Renaissance Rogues

Whoever said poetry was boring must have never read the works of renaissance rogues like Shakespeare, John Donne, and the like!

Although much of their works were seemingly refined, these writers definitely had some dirty thoughts on their minds when they were writing...and that makes their work all the more exciting for us to read today!

The trick to picking up on these lewd and explicit features is understanding the literary and analytical conventions the poets used to incorporate them into their works.

This blog is a compilation of some of the most widely used literary and analytical devices in the poetry and plays of the Renaissance. My hope is that after you read it, you might appreciate poetry a little more!

To get you started,
-A literary term is a concept that specifically focuses on the formal operations of literary texts
-An analytical term is a concept that allows you to make sophisticated historical and/or critical analyses of texts

Poetic Blazon

                             

  • Definition: A blazon is a list of a woman’s admirable features. It is a common feature of lyric poetry and often involves the use of hyperbole and simile in describing things. 
  • Sentence: My boyfriend wrote me a love letter and included a blazon listing off all of my body parts that he adored most and how each one had been made by a different god. 
  • Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” makes use of the blazon as the speaker lists how much time he would spend adoring different parts of the addressee’s body. 

An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

  • Another example can be seen in Shakespeare’s famous sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” However, in this poem, the speaker mocks the conventions of the blazon when describing the mistress. 


Apostrophe

                    

  • Definition: An apostrophe is a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an imaginary person, abstract idea, or object. 
  • Sentence: In his poem “81,” Sir Philip Sydney begins the poem with an apostrophe by directly addressing a kiss. 

“Oh kiss, which dost those ruddy gems impart”

  • In the line, the speaker is addressing the kiss and also personifying it by giving it the human qualities needed to be addressed. Renaissance poets often used apostrophes to personify objects. Also, in many dramatic works and poetry like this one, apostrophes were often introduced by the exclamation “O”.
  • Another example of an apostrophe can be seen in the title of Ben Jonson’s epigram “To Sickness,” which directly addresses sickness it as if it were a person. 

Paradox

Definition: A paradox is a proposition or statement that is self-contradictory. 

Sentence: In Sir Philip Sydney’s “81,” the poet is using his words to try to convince the addressee to stop him from embarrassing her, but the paradox is that the only way she can stop him is by stopping his mouth with a kiss. 

Cony-Catching

                                   

  • Definition: Cony-Catching was a practice in Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians. 
  • In Renaissance England, you were the victim of cony-catching if someone tricked you into giving them your money
  • Robert Greene wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Defence of Conny-catching,” in which he argued that it really wasn’t that terrible and there were worse crimes to be found among “reputable” people. 

Read it here:http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Greene/Defence_Cony-catching.pdf

Ventriloquize

                      

  • Definition: A literary feature in which writers take on the voice of certain characters in an authoritative way
  • Sentence: In Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare uses the character of Venus to ventriloquize women’s desire. 
  • In many Renaissance texts, it was common for male authors to ventriloquize the voice of women. Although the texts were written by male authors, they were voiced by female characters and so, the men would be taking on the female voice.  
  • Additionally, In Aphra Behn’s “The Disappointment,” we get an instance of ventriloquism when the poet narrator ventriloquizes Lysander’s voice in the third person. (http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_disappointment.html)