Which poet first popularized the sonnet form?

• A. William Shakespeare
• B. Francesco Petrarch
• C. Edmund Spenser
• D. John Donne

Answer: (B)

Francesco Petrarch is the poet who first popularized the sonnet form. He wrote a vast collection of 14-line poems—often called the Canzoniere—that established the structure many associate with the sonnet: an octave that presents a problem or situation, a turn (volta) after the octave, and a concluding sestet. This pattern, along with the characteristic rhyme schemes of the time, helped the form spread widely across Europe as translators and readers circulated his work. Because of that widespread influence, the form came to be known as the Petrarchan sonnet.

Later poets in other languages, like Shakespeare, helped popularize the sonnet in their own traditions, and writers such as Spenser and Donne contributed important variations, but the first broad diffusion and standardization of the form trace back to Petrarch.