The Italian word sonetto is where the word "sonnet" originates. By the thirteenth century, it denoted a poem with fourteen lines and a rigid rhyme pattern.
A sonnet is a kind of poetry that was created in Palermo, Sicily, during the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Giacomo da Lentini, a poet and notary, is credited with creating the sonnet to convey courtly love. Its dissemination is attributed to the Sicilian School of poets who were around him at the Emperor's Court. The oldest sonnets, however, have been translated into Tuscan dialect and are no longer preserved in their original Sicilian.
Christopher Blum claims that the sonnet was the preferred form of expressing passionate love throughout the Renaissance. Although the name "sonneteer" may be used derisively, standards have altered significantly as the sonnet form has become popular in languages other than Italian. Nowadays, any topic is acceptable for sonnet writers.
