On Sonnets -- Background

English poets in the 16th century adopted a short form of lyric poetry, the sonnet (little
song) from Italian masters such as Petrarch, a scholar-humanist who composed
sonnets in praise of a woman named Laura. Here is one of Petrarchs sonnets:
Petrarch, Sonnet XII
If from the cruel anguish my life tries
To shield itself, and from the many cares,
That I may see at the end of the years,
Lady, the light extinguished of your eyes,
And the hair of fine gold to silver turn,
And garlands and green clothes all worn and spent,
And the face pale that in my sad concern
Makes me timid and slow now to lament,
Yet Love will give me such aggressive powers
That I shall tell you of my martyrdom
The years, such as they were, the days, the hours;
And when the time to kill desire is come,
At least my grief will know and recognize
The little comfort of late-coming sighs.
The information below summarizes some conventions of Petrarchan sonnets:
Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered "the first writer of the Renaissance." Although his
Italian sonnets rely on courtly love conventions, the Renaissance sees a sort of
codification of the material and certainly of the form.
Petrarchan love conventions:
the poet (male) addresses a lady (corresponding to Petrarch's Laura).
she often has a classical name like Stella or Delia.
the poet-lover praises his mistress, the object and image of Love, with praise
for her superlative qualities using descriptions of beauty supplied by Petrarch:
"golden hair," "ivory breast," "ruby lips."

the poet employs contradictory and oxymoronic phrases and images: freezing
and burning, binding freedom.
the poet-lover dwells only on the subjective experience, hence on the misery
of being in love: thus the occasional appearance of the conventional
invocation to sleep to allay the pain (insomnia poems).
the poet disclaims credit for poetic merits: the inspiration of his mistress is
what makes the poetry good, he claims.
the poet promises to protect the youth of his lady and his own love against
time (through the immortalizing poetry itself).
The Italian sonnet functions as an act of intuition complete in itself, seeking to crystallize
a tender state of being. The poet seems continuously at work on his personal drama,
recording all the subtle modulations of feeling. It is said that the self-centered quality of
this kind of work is new. But the focus on the subjective state and of the suffering self as
opposed to the lady supposedly at the heart of the matter is all part of courtly love poetry
and to be found repeatedly in medieval poetry and lyrics. Perhaps the degree of
precision in the anatomy of the love process can be claimed as new to the Renaissance.
And characteristically Renaissance is the celebration of that attraction to mortal beauty
and earthly values as sublime.
As Petrarchan conventions became established, a simultaneous inclination to sound
original emerged. Later sonnet developments included:
a replacement of the Petrarchan metaphor (expressing the unity of all things)
with a simile drawn from common observation and direct perception.
an emphasis in mode upon persuasive reasoning.
the inclusion of physical love with the platonic.
an increased self-consciousness about the act of composing itself (love
poetry about love poetry).
-- borrowed from http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/ren.sonnets.html
Translations into English of Petrarchs Italian sonnets started a fad among many poets of
the Elizabethan period (late 16th century). Sonnet cycles, or collections of sonnets
composed on one theme or addressed to one lady, created a vogue for sonnet writing.
Sir Thomas Wyatt translated Petrarchs sonnets and wrote many of his own. The poem
below by Wyatt is NOT a sonnet but its a good poem:
They Flee From Me
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, "dear heart, how like you this?"
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
Shakespeares sonnets: Dates of composition are unknown. Nor is it certain whether
the order of the sonnets in the first (unauthorized) publication reflects how Shakespeare
would have arranged them. However, the collection seems to break into two major
groups: those addressed to a young man (whose identity still puzzles scholars) in which
the speaker (Shakespeare?) confesses and protests his love; and a second set
addressed to a woman conventionally known as the Dark Lady (so named because the
sonnets refer to her dark hair and complexion).
The sonnets to the young man do not openly suggest any physical homosexual
relationship, although that was possible. Rather, they assert what has been called a
homosocial connection between the two, a love attachment which was erotic without
necessarily being physical. Its worth comparing Socrates speech in Symposium as you
read these. Poems celebrating especially close attachments between young men are not
unusual in English poetry (the archetype is the love of David for Jonathan in the Old
Testament, a love that surpasses the love of women), but it should be noted that
Shakespeare is almost unique among Elizabethan poets in directing many of his sonnets
at another male. The only notable exception is a minor poet named Richard Barnfield
whose sonnets are more explicitly homoerotic than Shakespeares, as in this poem by
Barnfield:
Cherry-lipped Adonis in his snowy shape,
Might not compare with his pure ivory white,
On whose fair front a poet's pen might write,
Whose rosiate red excels the crimson grape.
His love-enticing delicate soft limbs,
Are rarely framed t' intrap poor gazing eyes;
His cheeks, the lily and carnation dyes,
With lovely tincture which Apollo's dims.
His lips ripe strawberries in nectar wet,
His mouth a hive, his tongue a honeycomb,
Where muses (like bees) make their mansion.
His teeth pure pearl in blushing coral set.

Oh how can such a body sin-procuring,

Be slow to love, and quick to hate, enduring?