Sonnet sequence

A sonnet sequence is a group of sonnets thematically unified to create a long work, although generally, unlike the stanza, each sonnet so connected can also be read as a meaningful separate unit.

The sonnet sequence was a very popular genre during the Renaissance, following the pattern of Petrarch. This article is about sonnet sequences as integrated wholes. For the form of individual sonnets, see Sonnet.

Sonnet sequences are typically closely based on Petrarch, either closely emulating his example or working against it. The subject is usually the speaker's unhappy love for a distant beloved, following the courtly love tradition of the troubadours, from whom the genre ultimately derived. An exception is Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, where the wooing is successful, and the sequence ends with an Epithalamion, a marriage song.

Although many sonnet sequences at least pretend to be autobiographical, the genre became a very stylised one, and most sonnet sequences are better approached as attempts to create an erotic persona in which wit and originality plays with the artificiality of the genre. Thus one could regard the emotions evoked to be as artificial as the conventions with which they are presented.

List of Italian sonnet sequences

List of English sonnet sequences

During the late 16th century and early 17th century a large number of sonnet sequences were written in England. The most notable are:

Other sonnet sequences include:

  • Anne Lok's (or Lock or Locke) Meditation of a Penitent Sinner (1560, 26 sonnets of a devotional nature based on Psalm 51, the first known sonnet sequence in English)
  • Thomas Watson's ΕΚΑΤΟΜΠΑΟΙΑ or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582, 100 semi-sonnets, most of which are of eighteen lines each, but still emulate the general idea of Petrarch, whom Watson had translated into Latin)
  • Thomas Lodge (1593, 40 sonnets to Phillis)
  • Henry Constable's Diana (1592)
  • William Percy's Sonnets to the fairest Coelia (1593)
  • The Tears of Fancie (1593, 60 sonnets formerly attributed to Thomas Watson
  • Barnabe Barnes's Partenophil and Parthenophe (1593, 104 sonnets)
  • Giles Fletcher's Licia (1593, 52 sonnets)
  • Zepheria, a collection of 40 sonnets by an unknown poet (1594)
  • Richard Barnfield appended 20 sonnets to his Cynthia (1595).
  • Emaricdulfe by E. C. Esq. (1595, 40 sonnets)
  • Bartholomew Griffin's Fidessa, more chaste than kind (1596, 62 sonnets)
  • Richard Linche's Diella (1596, 39 sonnets)
  • William Smith's Chloris (1596, 51 sonnets)
  • Robert Tofte's Laura (1597, 40 sonnets)
  • William Alexander of Menstrie (Later Earl of Stirling)'s Aurora (1604, contains 125 lyrics of which 105 are sonnets)
  • William Drummond's Poems (1616, 68 sonnets)

Notable later sequences

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the sonnet sequence returned to favour, although with a greater variety of subject matter.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ his subsequent sequence Dream Songs — 385 eighteen-line poems published between 1964 and 1968 — could also be thought of as conforming to this genre
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