Blackwell Reference Online

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Was love poetry being written in Renaissance England? The obvious answer is a resounding yes: this was the age of Shakespeare's sonnets and John Donne's meta-physical lyrics, of Cavalier invitations to ‘gather ye rosebuds’ (and have sex), and of elegies to dead beloveds of all ages and varieties. Recently however, a school of criticism has answered the question differently. Certainly, they grant, much poetry spoke of desire, but was the subject really ‘love’? And even if so, did the writer actually feel such emotions? Because much lauded love poetry was generated at and for the court of Queen Elizabeth I, sceptics have argued that its rhetoric was primarily a cover for social advancement or special pleading within a system headed, unconventionally, by a female authority. In instances such as Sir Walter Ralegh's ‘Ocean to Cynthia’, the masking was slight indeed: Elizabeth had nicknamed him ‘Water’, and Cynthia was one of the chaste goddesses with whom the queen was routinely identified. Further-more, given the general misogyny characteristic of Renaissance thought, honouring non-royal women as an actual (as distinct from fictional) audience might be regarded as debasing rather than elevating for male courtiers. Why hold themselves up to ridicule? Certainly, traces of conventional contempt for women can be found in poems by Ben Jonson and Donne. Women poets writing to male beloveds ... log in or subscribe to read full text