A sonnet is a poetic form which originated in Italy; Giacomo Da Lentini is credited with its invention.

The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound). By the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history.

Writers of sonnets are sometimes called "sonneteers", although the term can be used derisively.

A variant on the English form is the Spenserian sonnet, named after Edmund Spenser (c.1552–1599), in which the rhyme scheme is abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. A Spenserian sonnet does not appear to require that the initial octave set up a problem that the closing sestet answers, as with a Petrarchan sonnet. Instead, the form is treated as three quatrains connected by the interlocking rhyme scheme and closed by a couplet. The linked rhymes of his quatrains suggest the linked rhymes of such Italian forms as terza rima. This example is taken from Amoretti:

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands

Happy ye leaves. whenas those lily hands, (a)Which hold my life in their dead doing might, (b)Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands, (a)Like captives trembling at the victor's sight. (b)And happy lines on which, with starry light, (b)Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,(c)And read the sorrows of my dying sprite, (b)Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book. (c)And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook (c)Of Helicon, whence she derived is, (d)When ye behold that angel's blessed look, (c)My soul's long lacked food, my heaven's bliss. (d)Leaves, lines, and rhymes seek her to please alone, (e)Whom if ye please, I care for other none. (e)

Amoretti is a sonnet cycle written by Edmund Spenser in the 16th century. The cycle describes his courtship and eventual marriage to Elizabeth Boyle.

Amoretti was first published in 1595 in London by William Ponsonby. It was printed as part of a volume entitled “Amoretti and Epithalamion. Written not long since by Edmunde Spenser.” The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets, along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and an Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage.[1] “The volume memorializes Spenser’s courtship of Elizabeth Boyle, a young, well-born Anglo-Irish woman, and the couple’s wedding on June 11, 1594”.[2] In the sonnets of Amoretti Spenser succeeds in "immortalizing the name of his bride to be ... by devices of word play".[3]

Amoretti has been largely overlooked and unappreciated by critics, who see it as inferior to other major Renaissance sonnet sequences in the Petrarchan tradition. In addition, it has been

overshadowed by Spenser’s other works, most notably The Faerie Queene, his epic allegorical masterpiece. C. S. Lewis, among the most important twentieth century Spenser scholars said that “Spenser was not one of the great sonneteers”.[4] However, other critics consider Spenser’s sonnets to be innovative and to express a range of tones and emotions, and are much more skillful and subtle than generally recognized.

The sonnets of Amoretti draw heavily on authors of the Petrarchan tradition, most obviously Torquato Tasso and Petrarch himself.[5] “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”.[6] 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 poetry 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 already married; it is an adulterous love. “Spenser’s innovation was to dedicate an entire sequence to a woman he could honorably win”.[7] Elizabeth Boyle was an unmarried woman, and their love affair eventually ended in marriage.

In addition, the Petrarchan tradition tends to be obsessed with the instability and discontinuity of the love situation. The speaker’s feelings, thoughts, and motives continually change and shift. The love situation is fraught with egotism, conflict, and continual transformations within the speaker. These conflicts are never resolved, but continue on endlessly as the poet is continually frustrated by the rejection of his beloved or his inability to reconcile spiritual and physical love.[8] While Petrarch finds some semblance of resolution in rejection of physical love and the subsequent death of his beloved, and Renaissance Petrarchism tends to ignore resolution and glorify the state of indeterminacy, Spenser finds his own unique solution. He eventually moves away from the constant transformation and self-absorption of the Petrarchan love situation, and towards the “peace and rest Spenser finds in the sacred world of marriage”.[9] He represents the Protestant conception of marriage, celebrating it as a sanctuary in which two people can find peace and rest in a mutual love covenant, in which spiritual and physical love can exist in harmony rather than as contraries

Prothalamion, the commonly used name of Prothalamion; or, A Spousall Verse in Honour of the Double Marriage of Ladie Elizabeth and Ladie Katherine Somerset,[1] is a poem by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), one of the important poets of the Tudor Period in England. Published in 1596[1] (see 1596 in poetry), it is a nuptial song that he composed that year on the occasion of the twin marriage of the daughters of the Earl of Worcester; Elizabeth Somerset and Katherine Somerset.

Prothalamion is written in the conventional form of a marriage song. The poem begins with a description of the River Thames where Spenser finds two beautiful maidens. The poet proceeds to praise them and wishing them all the blessings for their marriages. The poem begins with a fine description of the day on which he is writing the poem. "Calm was the day and through the trembling air/The sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play." The poet is standing near the Thames River and finds a group of nymphs with baskets collecting flowers

for the new brides. The poet tells us that they are happily making the bridal crowns for Elizabeth and Katherine. He goes on his poem describing two swans at the Thames, relating it to the myth of Jove and Leda. According to the myth, Jove falls in love with Leda and comes to court her in the guise of a beautiful swan. The poet feels that the Thames has done justice to his nuptial song by "flowing softly" according to his request: "Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song."

The Spenserian Sonnet was named for Edmund Spenser 1552-1599, a 16th century English Poet. The Spenserian Sonnet inherited the tradition of the declamatory couplet of Wyatt / Surrey although Spenser used Sicilian quatrains to develop a metaphor, conflict, idea or question logically, with the declamatory couplet resolving it.

Beyond the prerequisite for all sonnets, the defining features of the Spenserian Sonnet are:

a quatorzain made up of 3 Sicilian quatrains (4 lines alternating rhyme) and ending in a rhyming couplet

metric, primarily iambic pentameter. rhymed, rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcdee. composed with a volta (a non physical gap) or pivot (a shifting or tilting of the main

line of thought) sometime after the 2nd quatrain. The epiphany is arrived at logically. written with each quatrain developing a metaphor, conflict, idea or question, and the

end declamatory couplet providing the resolution.