Francesco Petrarch's sonnets are in Petrarchan form,
using the scheme
ABBA·ABBA CDE·CDE
The Italian Renaissance began with Petrarch and
the first sonnets are credited to Petrarch.
Petrarch wrote in Latin, thus as many people were
unable to read Latin, they could not read what
Petrarch wrote. Petrarch was the founder of humanism,
and the then new attitudes towards rhetorick. The new
humanism held that rhetorick instead of being the servant
of Logic, now Logic would be the servant of rhetorick.
This slowly extended to all the arts of the Renaissance,
including pictorial art, music, architecture, palace
garden design, dance, philosophy, etc: all based upon a
new Rhetorick tacens. As the sonnets presented here have
been translated into English, much of their beauty has
been lost.
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