sonnets
From sonnetta or “little song”
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Definition(s)
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14 lines of poetry with set rhyme
Usually iambic pentameter
Italian sonnets = 11 syllables/line
French sonnets = 12
syllables/line (aka Alexandrine)
Meant to be sung
Usually about [courtly] love
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Some Sonneteers
Petrarch (1304 - 1374)
Wyatt (1503 - 1542)
Spenser (1552 - 1599)
Sidney (1554 - 1586)
Shakespeare (1564? - 1616)
Donne (1571 ca. - 1631)
Milton (1608 - 1674)
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Sonnet Sequences
Many sonneteers wrote in “cycles” or
sequences
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Sidney Astophil & Stella (1580)
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Edmund Spenser Amoretti (1595)
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Shakespeare (Dark Lady)?
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John Donne Songs & Sonnets
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Francesco Petrarch
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1304 - 1374
Poet laureate of Rome (1341)
Wrote his sonnets to the fair-haired,
blue-eyed “Laura”
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Petrarchan or Italian
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Octave
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(abba abba) closed rhyme
Problem or question
Sestet
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(cde cde or cdc cdc) interlocking rhyme
Answer or (re)solution
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Thomas Wyatt
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1503 – 1542
Lover of Anne Boleyn before she
married Henry VIII
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Edmund Spenser
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1552 - 1599
Attended Cambridge University:
B.A. (1573) and M.A. (1576)
Faerie Queene greatest work
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Spenserian
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3 quatrains (abab bcbc cdcd)
 Problem or question
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Couplet (ee)
 Answer or (re)solution
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William Shakespeare
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1564 - 1616
Major playwright
Venus & Adonis
The Rape of Lucrece
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Shakespearean
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3 quatrains of interlocking
(abab cdcd efef)
– Problem or question
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1 couplet
(gg)
– Anser or (re)solution
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Hardin Craig’s Groupings (i)
Generally …
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1-126 addressed to highborn patron
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127-152 addressed to “Dark Lady”
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127 not a true sonnet
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Some say 145 is not Shakespeare’s
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Finis
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