The Sonnet

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The Sonnet
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Origins of the sonnet

• Italy, Jacopo da Lentini. Sicilian school, 13th
  century
• term derived from the Italian sonetto, little
  song
• Dante (12651321)
• Guido Cavalcanti (c. 12501300)
• Petrarch (1304-1374)

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Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

• his sonnets are contained in a collection called
  Canzoniere (Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta)
• 366 poems in the Italian vernacular language
• 14 lines, an octave and a sestet
• written over a long period of time (1330-1365)
• arranged as an intimate diary
• two parts In vita di Madonna Laura, In morte di
  Madonna Laura
• Laura the woman loved by the poet

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• unlike the idealised women of the Dolce Stil
  Novo she doesnt lead to God, but makes the poet
  deviate
• the reason for the poets 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

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• 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

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The sonnet in England

• Petrarchs 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

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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
• Spensers Amoretti, tracing the poets courtship
  to the woman who would become his wife

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Structure

• Petrarchan sonnet
• 14 lines
• an octave (2 quatrains)
• a sestet (2 tercets)
• rhyme scheme
• abba abba
• cde cde / cdc cdc
• Shakespearean sonnet
• 14 lines
• three quatrains
• a final couplet
• rhyme scheme
• abab cdcd efef
• gg

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Edmund Spenser, Amoretti

• 88 sonnets
• tracing the poets 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

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Shakespeares 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

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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 summers
  day?
• Sonnet CXVI Let me not to the marriage of true
  minds
• Sonnet CXXX My mistress eyes are nothing like
  the sun