Lessons in the history of the sonnet
The history of the sonnet, an Italian poetic form whose name means ‘little song’, provides many lessons for developing readers and writers of poetry. This course will focus on the sonnet in English, which arrived in England during the Renaissance. We will read examples of the first ever English sonnets, before examining the features of Shakespeare’s innovative and infamous Sonnets. We will also explore the form’s central theme, love, how the sonnet got its bad reputation as a vehicle for cringey language, and the fate of the sonnet in the 20th century.