Borders and Liminal Spaces in 16th-Century Collected Poetry: A Spatial Approach to the Advent of the English Sonnet Sequence in Print

Abstract

This chapter deals with the page layout of several early modern printed poetic collections to show how political, social and cultural issues are embedded in the very spatial arrangement of the book. Three examples will be analysed in detail: Vellutello’s very influential 1525 commented edition of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, a central publication in the history of European Petrarchism; the 1557 English poetic collection commonly known as Tottel’s Miscellany, which established the tradition of the printed lyric collection in England; and Samuel Daniel’s 1592 Delia, which to a large extent ushered in the sonnet sequence as an editorial genre in England. We wish to demonstrate that the editorial shape of the English sonnet sequence was invented through a careful management of space based on European and English precedents.