English sonnet

noun

1. Shakespearean sonnet.

Word History and Origins

Origin of English sonnet¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

In 1989, the Princeton scholar Thomas P. Roche, Jr.,’s “Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences” established Lock as the author of the sonnets, putting her “Meditation” at the chronological head of the English-sonnet-sequence tradition.

From The New Yorker

The first English sonnet cycle was Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella,” published in 1591.

From The New Yorker

The newest Norton, published in 2018, includes Lock under the sub-heading “An Elizabethan Miscellany” and features a two-sentence introduction noting that her verse paraphrase of Psalm 51 is “arguably the first English sonnet sequence as well as an early example of the Protestant devotional lyric that led to the religious poetry of John Donne and George Herbert.”

From The New Yorker

Among students and scholars of Persian literature, she was recognized for her command — and renovation — of the ghaza l, a poetic form that is often compared with an English sonnet.

From Washington Post

Like Cromwell, he was an inglese italianizzato, and his bold experimenting in English with the verse-forms and sensibilities of the Italian renaissance – he wrote the first English sonnet – had a profound influence on our literary language.

From The Guardian