Denoting a sonnet of the kind used by the Italian poet Petrarch, with an octave rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet typically rhyming cdcdcd or cdecde.
‘Throughout the Sonnets, Barrett Browning deliberately invokes the Petrarchan sonnet tradition only to revise it according to her own historical moment.’
‘Consisting of sixteen lines rhymed in four abba quatrains, the Modern Love sonnets at least visually acknowledge both Tennyson's In Memoriam and the Petrarchan sonnet tradition.’
‘By Wroth's day, such Petrarchan sonnets would have been considered standard, established, sanctioned, and, primarily, conservative.’
‘As we shall see, both negative and positive representations of such Catholic practices and identities abound in early modern visual images, sermons, and, for our purposes, Petrarchan poems.’
‘In Tottel's 221, the poet's revision of Petrarchan neoplatonism relies upon contemporary Catholic religious sensibilities that centralize the body in worship.’
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