The Sonnet
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Fourteen-line lyric poem with a single theme
 Written in iambic pentameter
 Sonnet Forms
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Shakespearean
Petrarchan
Spenserian
Sonnet Sequence: a group of sonnets linked
by theme or person addressed
Iambic Pentameter
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each sonnet line consists of ten syllables
syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or
iambic feet
one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed
syllable (Iamb)
da DUM/da DUM/da DUM/da DUM/da DUM
When I / do COUNT / the CLOCK / that TELLS / the TIME
(Sonnet 12)
Shakespearean
Sonnet
Shakespearean Sonnet
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14 line stanza
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3 four-line quatrains
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Concluding two-line couplet
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Presents a summarizing/concluding statement
written in iambic pentameter
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Explores a different variation of the main theme
Iambic pentameter: U / U / U / U /
Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
U/
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
First Quatrain
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
Second
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
Quatrain
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st
Third Quatrain Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time though grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
Couplet
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18 Practice

Paraphrase
Put into your own words
 About the same length as the original
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Paraphrase Sonnet 18
 What is the theme?
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Petrarchan Sonnet
Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
 Two
Parts
 Eight-line octave
 Intro.
a problem or raises a question
 Six-line
 Offers
 Rhyme
sestet
a solution
Scheme
 abbaabba
 cdecde / cddcee / cdcdee
“Whoso List to Hunt”
 Allegory
a
literary work with two or more
levels of meaning-one literal level
and one or more symbolic levels.
 Objects, events, characters stand
for ideas and qualities beyond
themselves.
“Whoso List to Hunt”
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore,
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”
Who is the hind?
literally = doe
figuratively = Anne Boleyn
Allegory
 the
hunter's pursuit of the hind
(doe) = Wyatt's pursuit of Anne
Boleyn
 The
doe belongs to Caesar =
King Henry VIII’s “ownership”
of Anne Boleyn
“Whoso List to Hunt” Questions
Find two examples of alliteration
 Find a metaphor and explain what is
being compared
 What is the theme of the poem?
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Spenserian Sonnet
Spenserian Sonnet
3 quatrains, ends with a couplet
 Rhyme Scheme: ABAB/BCBC/CDCD/EE
 Introduced by Edmund Spenser who
combined the forms of the Italian and
English sonnets using an interlocking
rhyme pattern
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Sonnet 30
Edmund Spenser
My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
1. Label the
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
rhyme scheme
Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
2. What is the
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
theme?
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
That fire which all thing melts, should harden ice,
And ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That is can alter all the course of kind.