Although many authors have produced successful sonnets, Sandra Bermann demonstrates that Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire are clearly among those who best exploit the genre's potential for rhetorical and thematic diversity. Through a series of close readings informed by a striking combination of linguistics, contemporary theory, and history, she highlights a variety of rhetorical strategies: metonymy in the Petrarchan sonnet, mobile metaphors in the Shakeperean, and allegory and irony in the Baudelairean. She simultaneously underscores transformations in meaning and voice in each...