This style of poetry, written to express the unattainable love for another, is called Petrarchism. The general theme of this sequence of poems is the unattainability of love-the “ speaker” (essentially the poem’s narrator) seeks to love Laura, but is never quite able to obtain her love in return. Petrarch’s famous collection, Il Canzionere, features 366 poems (317 of which are sonnets), chiefly written in praise of a woman named Laura. Portrait of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)

Technically, the sonnet is thought to have been invented in Italy by a thirteenth-century notary named Giacomo da Lentini, but the form was popularized by a fourteenth-century humanist scholar named Francesco Petrarca, usually anglicized as Petrarch. Over the centuries, various poets have taken liberties by deliberately omitting or altering some of these four main components, but the vast majority of the sonnets you come across adhere closely to this form. The simple answer is that a sonnet is a poetic form made of 14 lines, a standardized rhyme scheme, a consistent meter, and a “ volta” (also known as a “ turn”) that marks a tonal or thematic shift. But what exactly is a sonnet, and when and why did sonnets become so popular? Thanks largely to the cultural awareness of William Shakespeare’s sonnets in particular (who among us doesn’t know the line “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), “sonnet” is almost a household word.

History of the Sonnet The Sonnet by Shaun Russellįew forms are more associated with Renaissance poetry than the sonnet.

English sonnet iambic pentameter