Spenser read and translated sonnets in several languages, including French and Italian. Italian poet Francesco Petrarch initially popularized the sonnet form in the 1300s. He wrote over 300 sonnets to Laura who, tragically, did not share his intense feelings of passionate love. Her presence as the distant and unattainable beloved—the cruel Petrarchan mistress—became a literary trope. While Spenser’s sonnets utilize the intense emotional state of being in love Petrarch popularized, Spenser’s beloved does share the speaker’s feelings.

Sonnets became a popular form in English poetry after the publication of Tottel’s Miscellany in 1557. The book of poems written by various authors was also titled Songes and Sonettes, and included a number of sonnets in English, including Thomas Wyatt’s popular translations of several sonnets by Petrarch. One English sonneteer (writer of sonnets—and Spenser’s influencer—was Philip Sidney. Sidney’s sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, was published four years before Spenser’s Amoretti by the same publisher, William Ponsonby. Sidney writes about his mad love for a Petrarchan mistress—the wife of another man. Spenser’s sequence, which is somewhat autobiographical, is set apart by the beloved’s opinion of the speaker.

In addition to sonneteers, Spenser was heavily influenced by medieval Arthurian legends, which is more explicitly in his long

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