Forms

The Petrarchan Sonnet

Also Known As Italian Sonnet

Citation Formats

General Reference

Literature Atlas. "The Petrarchan Sonnet." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/petrarchan-sonnet.

APA Style

Literature Atlas. (n.d.). The Petrarchan Sonnet. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/petrarchan-sonnet

BibTeX

@misc{literatureatlas-the-petrarchan-sonnet,
  author = {Literature Atlas},
  title = {The Petrarchan Sonnet},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/petrarchan-sonnet},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet divides its fourteen lines into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a six-line sestet rhyming CDECDE or CDCDCD, with a volta, Italian for turn, marking a shift in the poem's argument, tone or subject at the octave-sestet break. Named for its greatest practitioner, the Italian poet Petrarch, whose sonnets to Laura set the model for centuries of European love poetry, the form was carried into English in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose translations and imitations of Petrarch introduced the sonnet to English readers.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Petrarch

Source Poetry Foundation

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Wyatt's translations and imitations of Petrarch introduced the sonnet form into English poetry for the first time, keeping the Italian octave-and-sestet structure.

Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

The Sonnet

The Petrarchan sonnet is the original form the general Sonnet entry describes.