EN 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Sestet, Puritans, Sonnet 130
Document Summary
Digression: puritans were very serious about sex- only inside of marriage and is very holy for the wife too. Good women and wives do not enjoy sex and are not passionate - but puritans celebrate passionate sex within a loving marriage because it has been ordained and approved by. Milton is not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about the sexual reaching out in his poem. Bradstreet"s letter to my husband also shows passion (not sexually graphic but sexually passionate) in her heroic couplets with iambic pentameter - most of which are closed lines with punctuation at the end of the line. Line 11 shows how her husband was her source of warmth- passion. Wanting him not just emotionally there but physically there. Talking about conception of the children through passion; writing openly about married sexuality - becomes unacceptable in the 1800s. Spenserian sonnet rhyme scheme entangles octave and sestet (ababbcbccdcdee)
