The term sonnet refers to a fixed verse poetic form , traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme.
Originating in 13th-century Sicily , the sonnet was in time taken up in many European-language areas, mainly to express romantic love at first, although eventually any subject was considered acceptable.
Many formal variations were also introduced, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit β and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.
The Sicilian School of poets who surrounded Lentini then spread the form to the mainland. Those earliest sonnets no longer survive in the original Sicilian language , however, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.
Peter Dronke has commented that there was something intrinsic to its flexible form that contributed to the sonnet's survival far beyond its region of origin. To this, da Lentini or whoever else invented the form added two tercets to the Strambotto in order to create the new line sonnet form. In contrast, Hassanally Ladha [ 4 ] has argued that the Sicilian sonnet's structure and content drew upon Arabic poetry and cannot be explained as the "invention" of the Sicilian School of poets.
