The Petrarchian Sonnet

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The Petrarchan sonnet is named after its creator, Francis Petrarch. Francis Petrarch was born in 1304 in Italy during the Middle Ages, which was also known as the Dark Ages, was a time of war and little literature. He published three hundred and sixty-six sonnets. Most all of them were about a woman named Laura, whom he stood no chance of winning over no matter how hard he tried. He tried for eleven years, with no success. Even after her death he wrote about her. The showmanship of his poems got the attention of a family in Rome who allowed him to study and travel any time he wished. Francis Petrarch was also one to turn his nose up at the common man. Petrarch was not well liked for his poetry, which to some resembled a sappy love poem. He died in 1374 in his study reading the book of Virgil. Love poems. Some are about comparing love to fire or objects, while others are about people. In Petrarch’s case, it was one woman named Laura who inspired him to write the three hundred and sixty-six love poems he wrote. His word choice, as depicted in “Sonnet 333”, which he wrote after Laura’s death, shows that Petrarch saw Laura as an immortal being that he would see again one day heaven, and would be with her. In the third stanza, when he says “Do I go telling, that how she lived and died/And lives again in immortality,/All men may know, and love my Laura’s grace.” By saying she lives again in immortality, he is calling her an immortal being and that all men have to know how wonderful she was. In “The Poetry Handbook” by John Lennard, he says that “Before a poem begins, there is in theory complete freedom of choice, but some kinds of words (notably scientific polysyllables) are rare in verse, and any chosen metre, form, and rhyme will sharply limit the choices available.” (223) According to Lennard, Petrarch might not have had any other word to describe how
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