ENGL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Sonnet 130, Human Sexuality, Sonnet 20
18 May 2012
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Document Summary
Happened during the 1580s to the 1590s, and was a popular way to share poems. Sonnets were shared by a small group of people in the know a coterie. This means that the sonnets were not really for the general public (there were not intended to be published). Later on, they were published and found themselves in print. They were distributed and copied by hand around circles of friends. Many people wrote them, and they were a sign of love and devotion and courtship. You would write 100 poems of sonnets to your beloved. Many writers would give them a narrative coherence, where there had not been intended to give them an explicit narrative. The form of the sonnet is very theatrical, and your friends would understand the context. Shakespeare never intended his works to be published, but he wrote them to make himself respected and known, and taken seriously in general.
