 |
 |
Just to be Captain Obvious here, but in the context of poetry, considerations of metre and rhyme are likely to come into it as well, of course. Which is probably one reason why Spenser never actually uses "sorrowfulness" to my knowledge (For poets reap much dolour and distresse / By that syllabic monster "sorr'wfulnesse".)
The fact that he doesn't use "sadnesse" is perhaps more interesting, I think, because it's a metrically convenient word that can be made to rhyme with lots of things, so Spenser could quite easily have used it as a substitute for most of his "sorrow"s. Except he didn't. Those four uses are once in Book II (to refer to Prays-desire's "spilling her faire beautie with sadnesse"), twice in one of the sonnets from Amoretti (where I suspect its main function is to rhyme with, and be connected to, "madnes" and "gladnesse" respectively) and once in the Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, where it's used for an internal rhyme with "basenesse". It also appears once in the generall argument of The Shepheardes Calender, but Osgood probably didn't count that because that's technically "E.K." speaking."Sad", on the other hand, is a word that in the late 16th century could be used to express a wider range of meanings than today (plus it only has one syllable and rhymes with a lot of words, which is clearly a bonus from a compositional point of view), so perhaps Spenser wasn't such a sad case after all...
1. On tristezza: that form does not occur in Dante's Comedy (finished a century after Francis's death), but tristizia does (three times, once in each cantica).
For possible synonyms in our period, try Cooper's Thesaurus (1578):
Or Florio's Italian dictionary (1598):Tristis. Sad : heavy : full of discomfiture : sorowfull : cruell : of much grauitie : bitter : difficult : hard : angry.
Tristitia. Sadnesse : heauinesse.
Tristo, sad, discontent, grieued, melancholic, pensiue, heauie, full of discomfiture, sorowfull, wofull, of much grauitie, unpleasant. Also knauish, wilie, craftie, subtle, malicious, deceitfull, slye.
Tristezza, knauishness, craftiness, subtilnes. Also sadnes, heauines, pensiuenes, sorowfulnes.
Tristitia, as Tristezza
2. On Spenser, Osgood's concordance shows only four occurrences of sadness but whole columns of sad. Cf. Lewis on Spenser in OHEL: "He was of course often, perhaps usually, disappointed....But...he did not feel Angst. He was often sad; but not, at bottom, worried" (p. 392).--
Professor of English Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &cEast Carolina University "Beep beep and beep beep, yeah."
To unsubscribe from the SIDNEY-SPENSER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=SIDNEY-SPENSER&A=1
To unsubscribe from the SIDNEY-SPENSER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=SIDNEY-SPENSER&A=1
To unsubscribe from the SIDNEY-SPENSER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=SIDNEY-SPENSER&A=1