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Edmund SpenserAmoretti XXXV: "My hungry eyes, through greedy covetize"
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1595A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto,” which means little song. Strictly speaking, sonnets have 14 lines and follow a highly structed rhyme scheme and meter. Early Italian or Petrarchan sonnets feature an octave (eight lines with the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA) and a sestet (six lines with the rhyme scheme CDECDE or CDCDCD). In the Renaissance, the English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet) usually followed the structural form of three quatrains, or three sets of four lines with the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEF, and a concluding couplet, or two lines that rhyme (GG). The major difference is the presence or absence of the concluding couplet, and where the volta, or turn, of the poem occurs.
Spenser uses elements from both Italian and English sonnets. The structure of three quatrains and a concluding couplet found in English sonnets appears in Spenser’s sonnets. However, his rhyme scheme, ABABBCBCCDCDEE, was “a compromise between Italian and English patterns” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 1320). This is a more demanding rhyme scheme than the Shakespearean form because it includes fewer rhyme sounds (more words rhyme in Italian than English). The first nine lines of Spenser’s sonnet rhyme scheme are called a Spenserian stanza, and can be found in his other poems—specifically The Faerie Queene.
Spenser follows strict iambic pentameter in his sonnets: lines with 10 syllables that follow a pattern of unstressed-stressed syllables. For example, “And all | their shows | but shad | ows, sav | ing she” (Line 14).
Synecdoche
Synecdoche is when a part represents a whole. This device is a part of the larger category of metonymy or metonyms: the poetic device of a smaller group or object standing in for a larger concept or group. A good example of synecdoche is the use of “alarms” to describe the severity of a fire. A three-alarm fire is not a fire that sets off three separate smoke alarms, but an event that causes three units of firefighters, such as fire engines, ambulances, or stations, to be activated. If these units did not have alarms, it would be an example of metonym, but because units of firefighters contain sirens and alarms, it is an example of synecdoche.
In Sonnet XXXV, the eyes represent the speaker. When referring to the feelings of his eyes, the speaker is referring to his own feelings. Spenser’s use of this literary device plays with the concept of I/eye. A first-person speaker in a sonnet usually uses the singular first person “I” pronoun. However, Spenser replaces the “I” with the “eye.” This changes the subject of the poem, and which pronouns are used: Plural eyes correspond with they/their.
This use of synecdoche also obscures the speaker. Rather than the speaker feeling greed and covetousness, he tells the reader that it is his eyes that experience such sinful feelings. The use of the third person plural contributes to this, and suggests that the beauty of the beloved is recognized by many, rather than only the speaker. By moving from a speaker admiring her beauty to the eyes consuming that beauty, beauty becomes a fact established by an inanimate judge. At the same time, synecdoche means that this inanimate judge is also the poet, and the object of the poem should reciprocate his praise.
Enjambment
Enjambment is the spilling over from one line of poetry to the next without the use of end stop punctuation. This is the opposite of an end-stopped line, where a thought or idea ends at the end of a line. Having a thought spill over to another line is a way to formally reflect content about excessiveness. For instance, Line 1 is enjambed on “greedy covetise,” which are words relating to excess. Line 1 cannot contain the excess of this sentence, so it runs onto Line 2, and the thought does not end until the fourth line, where the first period appears. In other words, the entirety of the first quatrain is one enjambed thought.
Another function of enjambment is to delay the resolution or completion of a thought. For instance, the third quatrain begins with “Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store” (Line 9). Grammatically, the “so” needs another clause beginning with “that,” which does not appear until Line 10: “that nothing else they brook.” The white space created by enjambment gives the reader a moment to guess the second part of the so-that equation, adding an element of curiosity. This kind of guessing game frequently occurs in music. The philosophy of music includes whether a musical movement (like a change of chords) fulfills or defies expectations. Renaissance poetry was deeply connected to music. Some poets, like Thomas Campion, included sheet music in publications alongside their poems. Spenser explicitly discusses music in the Epithalamion—the wedding poem following his sonnets.
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By Edmund Spenser
