Sonnet 19 | Historical Context

Sonnet 19 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 were Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey...
(read more)