The first thing that comes to our mind while deal­ing with son­nets is tra­di­tion, struc­ture and cer­tain terms. Terms such as a four­teen line poem, qua­torzain, four­teen­er, Shake­speare­an etc. are often used by peo­ple when­ev­er they try to defy the dic­tio­nary mean­ing of son­net and go into the cave of details. The rea­son might be the fact that Son­net has always been in lit­er­a­ture with a strong nerve but nev­er has been on the peak of pop­u­lar­i­ty in com­par­i­son with oth­er lit­er­ary gen­res. Had the Ital­ian and Occ­i­tan lan­guages not exist­ed or cre­at­ed per­haps the Lit­er­ary mind­ed peo­ple would not have been able to muse over, crit­i­cize and cre­ate lit­er­a­ture through the pop­u­lar well-known genre of poet­ry which we call as Son­net. Not a sin­gle era of poet­ics can be imag­ined with­out the cre­ation of com­plex Son­nets along with its sev­er­al pos­tu­lates that had served as food for poet­ry worms of the con­cerned peri­od. Start­ing from the son­neteer Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni in the 12th cen­tu­ry, to Derozio in the 20th cen­tu­ry this form of poet­ry has been one of the most lucra­tive genus of lit­er­a­ture for myth­i­cal exper­i­ments down the ages. If we com­pare son­net with oth­er poet­ic forms from the philo­soph­i­cal, the­mat­ic and aes­thet­i­cal point of view, it does not cre­ate a notable dif­fer­ence but where the forte of Son­nets lies is in its struc­ture and num­ber of bifur­ca­tions this form exper­i­men­tal­ly pos­sess­es. All exper­i­ments on son­net have been with its struc­tures like rhyming pat­tern, divi­sion of stan­zas, num­ber of lines etc. Crit­ics say the math­e­mat­ics involved with son­net often cur­tails one’s free­dom of expres­sion. This is one of the main rea­sons that make the usage of son­net intri­cate. How­ev­er the extreme phi­los­o­phy and pow­er of Son­net as a poet­ic genre is undeniable.
“The cre­ator of Son­net” is still an issue of argu­ment. Though Petrar­ch has been wide­ly accept­ed as the father of Son­net it is more par­tic­u­lar­ly due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty and pol­ish he gave to Son­net. Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni (1188–1240), head notary at Sicil­ian School (the first school of ver­nac­u­lar Ital­ian poets) of Court Poet­ry is cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of Son­net which might be sourced from any Sicil­ian song form for the very mean­ing of Sonetto(the Ital­ian word from which Son­net has been derived) is a lit­tle song. How­ev­er, none of his poems fol­low the Sicil­ian dialect but they rather seem to con­form to Tus­can. It is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that he changed his poems orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Sici­ly into Tus­can after he came to Tus­cany and pop­u­lar­ized it with his oth­er con­tem­po­raries main­ly Dante Alighieri, Gui­do Cav­al­can­ti and Petrar­ch . Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni, the head of Sicil­ian school under Fred­er­ick-II in the 13th cen­tu­ry who wrote about 300 son­nets most­ly deal­ing with pain, suf­fer­ing, and uncer­tain­ty of love with a strong sense of emo­tion­al out­burst. Anoth­er asso­ci­a­tion of Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni is asso­ci­at­ed with his inven­tion of his mul­ti-stro­phed com­po­si­tion Can­zone. The son­net is, in actu­al­i­ty, an iso­lat­ed stro­phe of a can­zone with the rhyming pat­tern of ABBAABBACDECDE. How­ev­er, lat­er ABBAABBACDCDCD became the stan­dard for Ital­ian Son­net. This rhyming pat­tern was first used by Gui­t­tone d’Arezzo (1230–94). Among the ear­ly son­neteers writ­ers were Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Gui­do Cav­al­can­ti (c. 1250–1300) who also belonged to the Sicil­ian school of poet­ry. Iambic pen­tame­ter was fol­lowed thor­ough­ly by all of these poets.

 

An exam­ple of Ital­ian Sonnet.

 

I have set my heart on serv­ing God

by Gia­co­mo de Lentini,

I have a place in my heart for God reserved,
So that I may go to Heaven,
To the Holy Place where, I have heard,
Peo­ple are always hap­py and joy­ous and merry.
I would­n’t want to go there with­out my lady
The one with fair hair and pale complexion,
Because with­out her I could nev­er be happy,
Being sep­a­rat­ed from my lady.
But I do not say that with blas­phe­mous intent,
As if I want­ed to sin with her:
If I did not see her shape­ly figure
And her beau­ti­ful face and ten­der look:
Since it would great­ly com­fort me
To see my woman shine in glory.

lo m’ag­gio pos­to in core a Dio servire,
com ‘io potesse gire in paradiso,
al san­to loco, c’ag­gio audi­to dire,
o’ si mantien sol­laz­zo, gio­co e riso.
San­za mia don­na non vi voria gire,
quel­la c’a blon­da tes­ta e claro viso,
che san­za lei non pote­ria gaudere,
estando da la mia don­na diviso.
Ma no lo dico a tale intendimento,
perch ‘io peca­to ci volesse fare;
se non ved­er lo suo bel portamento
e lo bel viso e ‘l mor­bido sguardare:
che’l mi teria in gran consolamento,

veg­gen­do la mia don­na in ghio­ra stare.

Gia­co­mo da Lenti­ni (pre 1250)

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