Amoretti and the Dolce Stil Novo

Recent numerological discoveries by Alex Dunlop make it clear that the Amoretti is a highly organized sequence in three sections of twenty-one, forty-seven, and twenty-one sonnets respectively. The theme of the sequence is that of the authors of the dolce stil novo, especially as subsumed in Petrarch. Fleshly love is in painful conflict with divine love. Italian writers resolved this conflict with the convention of the death of the lady. She then becomes a saint, and the poet's devotion to her leads him towards heaven. Spenser solved the problem by asserting that fleshly love as sanctified in marriage is a human expression of divine love. This is especially clear in the Easter sonnet, number 68. Spenser's sequence both draws on convention and departs from it in a way that is typical of his other works, especially the Epithalamion. It is one of Spenser's most carefully articulated and most impressive creations.