sonnet. Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

The sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem that has its origins
in medieval Italy. The term comes from the
Italian sonnetto, meaning “little sound or song.”
While the sonnet has become a prevalent literary
form in a number of languages and has acquired
different forms (most notably the Shakespearean or
English sonnet form), the first sonnets followed
what is now known as the Italian or Petrarchan
form, consisting of hendecasyllabic (or 11-syllable)
lines arranged into an octave (or eight-line section)
followed by a sestet (or six-line part).
Typically there is a turn of thought or volta beginning
with the sestet, so that a conventional sonnet
might ask a question in the octave to be answered
in the sestet, or introduce a situation in the octave
to be interpreted in the sestet, or express a desire or
complaint in the octave that is assuaged in the sestet—
any two-part progression that involves a pivotal
change that can occur in the sestet of the poem.
The earliest extant sonnets are credited to GIACOMO
DA LENTINO, a notary attached to the imperial
court of Frederick II in Sicily, who
flourished between 1215 and 1233. Giacomo’s
sonnets rhymed abababab cdecde; the following is
Frederick Goldin’s translation of one of Giacomo’s
earliest:
The basilisk before the shining mirror
dies with pleasure;
the swan sings with greatest rapture
when it is nearest death;
at the height of its pleasure the peacock
gets upset when it looks at its feet;
the phoenix burns itself all up
to return to be reborn.
I think I have become much like these
creatures,
I who go gladly to death before her beauty
and make my song lusty as I approach the
end;
in merriment I suddenly despair,
burning in fire I am made new again in joy
because of you, whom I long to return to,
gentlest one.
(Goldin 1973, 219, ll. 1–14)
Like most of the later Italian sonnets, this one is
about love, and plays on the COURTLY LOVE convention
of dying for love of one’s lady. The turn of
thought accompanying the sestet’s change of
rhyme involves the speaker’s comparison of himself
with the fantastic animals he has introduced in
the octave.
The sonnet form was picked up and used by
many later poets of the Italian Middle Ages. In particular
the Tuscan poet GUITTONE D’AREZZO altered
the form in the later 13th century to create the abbaabba
rhyme scheme for the octave, a pattern that
became standard in all later Italian sonnets. The
great Tuscan poets Guido GUINIZELLI and Guido
CAVALCANTI utilized this form, and DANTE included
love sonnets in both his Rime and his VITA NUOVA.
But it was Francis PETRARCH whose influence
spread the sonnet form across Europe and gave his
name to the traditional Italian sonnet form.
CHAUCER was the first to translate a Petrarchan
sonnet into English, in the Canticus Troili embedded
in the first book of his courtly ROMANCE,
TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, but Chaucer did not copy
Petrarch’s form. The marquis de Santillana
(1398–1458) introduced the sonnet form into
Spain, and it became popular in France and England
during the Renaissance, with Sir Thomas
Wyatt first imitating Petrarch’s form and style in
English the early 16th century.
Bibliography
Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. German and Italian
Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.
Kleinhenz, Christopher. The Early Italian Sonnet: The
First Century (1220–1321). Lecce, Italy: Milella,
1986.
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. The Invention of the Sonnet,
and Other Studies in Italian Literature. Rome: Edizioni
de Storia e letteratura, 1959.

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