Estoy bien y tu?

愛頌　十四行詩之68　Edmund Spenser

最榮耀的生命之主！在這天，
你勝過了死亡和罪凱旋；
征服踐踏了地獄，戰勝
擄掠我們這些曾被擄掠的：
親愛的主，這喜樂日是喜樂的開始；
求賜我們：永遠在喜樂中生活！
因你為我們受死，
用你的寶血潔淨一切罪惡。
使我們能看重你愛的可貴，
也能更新對你同樣的愛；
愛那些同被你重價買贖的，
為了你，能彼此以愛相待。
寶貴的愛，我們愛如當盡的責任，
愛的功課是主所教導我們。

The sonnets of Amoretti draw heavily on authors of the Petrarchan tradition, most obviously Torquato Tasso and

Petrarch himself^. “In Amoretti Spenser often uses the established topoi, for his sequence imitates in its own way the

traditions of Petrarchan courtship and its associated Neo-Platonic conceits” . Apart from the general neo-platonic

conceit of spiritual love in opposition to physical love, he borrows specific images and metaphors, including those that

portray the beloved or love itself as cruel tormenter. Many critics, in light of what they see as his overworking of old

themes, view Spenser as being a less original and important sonneteer than contemporaries such as Shakespeare and

Sir Philip Sidney.

However, Spenser also revised the tradition that he was drawing from. Amoretti breaks with conventional love

in a number of ways. In most sonnet sequences in the Petrarchan tradition, the speaker yearns for a lover who is

sexually unavailable. Not only is there a conflict between spiritual and physical love, but the love object is often

married; it is an adulterous love. “Spenser’s innovation was to dedicate an entire sequence to a woman he could

honorably win” . Elizabeth Boyle was an unmarried woman, and their love affair eventually ended in marriage.