Edmund Spenser. “Amoretti”, Sonnet 75

Edmund Spenser. “Amoretti”, Sonnet 75
This sonnet was written by Edmund Spenser being included in a sonnet cycle in the 16th century with the name of Amoretti; it was published in 1595 after hemet and married his second wife Elizabeth Boyle. The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets, which suppose a poetic celebration of marriage with an innovative and expressive range of tones andemotions, being much more skillful and subtle than generally recognized before in Spenser´s works. What distinguishes Spenser's poem from earlier poetry is the personal note it strikes since the poetplaces himself in the centre of the poem, telling us about his personal situation, emotions and convictions. Lyric poetry became very popular in Spenser's time, the Renaissance, because people began tobe interested in the individual. This individualism is reflected in Elizabethan poetry, of which Edmund Spenser is one of the greatest representatives. The title of his cycle of sonnets, Amoretti,translates in italian as "little notes" or "little cupids," and were written most likely about his wife. Concretely, this one corresponses to Sonnet 75 in which Spenser claims to give her immortality inhis verse dealing with the ability of love to transcend all boundaries; it will live on after death through his words.
In line with the content of this precise poem; it opens with the strikingimage of a man writing his beloved's name in the sand, only to see the waves wash it away again (l. 1-4).He does it repeatedly in order to show his relentless need to have his love be rememberedforever. One interesting thing to mark in here is that the narrator makes the wave masculine and typically nature is associated with femininity, (“his pray” (l.4)) the reason could be that in the late1500s women were seen as fragile creatures, who were not involved in the eradication of memory. Consecutively, in the second quatrain, a female voice (perhaps his beloved) tells him that he is working...