sonnet

A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word sonetto (, from the Latin word sonus, ). 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 – and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.

==Romance languages== ===Sicilian=== Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention at the Court of Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. 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. The form consisted of a pair of quatrains followed by a pair of tercets with the symmetrical rhyme scheme \mathrm{ABABABAB \,\, CDCDCD}, where the sense is carried forward in a new direction after the midway break.