Sonnet

The term derives from the Italian sonetto, a ‘little sound’ or ‘song’. It was

Petrarch, more than anyone, who established the sonnet as one of the

major poetic forms. Except for the curtal sonnet (q.v.) the ordinary

sonnet consists of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameters (q.v.)

with considerable variations in rhyme scheme.

The three basic sonnet forms are:

(a) The Petrarchan (q.v.), which comprises an octave (q.v.) rhyming

abbaabba and a sestet (q.v.), rhyming cdecde or cdccdc, or in any

combination except a rhyming couplet.

(b) The Spenserian (q.v.) of three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab,

bcbc, cdcd, ee.

(b) The Shakespearean, again with three quatrains and a couplet,

Rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Background Check:

The sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian

School under Emperor Frederick II. Guittone d'Arezzo rediscovered it and

brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he

founded the Siculo-Tuscan School, or Guittonian school of poetry (1235–

1294). He wrote almost 250 sonnets. Other Italian poets of the time,

including Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–

1300), wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarch.

Other fine examples were written by Michelangelo.

The Structure:

The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the time included two parts

that together formed a compact form of "argument". First, the octave,

forms the "proposition", which describes a "problem", or "question",

followed by a sestet (two tercets), which proposes a "resolution". Typically,

the ninth line initiates what is called the "turn", or "volta", which signals

the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that don't

strictly follow the problem/resolution structure, the ninth line still often

marks a "turn" by signaling a change in the tone, mood, or stance of

the poem.

The Italian form is the commonest. The octave develops one thought;

there is then a ‘turn’ or volta, and the sestet grows out of the octave,

varies it and completes it. In the other two forms (Spenserian and

Shakespearean) a different idea is expressed in each quatrain; each

grows out of the one preceding it; and the argument, theme and dialect

(qq.v.) are concluded, ‘tied up’ in the binding end-couplet.

English Sonnet:

Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England in the

early sixteenth century. His famed translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, as

well as his own sonnets, drew fast attention to the form. Henry Howard,

Earl of Surrey, a contemporary of Wyatt’s, whose own translations of

Petrarch are considered more faithful to the original though less fine to

the ear, modified the Petrarchan, thus establishing the structure that

became known as the Shakespearean sonnet. This structure has been

noted to lend itself much better to the comparatively rhyme-poor English

language.

The Spenserian Sonnet:

The rhyme-scheme of the Spenserian sonnet is quite different from that of

the Petrarchan sonnet. Its rhyme-scheme is: a b a b, b c b c, c d c d, e

e. it contains four parts: three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The

Spenserian sonnet is also called linked sonnet‟, because of its peculiar

rhyme scheme where the three quatrains are linked together: the last line

of the first quatrain rhymes with the first line of the second quatrain; and

similarly, the last line of the second quatrain; and similarly, the last line of

the second quatrain rhymes with the first line of the third quatrain.

Shakespearean Sonnet:

The Shakespearean variety of the sonnet also usually has 14 lines, which

are normally split into three verses of four lines (also called quatrains), and

it usually finishes with a two-line couplet. The poem may appear as a single

unit on the page or it may be physically split in a variety of ways. The

couplet tends to form an epigrammatic close which provides a

‘summing up’ of the main theme of the poem. The rhyme scheme can be

broken into units of abab, cdcd, efef, gg, and there are full stops at line 4

and line 8 and a colon at line 12, which break it into sense units based on
a 4/4/4/2 structure. The basic meter is iambic pentameter with some

substitution. The final couplet forms an ‘epigrammatic close’, a

memorable summing up of what the poem.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Shakespeare’s Sonnets are a collection of 154

sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty

and mortality. They were published together in 1609. The first 126 sonnets

are addressed to an unnamed young nobleman with whom the poet is

helplessly emotionally bound. The final sonnets are addressed to a

mysterious woman, whom the speaker loves, hates and lusts for

simultaneously. The young nobleman is referred to as ‘Mr. W.H’ and the

mysterious woman is referred to as the ‘dark lady’.

Discussion: However, it was not until the last decade of the 16th c. that

the sonnet was finally established in England. The first major sonnet cycle

was Astrophil and Stella, written by Sir Philip Sidney (c. 1580–3) and

printed in 1591. The greatest sequence of all was Shakespeare’s sonnets,

not printed until 1609, but some had circulated in manuscript for at least

eleven years before. He wrote 154 sonnets in all.

By early in the 17th c. the vogue for love sonnets was already over. Ben

Jonson was not interested in the form, and hardly any lyric poet in the

Jacobean and Caroline periods (qq.v.) wrote a sonnet of note. However,

Donne did write nineteen very fine sonnets on religious themes, grouped

together under the title of Holy Sonnets.

Thereafter it was not until Milton that the sonnet received much attention.

Milton did not write a sequence and he did not write about love. His
sonnets belong to the genre of occasional verse (q.v.), and thus are about a

particular event, person or occasion, like To the Lord General Cromwell

and On the Late Massacre in Piedmont. After Milton the sonnet was

virtually extinct for well over a hundred years.

There was a very considerable revival of interest during the Romantic

period. Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Baudelaire all wrote splendid

sonnets. Wordsworth’s are generally thought to be the best, especially his

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, To Toussaint

L’Ouverture and On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic.

Shelley also wrote two splendid sonnets: Ozymandias and England in 1819.

During the Victorian period (q.v.) a large number of poets re-established

the sonnet form, and in particular the sonnet sequence about love. The

major works are Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the

Portuguese (1847–50), Christina Rossetti’s Monna Innominata (1881)

and her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The House of Life (1881).

Christina Rossetti’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets have

significantly modified sonnet convention by introducing female desire

into a form traditionally written from a male point of view.

In the 20th c. a number of poets writing in English composed a variety of

sonnets on many different themes. Robert Frost, John Crowe Ransom and

W. H. Auden all composed memorable sonnets. Dylan Thomas and George

Barker also wrote notable sonnets, as did Robert Lowell (e.g. his sequence

The Dolphin). Two other distinguished modern poets who have composed

sequences are Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney. In the late 1970s Tony

Harrison emerged as an outstandingly talented sonneteer.

During over seven hundred years the ‘narrow room of the sonnet’ has

been adapted to a remarkable variety of experiment and development

and an astonishing range of feeling and themes. One of the most

remarkable of all modern experiments in sonnet form is Vikram Seth’s The

Golden Gate (1986). The recent anthology The Penguin Book of the Sonnet:

500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English (2001), edited by Phillis Levin,

collects over six hundred sonnets from Wyatt to 20th c. poets. See also

crown of sonnets; quatorzain; sonnet cycle.

Sonnet Cycle:

Series of sonnets are written on a particular theme to a particular

individual. Love is the commonest theme and the advantages of the cycle

are that it enables the poet to explore many different aspects and moods

of the experience, to analyse his feelings in detail and to record the

vicissitudes of the affair. At the same time each individual sonnet lives as

an independent poem.

Of the many cycles the following are the most famous: Dante’s Vita Nuova

(1292–4), in which there are extensive prose links; Petrarch’s Canzoniere

(c. 1328–74); du Bellay’s L’Olive (1549); Ronsard’s Amours (1552);

Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591); Spenser’s Amoretti (1595);

Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609); Donne’s Holy Sonnets (1635–9);

Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822); Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s

The House of Life (1881); Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from

the Portuguese (1850); Rilke’s Sonette an Orpheus (1923).

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