Writing Sonnets as a Scoto-Britane. Scottish Sonnets, the Union of the Crowns, and Negotiations of Identity

This article takes its cue from a renewed interest in Petrarchan sonneteering in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as related to the definition of insular identity. I will suggest that the process of negotiation connected to James’s accession to the throne of England in 1603 left its mark on the formal choices made by British sonnet authors, and that consequently it is possible to investigate sonnet production in the period with an eye to the national allegiances that those formal choices may foreshadow, and/or to the nationalistic ideas they may imply. This paper considers the sonnet rhyme schemes preferred by those Scottish sonneteers working around the political cœsura represented by 1603 and the Union of the Crowns. In particular, it will focus on William Alexander and Alexander Craig, two of the Scottish courtiers who followed the king to London and produced substantial sonnet corpora.