17 pages • 34-minute read
Sonnet 18
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Background
Literary Context
The collection in which Petrarch’s “Sonnet 18” appears (Canzoniere) is, according to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, “primarily concerned with Petrarch’s love for Laura and the varied moods it engenders, from ecstatic joy to deep sorrow, as well as his inner thoughts, desires, and aspirations” (191). It is primarily, but not wholly, made up of sonnets (14-line poems) such as “Sonnet 18.” What is now known as the Italian sonnet form was created in the court of Frederick II between 1205 and 1250. The octave rhyme scheme (the rhyme scheme of the first eight lines of the poem) was invented by d’Arezzo (1230-94) and popularized by Dante and Petrarch.
Dante’s Vita Nuova, which is an autobiography that illustrates Dante’s Platonic ideal of love for Beatrice, influenced Petrarch and “Sonnet 18.” The deceased beloved, Beatrice, becomes an angelic figure of virtue. These love lyrics help define the dolce stil nuovo, a term coined by Dante that means “sweet new style.” Petrarch’s beloved (Laura) also dies, but Petrarch struggles to subdue his passion. The dolce stil nuovo was part of the courtly love tradition that began in Europe with the troubadours, with ideas descended from Ovid’s love poems. Courtly love—often articulated through Arthurian romances, as well as The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus—includes pining after an unattainable woman. Petrarch honed this into the image of the cruel Petrarchan mistress. His love for Laura was unrequited, or unreturned, and this romantic dynamic is a central feature of his sonnets.
Many later poets were heavily influenced by Petrarch, spawning the term Petrarchism, which refers to emulating Petrarch’s style. Renaissance English poets Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard (the Earl of Surrey) emulated and translated Petrarch in the 1520s. This spawned a new generation of English-language sonneteers, including Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Later sonneteers include John Donne, who published his Holy Sonnets in 1633, which developed some of the religious ideas in Petrarch’s poetry.
Cultural Context
Petrarch is the father of Italian Renaissance humanism, a school of thought developed from his rediscovery of the works of Cicero and other Latin authors. At the time, the works of Roman authors were widely unknown and untranslated, and Petrarch’s 1345 translation of the works brought them back into the public for the first time since before the Crusades. Renaissance humanism is a school of thought concerned with education and the arts, and with implications for society. It proposes education via the studia humanitatis, the human school, which follows along the lines established by Cicero’s work, with emphasis on four major categories: grammar, rhetoric, history, and poetry, with moral instruction following from these categories.
From this core, humanism would grow to a larger poetic, artistic, and philosophical school that would see Greek and Roman myths reincluded into popular narratives as well as see an increase in the use of techniques outside the Christian, specifically Catholic, tradition. The themes of humanism are reflected in “Sonnet 18” and in Petrarch’s other poetry as well. His personal popularity as a poet and writer helped to spread these ideas throughout the Italian peninsula, which would later influence the wider European continent and inspire many other poetic styles.
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