Entry on Sonnets pt. 2 (Aha...I knew that someday I'd teach EN 202)

 

Did you know that poets continued to write sonnets after Shakespeare? The woman pictured above, Mary Robinson, an actress who became a writer and feminist, helped revive this type of poetry in the late 18th century (late 1700s).

Here's a link to some of her sonnets from her book, Sappho and Phaon. Sappho was the Greek poet (or poetess) who is now considered one of the lesbian foremothers. In Robinson's day, Sappho was more noted for her relationship with the young man Phaon. Robinson, in fact, encouraged an identification between herself and Sappho.

http://etext.virginia.edu/britpo/sappho/sappho-poems.html

Here is a link to another more political sonnet, "To Liberty."

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/other/rmd-liberty.html

Below is a sonnet dedicated to Robinson's daughter, Maria:

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/1791/1791-daughter.html

Another late 18th century poet/novelist Charlotte Smith also worked in this form. Below is a sonnet inspired by Goethe's phenomenally successful novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

http://www.engl.virginia.edu/enec981/dictionary/16smithM1.html

She was also known for writing about nature:

http://www.sonnets.org/smith.htm

Nineteenth-century poets wrote sonnets as well. You might recognize this one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who also wrote a novel in verse, Aurora Leigh):

http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/elizabethbarrettbrowning/poems/sonnetsfromtheportuguese/howdoilovetheeletmecounttheways.html

Another poet was Christina Rossetti. Here is a link to her sonnet, "Sappho":

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/sapho.html

She also wrote a "Sonnet of Sonnets." The Great Poetess whom she refers to in her introduction is Barrett Browning. (By the way, you may recognize Christina Rossetti's last name because her brother translated Petrarch's sonnets into English. I think that I linked to some of his translations!)

http://celtic.benderweb.net/cr/cr90.html

Although male poets wrote sonnets at this time as well, like Rossetti, I wonder what Laura -- or Shakespeare's Dark Lady (whether or not she was Aemelia Lanyer) would have made of these later sonnets by women!