Edinburgh Napier University

  A Celestial Crown of Sonnets aims to tell the story of astronomy via an heroic crown of sonnets (also known as a sonnet redoublé), with each sonnet focusing on a different historically significant astronomer. The formal structure involves fourteen sonnets (which we have prepared according to the Shakespearean style) in which the last line of each sonnet is the first line of the proceeding one. The final line of the fourteenth sonnet is also the same as the first line of the first, and these fourteen sonnets are followed by a fifteenth ‘mastersonnet’, in which the first lines from each of the fourteen previous sonnets are used to construct a new sonnet, which again must conform to the metre and form of the chosen style of sonnet (i.e. Shakespearean).