Spenserian sonnets differ from the Petrarchan sonnet in form and thematic content.
Spenser changed his rhyme scheme to be abab bcbc cdcd ee. The rhymed couplet
was an important innovation that Shakespeare later adopted in his sonnets.
Thematically, Spenser’s sonnets are generally happier and less about unrequited
love.
Sonnets 15 and 75 are both about a mans profound love for
his lover but, they also have a lot to say about vanity. In #15 the speaker
says to the merchants going to distant lands to seek treasure “What needeth you
to seeke so farre in vaine?” The word vain can function in two ways here. He is
saying that they seek so far to no avail, and that what they seek is not worth
much. He then compares the objects that these merchants might be seeking (rubies, pearls etc…) to
characteristics that his lover has. Doing this implies that the speaker thinks
the real treasures in life are in the people we love.
Sonnet #75 does a similar thing with the word “vain”. The poem begins with the speaker wanting
to immortalize his love’s name by writing it on the shore. The poem shifts to her perspective when
she says “Vayne man, …that doest in vaine assay”. Again we find both meanings of the word vain. She is calling
the speaker vain because he thinks he has the power to immortalize a mortal
being and then she says his efforts are in vain. The shift to her perspective
and to what she is saying is magnified by the spondee “vayne man”. The jarring-ness
of the two stressed syllables forces the reader to pay attention to what she is
saying.
I agree with your interpretation of the lines about vanity, but i wonder if that vanity is tied to the concept of a mortal immortalizing anything or strictly other people. It honestly seems to me as if he is attempting to force remembrance on someone. It seems maybe the speakers obsession with the woman has driven him to want her memory to live on with or without her permission exclusively because of how it reflects on him.
ReplyDeleteThis seems highly likely in the context of the poem: it is more an argument than a dialogue, where she calls him dull witted for not realizing that she will decay, and he gives it back to her by saying he will actually write "in the heavens" (12). This suggests the divinity of poetry, and hence the poet's elevation above his subject.
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