Secret Architecture of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Steven Monte is Full Professor of English at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He has also taught at the University of Chicago and at Yale University, from which he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature. His scholarship focuses on Renaissance and post-Romantic poetry in English and French. His book publications include Victor Hugo: Selected Poetry (Carcanet, 2001; Routledge, 2002) and Invisible Fences: Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature (Nebraska, 2000). His articles are on subjects ranging from the Renaissance sonnet sequence to Emily Dickinson and difficulty in modern poetry. He is currently working on a verse translation of Joachim Du Bellay’s Les Regrets.

• AcknowledgementsNote on titles, terminology, and notationIntroduction: Seeing Things ‘Perspectively’1: Stories in and about Shakespeare’s Sonnets2: The Basic Scheme3: Poetic Rivalry in Late-Elizabethan England4: A Triptych for the Third Earl5: Competing Schemes6: The Fair-Youth Sonnets, Part 17: The Fair-Youth Sonnets, Part 28: The Mistress Sonnets9: Complaints of the HeartConclusion: Seeing Things RetrospectivelyAppendicesNotesBibliography

Monte’s The Secret Architecture of Shakespeare’s Sonnets traces the historical milieu of Shakespeare’s own aesthetic principle and thereby demonstrates the inseparability of form and context. This beautiful book attests to the importance of risking audacity in argument and interpretive practice even as it models the affordances of scholarly patience and care.