositions of England, resulting in the production of a variety of poems varying in structure, rhyme scheme, and argument (Black 546). Despite the common motif of the Renaissance woman presented in both works of literature and the poems’ shared Shakespearean rhyme scheme and structural patterns, Samuel Daniel and William Shakespeare incorporated a variety of differing rhetorical comparisons, vivid imagery, and detailed diction to present opposing arguments regarding
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Additionally, elements of personification and intense imagery, as when the speaker depicts the woman as “a modest maid, decked with a blush of honour / whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love” reveal the amount of attention paid to this woman and the great distress relayed upon the speaker due to his inability to attain her love (Daniel, 9-10). Contrary to the emphasis on the admiration of an unattainable lover seen in Daniel 6, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the woman throughout Sonnet 130 utilizes strong language to emphasize the reality of love. Comparisons such as “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” and “in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks,” emphasize the speaker’s realization that the use of blazon in poetry is often an over-exaggerated version of a lover’s features (Shakespeare lines 1, 11-12). The use of such descriptive language as “roses damasked, red and white” throughout the poem serve to portray the over-the-top depictions of lovers in typical Renaissance-era poetry and contribute to Shakespeare’s argument that many of the elements of Petrarchan poetry provide unrealistic depictions of the reality of women (Shakespeare, 5). Each of the two poems represent widely differing views on the motif of the Renaissance woman, despite their use of similar rhetorical strategies and also similar poetic
Additionally, elements of personification and intense imagery, as when the speaker depicts the woman as “a modest maid, decked with a blush of honour / whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love” reveal the amount of attention paid to this woman and the great distress relayed upon the speaker due to his inability to attain her love (Daniel, 9-10). Contrary to the emphasis on the admiration of an unattainable lover seen in Daniel 6, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the woman throughout Sonnet 130 utilizes strong language to emphasize the reality of love. Comparisons such as “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” and “in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks,” emphasize the speaker’s realization that the use of blazon in poetry is often an over-exaggerated version of a lover’s features (Shakespeare lines 1, 11-12). The use of such descriptive language as “roses damasked, red and white” throughout the poem serve to portray the over-the-top depictions of lovers in typical Renaissance-era poetry and contribute to Shakespeare’s argument that many of the elements of Petrarchan poetry provide unrealistic depictions of the reality of women (Shakespeare, 5). Each of the two poems represent widely differing views on the motif of the Renaissance woman, despite their use of similar rhetorical strategies and also similar poetic