Lesson 04/10/11

The sonnet is a lyrical form of poetry.

Petrarch's sonnet model consisted of an octave and a sestet. The model was gradually transformed when he entered the British scene to adapt to the English language and British rhythm. The progressive transformation was due to:

1) Sir Thomas Wyatt who mainly translated Italian sonnets from Italian into English (see hand out).

2) Henry Howard Earl of Surrey who first reorganized the structure of Petrarch's model into the typical structure of the Elizabethan sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet.

Surrey's contribution to the sonnet is both thematical and structure. In a few words he tailored the sonnet to the needs of the English language, but the most creative and innovative sonneteer was William Shakespeare. He was able to reshape the typical convention of the sonnet (courtly love poetry) to create something new.
The sonnet "Passa la nave mia colma d'oblio" is arranged into fourteen lines. In Petrarch's sonnet the reader can recognize the typical structure of the Italian sonnet.

The octave introduces the problem creating a comparison between the speaker's life and a ship travelling in tormented seas, at midnight. The skipper is worried by private thoughts that are so sad that it seems not to care even of the terrible weather conditions. He sighs, he has desired and hopes.

There follows the sestet where his pessimistic, sad moods are repeated: he weeps, he regrets life as well as the conditions of the weather puts his voyage at risk. In the ending tercet the speaker hides his feelings in the same way as he cannot see the stars. He seems unable to use reason and even worse to be able to reach the harbor.

It goes without saying that there is an apparent analogy between the poet's life and the voyage progress. Unfortunately such life does not sound easy but rather unveils difficulties, problems, torments that all together seem to make the
poet unable to come to an autonomous solution of his pains.