The Sonnet

Origins of the sonnet

Italy, Jacopo da Lentini. Sicilian school, 13th centuryterm derived from the Italian sonetto, little songDante (1265–1321)Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–1300)Petrarch (1304-1374)

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)his sonnets are contained in a collection called Canzoniere (Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta)366 poems in the Italian vernacular language14 lines, an octave and a sestetwritten over a long period of time (1330-1365)arranged as an intimate diarytwo parts: In vita di Madonna Laura, In morte di Madonna Laura

Laura: the woman loved by the poet

unlike the idealised women of the “Dolce Stil Novo” she doesn’t lead to God, but makes the poet deviate

the reason for the poet’s inner conflict, between the sensual temptation of love and his aspiration to asceticism

love for this woman a complex feeling, giving the poet both joy and pain, destined never to be fully realized

Petrarch ’s quest for love leads to hopelessness and irreconcilable anguish, as he expresses in the series of oxymorons in Rima 134 "Pace non trovo, et non ò da fa guerra”

The sonnet in England Petrarch’s poem is exactly where the English

sonnet starts from about 200 years later, with Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and his translations of Italian poems

the phase in the history of the language called “Modern English” had just begun

poets needed to create a proper poetic language

they did so by exercising on the Italian model

Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser I find no peace Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his

most common sestet scheme is cddc ee. This marks the beginnings of an exclusively "English" contribution to sonnet structure, that is three quatrains and a closing couplet

vogue of the “sonnet sequence” Spenser’s Amoretti, tracing the poet’s courtship

to the woman who would become his wife

Structure

Edmund Spenser, Amoretti

88 sonnets tracing the poet’s courtship to the woman

who would become his wife One day I wrote her name upon the strand… in the Elizabethan form on the power of poetry to make things

immortal

Shakespeare’s Sonnets sonnet sequence: 154 brings the Elizabethan form to perfection

(three quatrains and a final couplet) first part dedicated to a “fair youth” (the Earl

of Southampton), second part dedicated to a “dark lady”

deals with the typical themes of Renaissance poetry with unique complexity and energy

Themes time, love, beauty, poetry, death, friendship the relationships between them: in particular, love and

beauty escape the devastating effects of time thanks to the power of poetry

parody of typically Petrarchan elements, like the blazon

Sonnet XVIII Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Sonnet CXVI Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Sonnet CXXX My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun