Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Sonnet

, lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme scheme, expressing differentaspects of a single thought, mood, or feeling, resolved or summed up in the last lines of the poem. Originally short poems accompanied by mandolin or lute music, sonnets aregenerally composed in the standard metre of the language in which they were written—iambic pentameter in English, the Alexandrine in French, for example (

see

Versification).

The two main forms of the sonnet are the Petrarchan, or Italian, and the English, orShakespearean. The former probably developed from the stanza form of the

canzone

orfrom Italian folk song. The earliest known Italian sonneteer was Guittone d'Arezzo. Theform reached its peak with the Italian poetPetrarch, whose

Canzoniere

(c. 1327) includes317 sonnets addressed to his beloved Laura. Among Petrarch's followers, whoestablished the sonnet tradition in their countries, were his countryman Torquato Tasso;Luis de Camõesin Portugal; and Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay,and other members of the French group known as thePléiade. The sonnet form was also introducedinto the literature of the Slavic countries.Sir Thomas WyattandHenry Howard, Earl of Surrey, are credited with introducing the sonnet into England with translations of Italiansonnets as well as with sonnets of their own.

The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave, or eight-line stanza, and a sestet, or six-linestanza. The octave has two quatrains, rhyming

a b b a, a b b a;

the first quatrain presentsthe theme, the second develops it. The sestet is built on two or three different rhymes,arranged either

c d e c d e,

c d c d c d,

c d e d c e;

the first three lines exemplify orreflect on the theme, and the last three lines bring the whole poem to a unified close.Among great examples of the Petrarchan sonnet in the English language are Sir PhilipSidney's sonnet sequence

Astrophel and Stella

(1591), which established the form inEngland. There, in the Elizabethan age, it reached the peak of its popularity.

The English sonnet, exemplified by the work of Shakespeareor Edmund Spenser's

Amoretti

(1595), developed as an adaptation to a language less rich in rhymes thanItalian. This form differs from the Petrarchan in being divided into three quatrains, eachrhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective,unifying climax to the whole. The rhyme scheme is

a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g.

In 17th-century England the sonnet tradition continued, with an expansion of the type of subject matter treated. Whereas the 16th-century sonnet dealt primarily with love, JohnDonnewrote a series of

Holy Sonnets;

and the sonnets of John Milton,written in both English and Italian, concern politics, religion, and personal matters. Milton's sonnets,based on the Petrarchan form, differ slightly in not having a break in the sense betweenoctave and sestet. This results in an even greater cohesiveness of structure.

After Milton, however, the popularity of the sonnet form in English declined somewhatuntil the end of the 18th century when the Romantic poets revitalized it.WilliamWordsworthis regarded as the finest sonnet writer of the period, although outstandingsonnets were also written by his contemporariesSamuel Taylor Coleridge,Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. During the Victorian periodElizabeth Barrett Browning wrote

Sonnets from the Portuguese

(1850), andDante Gabriel Rossettiwrote the sonnetsequence

The House of Life

(1881). Other important sonneteers includeRobert Browning,Matthew Arnold,Christina Georgina Rossetti,and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The work of Hopkins is marked by radical variations in the traditional sonnet form; for example, his11-line sonnet “Pied Beauty” uses sprung rhythm and begins with a sestet, concludingwith a quatrain and a very short final line.

The sonnet form has proved adaptable to 20th-century themes and diction. The Austro-German poetRainer Maria Rilke wrote what is considered one of the greatest of modern sonnet sequences,

Sonnets to Orpheus

(1923; trans. 1936). Edwin Arlington Robinson,Elinor Wylie, andEdna St Vincent Millayare noted 20th-century American sonneteers. The Anglo-AmericanW. H. Audenwrote the distinguished sequence

Sonnets from China

(1936-1938), as well as numerous individual sonnets.