How Shakespeare's Sonnets drew on Canzoniere
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Francesco Petrarca’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Canzoniere
Francesco Petrarca · c. 1374
MedievalThe influenced
Shakespeare's Sonnets
William Shakespeare · 1609
PoetsRelevance
8/10
On Shakespeare's Sonnets’s page
- The tradition Shakespeare is pushing against — Petrarch's Canzoniere founded the Petrarchan sonnet and its idealizing conventions
- Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun") is a direct mockery of the Canzoniere's stock metaphors — eyes-like-the-sun, lips-like-coral
- Read Petrarch first and the subversion lands: you can't hear Shakespeare's joke without the idiom he's deflating
On Canzoniere’s page
- Petrarch founded the tradition Shakespeare would spend a sequence arguing with — the Petrarchan love sonnet starts here
- The Canzoniere gave English poetry its stock metaphors: eyes like the sun, lips like coral, the unattainable idealized beloved
- Shakespeare engages and subverts all of it — Sonnet 130 mocks the very imagery the Canzoniere made standard