The Cambridge Companion to the SonnetA. D. Cousins, Peter Howarth Beginning with the early masters of the sonnet form, Dante and Petrarch, the Companion examines the reinvention of the sonnet across times and cultures, from Europe to America. In doing so, it considers sonnets as diverse as those by William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, George Herbert and e. e. cummings. The chapters explore how we think of the sonnet as a 'lyric' and what is involved in actually trying to write one. The book includes a lively discussion between three distinguished contemporary poets - Paul Muldoon, Jeff Hilson and Meg Tyler - on the experience of writing a sonnet, and a chapter which traces the sonnet's diffusion across manuscript, print, screen and the internet. A fresh and authoritative overview of this major poetic form, the Companion expertly guides the reader through the sonnet's history and development into the global multimedia phenomenon it is today. |
Contents
The sonnet and the lyric mode | 25 |
The sonnet subjectivity and gender | 46 |
The English sonnet in manuscript print and mass media | 66 |
Dante Petrarch | 84 |
the love sonnet in early | 105 |
Shakespeares Sonnets | 125 |
in early modern Britain | 145 |
the sonnet from Milton to the Romantics | 166 |
The Romantic sonnet | 185 |
The Victorian sonnet | 204 |
The modern sonnet | 225 |
The contemporary sonnet | 245 |
Further reading | 267 |
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Common terms and phrases
Anna Seward Anthology Astrophil and Stella Auden beauty century Coleridge contemporary courtly critics cultural Dante Dark Lady death desire Donne early modern edited Elizabeth emotional English sonnet example experience express Faber feeling female final couplet fourteen-line gender genre Heaney Herbert Ibid Italian John John Donne Keats language later lines literary London love sonnets lover lyric manuscript Mary meditation Milton narrative Oxford University Press Penguin Petrarch Petrarchan poem's poet's poetry poets political praise Prose published quatrains reader religious sonnets Renaissance rhetorical rhyme scheme Rime sparse Robert Romantic Rossetti Seamus Heaney sense sestet Shakespeare's Sonnets Shakespeare's speaker Sidney Sidney's social song Sonnet 18 Sonnet 73 sonnet form sonnet sequence sonnet tradition soul sound Spenser spiritual stanza suggests T. S. Eliot Ted Berrigan thee thou tion turn verse voice vols W. H. Auden William William Alabaster words Wordsworth writing written Yeats York young