The sonnet is an important parcel of European literature. It has roots in Italian literature as it has originally been explored by Italian poets, notably Francis Petrarch. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet has a prescriptive style to which a sonneteer complies. Some structural and format rules make a sonnet what it is. Moreover, on a thematic level, the genre lends itself to the exploration of various themes, the most recurrent of which is love.
A glimpse at the history of the Italian Sonnet
While the Italian sonnet is also called the Petrarchan sonnet about Francis Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)- great fourteen-century poet- the sonnet is claimed to have existed a century before him (Spiller, 1992). The early Italian sonneteers were in the 13th century and used a style that reflected the courtly circles from which it emerged. It is, indeed, believed to have emerged from Sicilian courts. Giacomo da Lentino and subsequent poets are the ones who laid the structural foundation of the Petrarchan sonnet. This is accounted for as early as 1235 (Spiller, 1992).
The musicality of the sonnet was beset on the genre by the third generation of sonneteers (Spiller, 1992). Before them, Gittone d’Arezzo and his followers displaced the elevated and courtly style of sonnets and imbued it with the communal lives and concerns of citizens. Then, the generation following them, the stilnovesti, self-proclaimed new sweet style poets vested musicality onto the sonnet. Only after them came Francis Petrarch, according to this reading of the history of Italian poetry. Hence, Petrarch, the main Italian sonneteer, is the representative of the fourth generation of the studied genre.
The Structure of the Italian Sonnet: Form, meter, and rhyme
The Italian sonnet is organized along with a canzone-stanza scheme whereby its distinctiveness and popularity lie (Wilkins, 1915). It follows a prescriptive pattern or stanzas which makes all the verses tune harmoniously. This distribution along stanzas is what has given the genre the quality of canzone. Indeed, the term refers to a medieval provincial song from which the sonnet is believed to have derived its form, with some variation.
The stanzaic form of a sonnet is that of a fourteen-line poem. It is divided into an octave and a sestet (Lewis, 2000). The octave is often divided into quatrains, viz. in two parts (Wilkins, 1915):
- Quatrain: 4 lines
- Quatrain: 4 lines
- Sestet: 6 lines
The usual rhyme for an Italian sonnet is that of abbaabba (for the octave) cdecde (for the sestet) but there are variations. Older versions reflect an ABABABAB scheme in the quatrain. However, the main characteristic of an Italian sonnet old or new is the clear division into two parts (quatrains) separated by a rhetorical turn of argument.
The Italian sonnet also reflects an iambic pentameter. Accordingly, lines are ten-syllable five-foot. An iamb is a two-syllable poetic foot composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (Strachan, Terry, 2000):
˘/ ˘/ ˘/ ˘/ ˘/
Language and Thematic Organization of a Sonnet
The possibilities that Italian sonnets offered a large room for the exploration of melodramatic themes are large. The metric and rhythmic organization allow for dramatic themes to be conveyed, notably thanks to the usage of the iambic pentameter. It is achieved through alternation between syllabic stress and un-stress which help convey an acceleration and deflation in the main theme of the poem.
However, the theme of love is probably what made the Italian sonnet famous and more particularly Petrarch’s sonnets. Petrarch and Elizabethan poets who followed his style produced poetry that spoke of a platonic kind of love. They expressed the feelings of a speaker who idealizes his beloved or mistress (Siegel, 1945). Behind such thematic exploration of the subject of love and the exaggerated measure lies in the chivalric and free-love tradition of the twelfth century (Siegel, 1945). The beloved woman is praised beyond measure but at the same time the lover, the speaker in the sonnet, is suggestively portrayed as heroic:
(Petrarch, Love Sonnet to Laura).
The type of love that Petrarchan sonnet describes is referred to as courtly love. It is believed that it shows the clinging to chivalries by “a degenerated aristocracy that retained very little of the chivalric attitude” (Siegel, 1945). Some scholars went further as to read Petrarchan’s legacy of courtly love as a projection of frustration and cultural malaise (Scaglione, 1997).
It is worth mentioning that Petrarch’s chivalric love tradition has been emulated by English poets during the Elizabethan era. They found in such early Italian sonnets a form to make up for the dwindling heroism in society. In fact, these poets, belonging to the then aristocracy, used this form to express discontent with society (Siegel, 1945).
There is a linguistic aspect to the use of sonnets by early Italian poets which is that the sonnet represents the spectacular use of vernacular as opposed to Latin- an important development in Italian literature. This is mainly due to the genre being derivated from the canzone, as afore-mentioned, which is a provincial type of poetry. Hence, the development of the sonnet testifies to the evolvement of Italian literature as such. Indeed, Dante-father of Italian literature- defended the Sonnet as a literary form, although for him the canzone was the highest form of vernacular (Spillar, 1992).
Conclusion
The sonnet in general and the Petrarchan legacy are exerting a lot of literary interest. They are part and parcel of European literature and are essential to anyone interested in the field. The sonnet has become a distinct genre for its peculiar structure, format, and rhythmic characteristics. It lends itself to a variety of subjects but the most discussed types are love sonnets, of which Petrarch is a good representative.
Bibliography
Turco, Lewis. The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, 3rd edition, University Press of New England, 2000. Literature Resource Center. Francis Petrarch.
Aldo Scaglione. “Petrarchan Love and the Pleasures of Frustration”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 58, No. 4 (1997), pp. 557-572
Siegel, Paul N. “The Petrarchan Sonneteers and Neo-Platonic Love”, Studies in Philology, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1945), pp. 164-182.
Spiller R. G., Michael. The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction, Routledge, 1992.
Norton Anthology of Poetry, Encyclopedia. “Italian Sonnet”, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 2005.
Wilkins, Ernest H. The Invention of the Sonnet, Modern Philology, Vol. 13, No. 8 (Dec., 1915), pp. 463-494.
Strachan, John.; Terry, Richard. Poetry: Elements of Literature, Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
Outline
General introduction
Body
- The Structure of the Italian Sonnet: Form, meter, and rhyme
- The language and Thematic Organization of a Sonnet