Editing Sonnet (section)

===Sicilian===
[[Giacomo da Lentini]]  is credited with the sonnet's invention at the Court of [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|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 [[quatrain]]s followed by a pair of [[tercet]]s with the symmetrical rhyme scheme ABABABAB CDCDCD, where the sense is carried forward in a new direction after the [[Volta (literature)|midway break]].

[[Peter Dronke]] has commented that there was something intrinsic to its flexible form that contributed to the sonnet's survival far beyond its region of origin.<ref>Peter Dronke, ''The Medieval Lyric'', Hutchinson University Library, 1968, pp. 151–4.</ref> [[William Baer (writer)|William Baer]] suggests that the first eight lines of the earliest Sicilian sonnets are identical to the eight-line Sicilian folksong stanza known as the ''Strambotto''. To this, da Lentini (or whoever else invented the form) added two tercets to the ''Strambotto'' in order to create the new 14-line sonnet form.<ref>William Baer (2005), ''Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets'', University of Evansville Press, pp. 153–154.</ref>

In contrast, Hassanally Ladha<ref>{{cite web| url = https://languages.uconn.edu/person/hassanaly-ladha/| title = Hassanaly Ladha's profile at University of Connecticut| date = 22 January 2016}}</ref> has argued that the Sicilian sonnet's structure and content drew upon [[Arabic poetry]] and cannot be explained as the "invention" of the Sicilian School of poets. Ladha notes that "in its Sicilian beginnings, the sonnet evinces literary and epistemological contact with the ''[[qasida]]''",<ref>[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10412573.2020.1743523 Ladha, Hassanaly, "From Bayt to Stanza: Arabic Khayāl and the Advent of Italian Vernacular Poetry": ''Exemplaria'': Vol 32, No 1 (tandfonline.com)], p. 17. Retrieved 7 July 2021.</ref> and emphasizes that the sonnet did not emerge simultaneously with its supposedly defining 14-line structure. "Tellingly, attempts to close off the sonnet from its Arabic predecessors depend upon a definition of the new lyric to which Giacomo's poetry does not conform: surviving in thirteenth-century recensions, his poems appear not in fourteen, but rather six lines, including four rows, each with two [[hemistich]]es and two 'tercets' each in a line extending over two rows."<ref>{{cite journal| url = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10412573.2020.1743523| title = Ladha, p. 15.| journal = Exemplaria| date = 2 January 2020| volume = 32| issue = 1| pages = 1–31| doi = 10.1080/10412573.2020.1743523| s2cid = 221178512| last1 = Ladha| first1 = Hassanaly}}</ref> In Ladha's view, the sonnet emerges as the continuation of a broader tradition of love poetry throughout the Mediterranean world and relates to such other forms as the Sicilian ''strambotto'', the [[Provençal language|Provençal]] ''[[canso (song)|canso]]'', the [[Andalusi Arabic]] ''[[muwashshah]]'' and ''[[zajal]]'', as well as the ''qasida''.<ref>{{cite journal| url = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10412573.2020.1743523| title = Ladha, p. 26, n. 80.| journal = Exemplaria| date = 2 January 2020| volume = 32| issue = 1| pages = 1–31| doi = 10.1080/10412573.2020.1743523| s2cid = 221178512| last1 = Ladha| first1 = Hassanaly}}</ref>