The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English [Paperback]

A unique anthology celebrating that most vigorous of literary forms--the sonnet

The sonnet is one of the oldest and most enduring literary forms of the post-classical world, a meeting place of image and voice, passion and reason, elegy and ode. It is a form that both challenges and liberates the poet.

For this anthology, poet and scholarPhillis Levinhas gathered more than 600 sonnets to tell the full story of the sonnet tradition in the English language. She begins with its Italian origins; takes the reader through its multifaceted development from the Elizabethan era to the Romantic and Victorian; demonstrates its popularity as a vehicle of protest among writers of the Harlem Renaissance and poets who served in the First World War; and explores its revival among modern and contemporary poets. In her vibrant introduction, Levin traces this history, discussing characteristic structures and shifting themes and providing illuminating readings of individual sonnets. She includes an appendix on structure, biographical notes, and valuable explanatory notes and indexes. And, through her narrative and wide-ranging selection of sonnets and sonnet sequences, she portrays not only the evolution of the form over half a millennium but also its dynamic possibilities.

SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503?-1542)
The longe love, that in my thought doeth harbar
Who so list to hounte I know where is an hynde
Farewell, Love, and all thy lawes for ever
My galy chargèd with forgetfulnes
I find no peace, and all my war is done

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517?-1547) The soote season, that bud and blome furth bringes
Alas, so all thinges nowe doe holde their peace
I never saw you, madam, lay apart
Love that lls)