Features of Shakespearean Sonnets in the poems of Saadi Youssef

Abstract

The sonnet, as invented by the Italians through Lentino and more closely associated with Petrarch, means in its original Italian-European form a "short song." By "song" here, we mean a concentrated, distilled, and specific form; it is an internal song of the soul, a flowing whisper, a revelation undisturbed by the noise of an external voice. Just as the sonnet was associated with Petrarch in Italy, it was associated with Shakespeare in England, although it was first brought by English poets in the sixteenth century. However, Shakespeare's sonnets, written at the end of that century, were essentially a tradition of writing, based on a single, specific feeling, with the idea being revealed or closed as a conclusion in the last two lines. In fact, the precursors of the sonnet in Arabic and Eastern poetry in general can be discerned in the lyrical pieces of Andalusian poets. Moreover, attempts at the structural formation of the sonnet in relatively later periods of Arabic poetry are present.