Amoretti by Edmund Spenser

Amoretti is a sequence consisting of 89 sonnets written by Edmund Spenser about chis courtship and eventual marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. There has been some divergence of opinion as to the true identity of the lady for whom or to whom some of the sonnets were addressed.

The charm of these sonnets lies in the facts that they express a sincere emotion, an intense passion for the lady. There is no conversational of feelings and grief , although there are conventional metaphors and similes and stock epithets. The sonnets have purity of thought and serenity of love.

Amoretti tells a story of love without sin or remorse, its varying fortunes, the lover sighs until the day he is accepted, and his final joy.

The entire sequence is written in conventional form as popularized by Petrarch. Spenser formed most sonnets of three quatrains followed by a couplets, in which the rhyme scheme is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.

Amoretti, Sonnets – Summary and Analysis

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