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Shakespeare's description of his lover's eyes as 'nothing like the sun' was both an homage and a sendup of the 300-year-old Petrarchan tradition, in which the poet’s male persona is forever enraptured by an unattainable female beloved. We will problematize that convention by reading and discussing the work of female poets who successfully inserted their own voices into the dominant Petrarchan mode. Beginning with an initial review of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, followed by a thorough grounding in Petrarch’s poems to his elusive Laura, who never speaks, we will read several early Italian female Petrarchans in whose work the convention is reversed and “Laura” speaks back. These include Italian poets Vittoria Colonna (and her interactive sonnets with Michelangelo), Veronica Gambara, and Gaspara Stampa; the French salon of Les Dames des Roches; and the dueling personas in sonnets by Pernette du Guillet and Maurice Scéve. Finally, we will return to Shakespeare and compare his “dark lady” and “fair youth” with figures of the beloved in sonnets by his contemporary women writers, such as Mary Herbert, Lady Wroth and Katherine Phillips. All continental works will be read in translation.