Passion in Poetry -- Exhibition at The New York Public Library Explores the History of the Sonnet

Original Manuscripts and Rare Editions of Works by Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Barrett Browning, Auden

Exhibition Opens May 2

New York, NY, April 9, 2003 -- Passion’s Discipline: The History of the Sonnet in the British Isles and America, a new exhibition at The New York Public Library, illustrates how poets from Dante to Kerouac have turned to the highly structured form of the sonnet to express passionate thoughts and feelings on love, religion, nature, and other subjects. Highlights of the exhibition include sonnets in the hand of Romantic poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats, as well as a notebook containing sonnets in the hand of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and two typescripts emended by W. H. Auden. Passion’s Discipline will be on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street from May 2 to August 2, 2003. Admission is free.

Other highlights include a lavishly illuminated 15th-century Petrarch manuscript and the Westmoreland Manuscript, the earliest known and most authoritative representation of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets.” The more than 250 items on view, drawn primarily from the Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, will feature early and first editions, as well as manuscript materials, photographs, and prints.

“Traditionally the sonnet has been the preferred poem of passion -- romantic, to be sure, but also the passion that arises from intense engagement with the world,” said Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, who organized the exhibition. “Emerging from the discipline of its rules is a counterpointed interplay of rhyme, sound, and rhythm that multiplies meanings and seems to expand the poem beyond its boundaries, as if several poems were living in one.” Passion’s Discipline is organized chronologically in six sections which illuminate the history and development of the sonnet over seven centuries.

Sections 1 and 2: Italian Origins and The English Renaissance
Created in medieval Sicily as a love poem, the sonnet was refined in Italy during the Renaissance and imported to England in the 16th century. A distinct category of verse, it consisted of fourteen lines of eleven syllables, divided by rhymes into sections of eight and six lines (octet and sestet). The Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), immortalized by his poetic journey into the afterlife in The Divine Comedy, used the sonnet prominently as part of a cycle of love poems in his spiritual autobiography, La Vita Nuova. The first edition of the Vita Nuova, printed in 1576 more than 250 years after Dante’s death, is on view in the exhibition. The earliest influences of the Italian Renaissance on English literature coincided with the translations of the sonnets of the humanist and poet Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), called Petrarch.

As the sonnet took root in England, its form was adapted to the demands of the English language. The Elizabethans, Shakespeare (1564–1616) among them, shattered the Italian model, arranging their sonnets in three quatrains and a concluding couplet which allowed them to exploit the greater number of rhyming words in English. Throughout the Renaissance and well into the 17th century, most sonnets were written as part of a sequence of poetic meditations on love-related themes. Shakespeare was the greatest sonneteer of the period and indeed in the history of English literature. The exhibition includes examples of the first, second, and third folios of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623, 1632, and 1663 respectively.

Section 3: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The preeminent sonneteers of the 17th-century, and also its leading poets, were the Metaphysical John Donne (1572–1631) and John Milton (1608–1674). The structure of the sonnet ideally suited Donne’s puzzle-posing style and philosophical subject matter. A theme would be introduced in the first stanza, developed or contradicted in the second, paradoxes teased out of the third, and the whole resolved in the concluding couplet. Among the selections on view in this section is the “Westmoreland Manuscript” (ca. 1605), one of the most important sources for modern scholarly editions of Donne’s poetry. Written in the hand of Donne’s close friend Rowland Woodward, who served as secretary to the first Earl of Westmoreland, it was almost certainly transcribed from the poet’s autograph manuscript. Among the material it contains, not found in any other 17th-century sources, are three of the “Holy Sonnets.” Another interesting object on view is a much-used 1950s paperback edition of Donne’s poems, which had been annotated and dog-eared by its owner, Sylvia Plath. Milton, the author of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained was the first English poet to fully embrace the Petrarchan sonnet, replacing the theme of romantic love with passages on the religious and political controversies of his age. A highlight of the Milton works on view will be a 1645 edition of his Poems, Both English and Latin, which had belonged to Alexander Pope.

Section 4: The Romantic Period
The sonnet languished for much of the 18th century, generally disdained by poets and critics until the Romantic period, when it was resurrected through the genius of William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Inspired by Milton’s example, Wordsworth adhered to the Italian sonnet’s structure. Once the province of love poetry, the sonnet became the ideal vehicle for the Romantic passion for nature. Displayed with several editions of Wordsworth’s sonnets about the countryside of the River Duddon is his copy of a guide to England’s Lake District, open to a fold-out engraved map of the area. The autograph manuscript by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), known as the Esdaile Notebook will be on view, as will be the manuscript of John Keats’s (1795–1821) “Sonnet to Sleep.” Although he wrote a mere handful of sonnets, Keats’s richness of imagery and language exerted an influence on sonnet writing even greater than Wordsworth’s, extending to the end of the 19th century.

Section 5: The Victorian Period
Although Queen Victoria’s 64-year reign was not characterized by a single literary sensibility, the accelerating pace of urbanization and industrialization resulted in a heightened appreciation for nature and a nostalgia for a seemingly less coarse and pedestrian bygone age. The theme of nature dominated Victorian sonnet writing, reflecting Romanticism’s pervasive influence. Yet, in keeping with the sonnet’s traditional purpose, the most famous of them focus on love. Best known is Sonnets from the Portuguese, in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) describes the maturation of her love for her husband, the poet Robert Browning. Several of her manuscript sonnets will be on view in the exhibition. A very influential work was Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s (1828–1882) The House of Life, a sonnet sequence in the Elizabethan manner on the themes of love and death. Rosetti’s translations of Dante and other medieval Italian poets portend the early modernist quest for authenticity among the literatures and myths of archaic cultures. Also on view are manuscripts of sonnets by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Oscar Wilde.

Section 6: The Modern Period
Paradoxically, the structured sonnet survived the 20th century’s iconoclastic impulse to do away with forms and became a favorite form of expression for modern poets. Whether adhering to the demands of the sonnet’s traditional discipline, or challenging its definition, poets of the modern period used the form to address subjects from the horrors of war to sexual love to the poet’s sense of alienation. Among the items on view is a typescript of W. H. Auden’s “In Time of War.” Love remained a favorite topic, but now the poet’s idealized love could be sexualized, whether behind a veil of classical allusion, as by W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) in “Leda and the Swan,” or more boldly and playfully, as in the sonnets of E. E. Cummings (1894–1962). Cummings’s own copy of the 1925 edition of his XLI Poems, with penciled notes in his hand, is on view. Another item of note in this section is the autograph manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s 1943 sonnet “The Moor of Myself,” which recently entered the Library’s collections as part of the Kerouac Archive.


Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature was assembled and presented to The New York Public Library by Dr. Albert A. Berg, famous New York surgeon and trustee of the Library, in memory of his brother, Dr. Henry W. Berg. The original collection, confined primarily to Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, with selected highlights of English literature, numbered 3,500 items. It has grown through acquisitions and gifts to include some 35,000 printed items and 115,000 manuscripts, covering the entire range of English and American literature. Recent acquisitions include the archives of writers Jack Kerouac and Terry Southern.

Exhibition Tours
Docent-led tours of the exhibition are available daily at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Group tours by appointment; call 212.930.0501 for reservations and fees.

Exhibition Brochure (pdf)


Passion’s Discipline: The History of the Sonnet in the British Isles and America will be on view from May 2 through August 2, 2003, at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library in the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall. Exhibition hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Sundays, Mondays, and national holidays. The Library will be closed Saturday, May 24 through Monday, May 26, for Memorial Day weekend. Admission is free. For more information about exhibitions at The New York Public Library, the public may call 212.869.8089 or visit the Library’s website at www.nypl.org.

Funding for this exhibition has been provided in part by the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Pinewood Foundation and by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

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Contact: Sabina Potaczek or Herb Scher 212.221.7676

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