Passion's Discipline: The History of the Sonnet in the British Isles and America

From May 2, 2003 through August 2, 2003
D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall (First Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)

The exhibition considers the development of the sonnet, the structured poetic form which has provided writers with a vessel for passionate feelings on many topics since its development in 13th-century Italy. The exhibition makes the case that the intensity of a poem's feeling is enhanced and clarified by the discipline of confining it in a formal structure. Materials on view, drawn primarily from the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, include a 1576 edition of Dante, and a lavishly illuminated 15th-century Petrarch manuscript, both of which show the origin and early development of the sonnet form.

Other rare and important items which illustrate high points of poetic expression through the sonnet or important aspects of its development include the 1605 Westmoreland Manuscript, which contains the earliest representation of poetry by John Donne; and manuscripts by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Millay, Auden, and Kerouac. Among the many other authors represented are John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Emma Lazarus, Richard Wilbur, and Adrienne Rich.

Public tours of Passion's Discipline are conducted every day at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Groups of ten or more people must make reserved group tour arrangements at least four weeks in advance; call 212.930.0501. Group tour fees are $7 per person for adults; there is no charge for full-time students.

Press Release

Exhibition Brochure (PDF)