Erminia:
With respect ...
"
We would not ascribe to Sidney the authorship of the (petrarchian sonnet,
because in fact it was invented by Petrarch and that's why we call it so.)
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Wasn't the so-called "Italian" (a.k.a. sometimes "Petrarchan") form of the
sonnet used by Cavalcanti and Dante before Petrarch?
"
A poetic form is as much an invention as Volta's battery or Franklin's
electricity. It is a concrete object which comes out from given times and
motivations. The literary forms are more important even of their authors.
"
Indeed -- and the evolution of the sonnet (in Italy, France, England,
America, etc.) shouldn't be reduced to Pertrarch. The form predates
Petrarch in Giacomo da Lentino, c. 1235, and reaches on at least as far as
John Berryman (the Lise/Chris "Sonnets") and Edwin Morgan's "Glasgow
Sonnets" and "Sonnets From Scotland".
"
Yet, poetic forms, such as the sonnet's form and its innovations, have
authors behind. And their names must be clearly recorded down in our
literary anthologies.
"
Quite.
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It is just like when during an exam, one student, having to comment on a
sonnet by Surrey's, comes out with an enthusiastic commentary of this
kind:
"
I presume here Surrey is a misprint for Sidney. An unfortunate one, as not
only was Surrey writing about seventy years before Sidney, but he's also the
first writer to employ the "English" (a.k.a "Shakespearan") sonnet form.
And the English -- abab cdcd efef gg -- form could quite as easily
accomodate an octave/sestet division as the Italian -- abbaabba cdecde --
form. A major difference is the Italian form enforces it, the English form
merely allows it. And one reason for the shift was that Italian (and
French, and all the Latin-derived romance languages) are +much+ more
rhyme-rich than English. Even Scots allows (or did) easier rhyming than
English.
"
The other student will comment as follows: 'In this poem , "Astrophil and
Stella", Sidney uses a Petrarchian style of sonnet writing , made of an
octave/sestet form, The petrarchian sonnet was invented by the Italian
poet of the Trecento, Petrarca and imitated throughout Europe and in
England'.(and so on.)
"
Well, strictly, Sidney is writing in the +Perarchist+ tradition (as we can
denominate the followers, in Italy and elsewhere, of Petrarch, rather than
Petrarch himself). Thomas Wyatt, writing in the early part of the 16th
century, and widely available in _Tottel's Miscellany_ (1555), translated
quite a few of Petrarch's poems, mostly sonnets, but also "Mine old dear
enemy ..." (Petrarch's "Quell 'antiquo mio dolce empio signore ...").
Sidney's innovation was to (re)establish the idea of the sonnet +sequence+,
though there all kinds of ways in which _Astrophil and Stella_ differs from
the _Canzoniere_. Not least because Sidney's sequence would seem to cover a
period of about three years, while Petrarch covers something coming-on for
thirty years, with Laura dying part-way through.
Robin
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