History Of The Sonnet And History Of Shakespeare
...as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Wyatt. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto, meaning "a little song." The sonnet style of poetry has certain characteristics that contrast other styles of poetry.
The history of the sonnet style can be traced back to the 13th century. It was invented by poets who used this highly structured poetic style to explore their feelings about love and mortality. The sonnet was popularized by Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374); the sonnet style grew so popular that centuries later, poets all over Europe were composing sonnets. The Italian sonnet that Petrarch used was probably invented by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Frederick II. The sonnet was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. However, it was his contemporary, the Earl of Surrey who gave the poems the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet.
Traditional English sonnets have fourteen lines, which are written in iambic pentameter. In the Romance languages, hendecasyllable and Alexandrines are the most widely used meters. They also have set rhyme schemes; for example, English (Shakespearean) sonnets have the rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg, Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets have the rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde or abbaabba cdcdcd, and Spenser wrote in abab bcbc cdcd ee rhyme scheme.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language. Among his many works, he wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. His sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, and morality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Sonnets were written over a number of years, probably beginning in the early...
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