This online lecture explores Romeo and Juliet’s first encounter as “love at first sonnet,” asking why Shakespeare stages their dialogue in this highly structured 14-line poetic form. The lovers’ shared sonnet transforms Petrarchan conventions into a collaborative exchange that reshapes the language of love. They make a place for themselves within the space of the sonnet, remaking lyric forms and the structures that define them.
Rebeca Helfer is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Spenser’s Ruins and the Art of Recollection (University of Toronto, 2012). She is currently completing a book project on the art of memory as a poetics in early modern English writing.
Please register to receive the Zoom link and updates. For information, please contact Julia Lupton (jrlupton@uci.edu).