The Elizabethan Courtier Poets

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The Court was the physical place in which the sovereign controlled his power and from which it developed and circulated the literary and cultural movements. As a matter of facts, as Catherine Bates states in the chapter “Poetry, patronage and the court” of “The English companion to English Literature 1500-1600”, since the reign of Henry VII Tudor the use of the policy of patronage became very important to convey political ideas and to build a small circle of trusted people. In order to gain favours, the poets of the court wrote to glorify their patrons. However, when Elizabeth I came to throne, the use of poetry was more complicated due primarily to the fact that for the first time a woman had full powers and was considered as a king. The courtier poets addressed their works to a female monarch …show more content…

This is what happened a few years later, when Elizabeth banished Raleigh because he married her maid without her permission. Moreover, Steven W. May in “The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: the poems and their contexts” affirmed that Raleigh wrote this poem when he was close to the Queen Elizabeth I, but he fear to be abandoned by the Queen who was beginning to prefer the Earls of Essex. The fear of abandonment is expressed in “Fortune hath taken away my Love” This poem is strictly related to the courtship and to his relationship with the Queen because it evokes the same Fortune that Elizabeth has mentioned in “Written on a Window Frame at Woodstock”. Raleigh explains that he is just another victim of fortune because Essex is superior to him as well as the Queen Mary was superior to Elizabeth when she imprisoned her. By affirming that they are both victims of bad fortune, he is attempting to attract the attention of the Queen in order to regain his position of

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