

It’s going to be awesome.

Sonnet: a fourteen line lyric poem, often written in iambic
pentameter
o Lyric: highly musical verse about emotion
• Musical: expect rhythm and rhyme
• Have very clear rhyme schemes
• Emotion: often (but not always!) about love
• Unrequited love: love that is not reciprocated or returned
o Iambic pentameter
Penta: five times (for a total of ten syllables)
Iamb: unstressed syllable, stressed syllable

The word “sonnet” is from the Italian sonnetto, meaning
“little song”
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2
3
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5
U / U /
U / U / U
/
 One day I wrote her name u pon the strand,
U
/
U
/
U / U /U /
 But came the waves and wash ed it a way:
U / U / U / U / U /
 A gain I wrote it with a sec ond hand,
U /
U /
U
/
U /
U /
 But came the tide, and made my pains his prey
• Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 75
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
Differ in rhyme scheme and content development

Made famous by poet, Petrarch, during the Italian
Renaissance
o In love with a woman, Laura, who did not love him back

Separated into an octave and a sestet
8
6
Octave
Eight Lines
Sestet

Six Lines


Presents a problem
Presents an idea
Presents situation
Discusses idea one way

Presents a solution
Presents an example
Presents a comment
Discusses idea other way

Rhyme scheme:

Rhyme scheme varies:




o abbaabba


o cdcdcd
o cdecde
o cdccdc
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A
C
D
C
D
C
D

Originated, in part, because English words are more difficult
to rhyme than Italian words

Separated into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet
4
2

Three Quatrains
Quatrain: Four lines

Couplet
Two lines

Develop an idea

Sum up sonnet
o Theme or thesis
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
Rhyme Scheme:
o abab cdcd efef
Volta, or turn,
can take place
between any 
rhyming group.
(Most often
between lines
12 and 13)
Reverse idea in quatrains
Rhyme Scheme:
o gg
Against my love shall be as I am now,
With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age's steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G