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Sonnet 19 Study Guide

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by William Shakespeare
About 25 pages (7,440 words)
Shakespeare's sonnets Summary

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Historical Context

As a literary genre, the sonnet originated in Italy and is associated with the name of Francis Petrarch (1304-1374). Petrarch was inspired by the first sight of a woman he referred to as "Laura," and whom he loved and worshipped from afar for a period of twenty years until her death in 1348, and for ten years after that. The poems Petrarch wrote describing his hopeless love for Laura inspired a vogue that lasted for centuries in Western poetry.

The characteristic Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) in which the subject is described and developed, and a sestet (six lines) in which the thought takes a turn and there is a solution to the problem or an easing of it.

This sonnet form reached England two hundred years after Petrarch. The first English sonneteers.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 853 words. This study guide contains 7,440 words (approx. 25 pages at 300 words per page).

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Copyrights
Sonnet 19 from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



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