The sonnet is a common poetic form of limited, but historically variable structure. The fourteen lines are divided asymmetrically into two parts, with two quatrains (stanzas of four lines) containing two rhymes and two tercets (stanzas of three lines) containing three. It was the most successful of various experimental approaches to the fourteen-line canzone strophe. The early modern sonnet was often devoted to matters of love, but it also offered scope for reflection, meditation, and questions of art.

Following its emergence at the Sicilian court of Emperor Frederick I…