Being a sonnet cycle of love with a detailed description of the lady’s physical beauty and the lover’s happy feelings, Amorettiis a story of love between earthlings which is aimed at marriage. Meanwhile, Spenser sanctifies the love by Platonizing and Christianizing the lady. Thus it is clear that the love in the mind of Spenser is not just an earthly one or a heavenly one separately, but both, and, a combination of both earthly love and sacred love.
References
[1]
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[3]
Hu, J. (2001). The Starry Heavens: English Renaissance Poetry and Traditional Cosmology. Beijing: Peking University Press.
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King, J. N. (1990). Spenser’s Poetry and the Reformation Tradition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
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Lerner, L. Marriage. In A. C. Hamilton (Ed.), The Spenser Encyclopedia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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Nelson, W. (1965). The Poetry of Edmund Spenser. New York and London: Columbia University Press.
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Plato (n.d.) (1993). The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues (W. S. Cobb, Trans.). New York: State University of New York Press.
[12]
Quitslund, J. A. (1990). Platonism. In A. C. Hamilton (Ed.), The Spen- ser Encyclopedia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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Rivers, I. (1979). Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Students’ Guide. London, Sydney, Wellington: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
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Singer, I. (1984). The Nature of Love (Vol. 1). Chicago: Chicago Uni- versity Press.
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Waller, G. (1994). English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century (2nd ed.). London and New York: Longman Group UK Limited.
