The sonnet tradition
A sonnet is a form of poem written in an iambic pentameter, meaning it has 14 lines with three quatrains (4 lines rhyming ABAB) and a couplet (2 lines rhyming AA). The sonnets originated from an Italian poet called Fransesco Petrarca, who wrote love poems, later known as sonnets, to a woman he called Laura in the 1300s. After the woman’s death the poems were published, and, with their huge popularity, writing a sonnet became a way of declaring your love to unattainable women. The sonnets were always themed around about unrequited love and despair.
The concept of the sonnets spread quickly around Italy and France but waited to be taken up by the Englishmen until the 1500s. Sir Thomas Wyatt started translating some of Petracra’s sonnets into English, thereby making them readable for the people of Britain. Wyatt wrote his own sonnets as well and he added a new theme as a contrast to the formerly known one, a theme in which the writer wants to break free of the love that enslaves him. The English poet Henry Howard took up writing sonnets as well, and he added male friendship as another theme to write a sonnet about. He also came up with the iambic pentameter, which later became the official structure of a sonnet. Even though these two poets made sonnets and published them together, the sonnet tradition didn’t gain much popularity amongst the people until the 1590s.
Writing sonnets suddenly became a trend and loads of authors jumped on the wagon. Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence ‘Astrohphil and Stella’ became one of the major publishings in sonnet writing, and it portrayed the classic unrequited love scenario of a man in love with an unachievable, distant woman, who marries a rich lord instead of him. Sir Philip Sidney was viewed as a true renaissance man, especially after he died a heroic death, and he inspired a future generation of poets,