A sonnet sequence is a group of
sonnets thematically unified to create a long work, although generally, unlike the stanza, each sonnet so connected can also be read as a meaningful separate unit.
The sonnet sequence was a very popular genre during the
Renaissance, following the pattern of
Petrarch. This article is about sonnet sequences as integrated wholes. For the form of individual sonnets, see
Sonnet.
Sonnet sequences are typically closely based on Petrarch, either closely emulating his example or working against it. The subject is usually the speaker's unhappy love for a distant beloved, following the
courtly love tradition of the
troubadours, from whom the genre ultimately derived. An exception is
Edmund Spenser's
Amoretti, where the wooing is successful, and the sequence ends with an
Epithalamion, a marriage song.
Although many sonnet sequences at least pretend to be autobiographical, the genre became a very stylised one, and most sonnet sequences are better approached as attempts to create an erotic
persona in which
wit and
originality plays with the artificiality of the genre. Thus one could regard the emotions evoked to be as artificial as the conventions with which they are presented.
Other English and Scottish sonnet collections and sequences of the period include:
Anne Lok (Lock, or Locke), Meditation of a Penitent Sinner (1560), 26 sonnets of a devotional nature based on Psalm 51, the first known sonnet sequence in English.
Thomas Watson, ΕΚΑΤΟΜΠΑΟΙΑ or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582), 100 'sonnets', most of which are of eighteen lines each, yet still emulating the general idea of Petrarch whom Watson had translated into Latin.