Sonnets: An Overview
p. 312
Scorn Not the Sonnet
William Wordsworth
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!
http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm
Sonnet
 Derived from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little sound;
song”
 Fourteen-line lyric poem that conforms to strict patterns of
rhythm and rhyme
Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet
 In Italy, the sonnet form was perfected by Francesco Petrarca,
known in English as Petrarch
 Known as the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet
 Form composed of two parts:
 Octave (an eight-line section; ABBAABBA)
 Sestet (a six-line section; CDECDE or variations*)
 Two-part statement: question-answer, problem-solution, or
theme-comment
 Volta (the turn or transition between the two) is usually found on
the ninth line
 Turn is a metaphorical term to represent the speaker’s “turn” from one
thing to another
*c d c d c d
cddcdc
cdeced
cdcedc
Sonnet 42 (Petrarch)
The spring returns, the spring wind softly blowing
Sprinkles the grass with gleam and glitter of showers,
Powdering pearl and diamond, dripping with flowers,
Dropping wet flowers, dancing the winters going;
The swallow twitters, the groves of midnight are glowing
With nightingale music and madness; the sweet fierce powers
Of love flame up through the earth; the seed-soul towers
And trembles; nature is filled to overflowing…
The spring returns, but there is no returning
Of spring for me. O heart with anguish burning!
She that unlocked all April in a breath
Returns not…And these meadows, blossoms, birds
These lovely gentle girls—words, empty words
As bitter as the black estates of death!
A octave
B
B
A
A
B
B
A
C volta
C sestet
D
E
E
D
Shakespearean/English Sonnet
 Not invented by Shakespeare but refined by him
 Formal organization and logical ideas by rules of sonnet form
 Fourteen iambic pentameter lines
 Three quatrains (four lines) and a couplet (two lines)
 Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
 Organization of ideas varies from sonnet to sonnet
 Final couplet is typically a turn of great impact,
 Final summary or explanation of all that came before
Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
A
B
A
B
first
quatrain
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd.
C
D
C
D
second
quatrain
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
E
F
E
F
third
quatrain
G
G
couplet
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 116
 Identify the rhyme scheme of the sonnet
 Label the groupings of lines (octave, sestet, quatrain, tercet,
couplet)
 Look up vocabulary terms
 Paraphrase the poem
 Answer the questions about the structure and overall
meaning of the poem
Spensarian Sonnet
 Named for Edmund Spenser
 Combines Italian and the English forms
 three quatrains and a couplet
 linking rhymes between the quatrains (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE)
 Similar to terza rima’s interlocking rhyme scheme
One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)