Asterisked items should be looked up in Holman-Harmon's Handbook to Literature or The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms or possibly a collegiate dictionary.

1. Notes & Questions on "The Soote Season" (NAEL7 #1)

1.1 (a) In what way does Surrey not use, really, either the Italian or English sonnet* form? How might the form he does use help convey theme, description, and characterization? (b) How does Surrey's rhyme scheme suggest a blended form? (c1) In what ways might the sonnet be considered to have both an envelope form (how do lines 1-2 symmetrically parallel line 12, and what is appropriately enveloped or enclosed in lines 3-11) and a whiplash, reversal, countercheck, or countermotion form (the first thirteen and a half lines leading one way, the last half line providing a surprising reversal)? (c2) How does the reversal form of this sonnet compare to that in Edward Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory"?
1.2 A basic problem of organization occurs, whether in an English 101 essay (as on an assigned topic like "What three or four qualities are necessary in a good employee?") or a sonnet by Surrey, when items are listed in a series. (a) What organizational patterns or principles are there in lines 3-11? That is, why are the items listed in the order they are? (b) How do lines 3-4 form a unit, 6-7 form a unit, 8-9 form a unit, and 10-11 form a unit? (c) How does the creature listed in line 11 provide an appropriate transition back to the landscape, as well as provide an appropriate climax of the ideas of spring's life, growth, or productivity (all of which are to be undercut in the sonnet's concluding reversal)?
1.3 (a) What do the heavy alliteration* and consonance* in the sonnet help convey or suggest about the spring season? (b) An NAEL footnote to the sonnet points out something unusual about its rhyme scheme; what themes, ideas, character (of the speaker) portrayal, tone, etc., might this rhyme scheme help convey, and how? (c) What ironic pun is there on the word spring in the sonnet's last line, and how does the irony connect with part a of this question?

2. Notes & Questions on "Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought" (NAEL7 #2)

2.1 As indicated by the NAEL footnote, this sonnet invites comparison with Wyatt's "The Long Love" (also included in NAEL). (a) In which sonnet are the verbs and actions more vivid, energetic, or dynamic? (For example, what exactly does the personified* Love do with his war flag in each sonnet?) (b) Which sonnet is metrically smoother, if either, and where? Which sonnet has less harshness in sound, if either, and where? (d) What rhyme* scheme is used in each sonnet? How does the rhyme scheme differentiate the two sonnets? (e) As a result of each sonnet's literary components, what are the resulting differences between the two sonnets in tone and portrayal and theme, relative to speaker, subject, and lady?
2.2 (a) What military or political sense (according to your collegiate dictionary) might seat(2) have, which would be pertinent? (b) What evidences of feudalism* can be found in Surrey's poem? How might these reflect Surrey's historical circumstances, the specific Tudor regime of his time? What rather different spheres of human activity are thus connected by this imagery and vocabulary? How does all this exemplify zeitgeist*? (What implications are there about love, romance, and marriage in the U.S. in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century?)
2.3 (a) Though in a general agreement, how does the closing couplet of each sonnet differ in the portrayal of the values inherent in the attachment of the lover to his Lord? (b) How does Wyatt's closing couplet suggest a pervasive motif in his poetry, including the NAEL selections, concerning relationships in romance and the court? (c) How does Surrey's closing couplet suggest the values of the aristocracy or nobility?

3. Questions on "Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace" (NAEL7 #3)

3.1 (a) How is this sonnet based on the same contrast or opposition found in Surrey's "The Soote Season"? (b) Based on your experience or observation, can or does this contrast or opposition really occur in real life?
3.2 (a) What paradoxes* and oxymoron* occur in lines 7-8, and how do these figures help define or describe the speaker's emotional or psychological state? (b) What do they imply about love or romance?
3.3 How does the sonnet's rhyme scheme (and the poem's consequent sound) help suggest romantic obsession?
3.4 How a modern-spelling edition of a text can erase shades of meaning, wordplay, and so on, is suggested by the printing of the word in line 4 as chair in modern-spelling editions of Surrey's poem. As indicated by the NAEL footnote, what would be lost by the standard modern spelling of the word?

4. Questions on "Th'Assyrians' king, in peace with foul desire" (NAEL7 #4)

4.1 Besides in this poem, Sardanapalus is the subject of George Gordon, Lord Byron's poetic drama Sardanapalus (1821) and a celebrated painting by the famous painter Eugene Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus (1826, 12' 1" x 16' 3"; reproduced in Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 9th ed., pp. 878-879). How do the views of Sardanapalus from the works of the Romantic era compare and contrast with the view of the ancient Assyrian king in Surrey's sonnet?
4.2 (a) Lines 1-4 may illustrate one of the three principal causes of reading comprehension difficulty in all reading, including poetry: the meanings of words (lexical), the grammatical or syntactical structure of a sentence or passage (grammatical), and the meanings of figurative language or allusion. Lines 1-4 may present grammatical difficulty to some readers; what is their grammatical structure -- that is, what are the subject and predicate of the main clause, and how do any phrases or subordinate clauses relate to the main clause? (b) How does the grammatical structure of lines 1-4 help convey their content (as opposed to potential different grammatical structures)? (c) How do grammatical difficulty, elliptical grammar (including a clipped or curt or abrupt quality) relate to any of the poems themes, meanings, or tone?
4.3 How does this sonnet illustrate the combination of the English pattern of 4-4-4-2 and Italian pattern of 8-6? How do grammar, punctuation, and content demarcate the units?
4.4 (a) How do the piling up of differing consonants (making pronunciation or enunciation difficult) in lines 1-4 help express their content? (b) How is alliteration used to help convey satiric scorn in the poem? (c) Almost never are diacritical marks (to indicate pronunciation, as of extra syllables) provided by the original authors of literary works, up through the mid twentieth century; rather, these are supplied by editors. How did the NAEL editors know that diacritical marks were needed in lines 5 and 10?

5. Notes & Questions on "So cruel prison [how could betide]" (also titled "Prisoned in Windsor") (NAEL7 #5)

5.1 (a) How does the poem have a symmetrical envelope structure, with stanza 1 connecting with stanzas 11-13 (and concluding couplet)? (b) How is the middle part of the poem (stanzas 2-10) organized or structured spatially? (c) Given the speaker's situation at the beginning of the poem, what irony is there in the general spatial movement of stanzas 2- 10? (c) How are stanzas 2-5 organized from lesser to greater in activity?
5.2 Like "Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt," the middle portion of this poem has sentence-fragment illustration (noun plus subordinate clause). What structural, thematic, and tonal effects are conveyed by this syntax or syntactical pattern? (Two exceptional books on the subject of grammar's thematic use in poetry, and by extension, literature generally are Francis Berry's Poet's Grammar and Donald Davie's Articulate Energy.)
5.3 (a) What ideas, applied to the speaker's life and situation, are suggested or implied by the classical allusion in the poem's first stanza? (b) How does this allusion connect with the concluding NAEL selection of Surrey's work?

6. Notes & Questions on "Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest" (also titled "Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt") (NAEL7 #6)

6.1 How does Surrey utilize the genre of elegy*, epitaph*, and eulogy* in this poem? The genres deal with death, and often have a speaker dealing with death (the acme in the English Renaissance is probably reached with Milton's "Lycidas"). How is Wyatt's death dealt with in the poem, in what our attitude should be about Wyatt and his death?
6.2 How does the iterative imagery* of static versus dynamic help convey any of the poem's themes or help structure it?
6.3 (a) How does Surrey convey his ideas through the symmetrical envelope structure of st.1, sts. 2-8, and st.9? (b) A list or series of items is given in sts. 2-8, which ought to have (like any list of items in any Eng. 101 essay) some organization, organizing principle, or structure. How are the items organized more or less spatially?
6.4 How is each anatomical part of Wyatt made, through metonymy* or symbolism, to represent an aspect of Wyatt's personality, temperament, or moral character? In what way might hand (st. 4) and tongue (st. 5) have an underlying logical interconnection, especially given the main reason for Wyatt's fame?

7. Notes & Questions on "O Happy Dames, That May Embrace" (NAEL7 #7)

(abbreviations: stanza number is given, followed by a period and then line number or numbers)

7.1 How does the poem's speaker make this poem relatively unusual in English Renaissance love poetry?
7.2 How is this poem thematically connected with several other poems of Surrey's in the NAEL selections?
7.3 (a) What weakness of Surrey's as a poet is suggested by the two main strands of imagery in the poem (1.1-2, 3.16; vs. prevailing imagery of stanzas 2 and 4-6)? (b) How do 1.1-2 and 3.16 connect? (c) How does the prevailing imagery of the poem recall that of Wyatt's "My Galley"?
7.4 (a) What sense, what meaning, can be made of the oxymoron in stanza 5, called attention to by the NAEL footnote? How can a romantic beloved really be these two opposite things, simultaneously? (b) How does the oxymoron in 5.33 lead, along with the immediately following two lines, to the idea that the beloved is no ordinary mariner? What specific kind of seafarer has he become?
7.5 The phrase "salt flood"(5.29) to mean "ocean" or "sea" is a periphrasis* that will become commonplace in English Neoclassical poetry, and become the standard poetic diction of that poetry that Wordsworth reacts against. When used by Alexander Pope or other great poets, such periphrases (e.g., "finny flock" instead of "fish") such periphrases are meaningful and thematic in the poem, not just decorative. How does the periphrasis in Surrey's poem work meaningfully, connecting imagistically (especially with the word salt) with stanza 4 and at the same time, suggesting in the word flood the basis of the speaker's anxiety?

8. Notes & Questions on "Martial, the things that do attain" (also titled, with a slightly different text, "My Friend, the Things That Do Attain") (NAEL7 #8)

8.1 How do the stanzaic* form, meter (number of feet* and syllables), and level of diction* (see material on levels of usage or registers of usage in a composition handbook, as well as Holman-Harmon), relate to the principal assertion about values made in the poem?
8.2 How do lines 1-2, 3-14, and 15-16 constitute a symmetrical envelope structure of the poem?
8.3 Where are many examples of lines containing balance* and symmetry*, and how do the balance and symmetry relate to Surrey's assertion about the way of life that should be pursued?
8.4 Where are many examples of abstract* diction in the poem, and how does this diction relate to Surrey's overall purpose or purposes of the poem?

9. Notes & Questions on "[from] The Second Book of Virgil"; cf. in the Norton Online Archive, at the NAEL website, "[from] The Second Book of Virgil" (NAEL7 #9)

9.1 To get a better perspective on the passage, look it up in a modern translation to see how a modern poetic or prose translation compares. The passage may be found in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. How does Surrey's translation compare and contrast with the modern translation? (Keats's famous sonnet "On First Looking in Chapman's Homer" should, unbeknownst to many, draw attention to the great translators of the English literary Renaissance, including William Tyndale [NAEL7 542 ff.], Sir Thomas Hoby [NAEL7 577 ff.], Arthur Golding [NAEL7 600 ff.] and the great poet and playwright George Chapman.)
9.2 Look up <blank verse>* in HTL or PDLT, and study the NAEL7 example (Aeneid IV.86-108) for how it manages the form pioneered in English by Surrey: e.g., how regular is the meter, and do meter, rhythm, and meaning cooperate?