Prešeren's Role in the Formation of the Wreath of Sonnets as a Poetic Form

Abstract

The study discusses Prešeren's contributuon to the development of the wreath of sonnets as a form. Although the Slovene romanticist applied the rules of the Sienna Academy, he enriched the wreath of sonnets in 1833 with the acrostic. Most of all, he was the first poet in the history of lyric poetry in general to fill this playful and manneristic form of courtly poetry-writing with emotional ardor and a genuine poetic message. The Russian translation of Prešerenʹs Sonetni venec by Fedor E. Korš (1889) spurred a multitude if wreath of sonnets in russian poetry. They were written by the gratest Russian poets of the time, e.g., Valerij Brjusov and Vjačeslav Ivanov, among others. The enthusiasm for this form then spread to other national literatures. The international profileration of the form in the 19th and 20th cc. thus owes much to the great poet of a small nation, i.e., to France Prešeren.