Sonnet

The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both
meaning "little song." By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines
that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. The conventions associated with the
sonnet have evolved over its history. The writers of sonnets are sometimes referred to as
"sonneteers," although the term can be used derisively. Many modern writers of sonnets choose
simply to be called "sonnet writers." One of the best-known sonnet writers is Shakespeare, who
wrote 157 sonnets.

Traditionally, when writing sonnets, English poets usually employ iambic pentameter. In the
Romance languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used metres.

Italian sonnet
The Italian sonnet was invented by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under
Frederick II.[1] Guittone d'Arezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to
his language when he founded the Neo-Sicilian School (1235–1294). He wrote almost 300
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 Petrarca
(known in English as Petrarch).Other fine examples were written by Michelangelo.

The Italian sonnet comprises two parts. First, the octave (two quatrains), which describe a
problem, followed by a sestet (two tercets), which gives the resolution to it. Typically, the ninth
line creates a "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.

In the sonnets of Giacomo da Lentini, the octave rhymed a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b; later, the a-b-b-a, a-b-
b-a pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets. For the sestet there were two different
possibilities, c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were
introduced such as c-d-c-d-c-d.

The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey, used this Italian scheme, as did sonnets by later English poets including John Milton,
Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Early twentieth-century
American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, also wrote most of her sonnets using the Italian form.

This example, On His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Italian form:

When I consider how my light is spent (a)

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, (b)
And that one talent which is death to hide, (b)
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (a)
To serve therewith my Maker, and present (a)
My true account, lest he returning chide; (b)
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" (b)
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent (a)
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need (c)
 Either man's work or his own gifts; who best (d)
Bear his mile yoke, they serve him best. His state (e)
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed (c)
And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (d)
They also serve who only stand and wait." (e)

English sonnet or Elizabethan Sonnet

Sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his
contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the
French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who
gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the
English sonnet. Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophil and Stella (1591) started a tremendous
vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare,
Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of
Hawthornden, and many others.These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan
tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; the exception is Shakespeare's
sequence. In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and
George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general
meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular
throughout this period, as well as many variants.

The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written
between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French
Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote several sonnets, of which the best-known are "The world
is too much with us" and the sonnet to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modelled on Milton's.
Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns
inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme
for the sonnet "Ozymandias". Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote
several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, of which the greatest is "The Windhover," and
also several sonnet variants such as the 10-1/2 line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line
caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had
been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

This flexibility was extended even further in the 20th century. Among the major poets of the early
Modernist period, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and E. E. Cummings all used the sonnet
regularly. William Butler Yeats wrote the major sonnet Leda and the Swan, which used half
rhymes. Wilfred Owen's sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth was another sonnet of the early 20th
century. W. H. Auden wrote two sonnet sequences and several other sonnets throughout his
career, and widened the range of rhyme-schemes used considerably. Auden also wrote one of the
first unrhymed sonnets in English, "The Secret Agent" (1928). Half-rhymed, unrhymed, and even
unmetrical sonnets have been very popular since 1950; perhaps the best works in the genre are
Seamus Heaney's Glanmore Sonnets and Clearances, both of which use half rhymes, and
Geoffrey Hill's mid-period sequence 'An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in
England'. The 1990s saw something of a formalist revival, however, and several traditional
sonnets have been written in the past decade.
Soon after the introduction of the Italian sonnet, English poets began to develop a fully native
form. These poets included Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, the Earl of
Surrey's nephew Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and William Shakespeare. The form is
often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he
became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The third
quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn" called a volta. The
usual rhyme scheme was a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. In addition, sonnets are usually written in
iambic pentameter, meaning that there are 10 or perhaps even 11 or 9 syllables per line, and that
every other syllable is naturally accented. (Sonnets almost always have 10 syllable lines, but do
not always have the natural accent)The sonnet must be 14 lines long, and the last two lines of the
sonnet have rhyming endings (though there may be exceptions). In Shakespeare's sonnets, the
couplet usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme.

This is the proper rhyme scheme for an English Sonnet (/ represents a new stanza): a-b-a-b / c-
d-c-d / e-f-e-f / g-g

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)

Admit impediments, love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

Spenserian sonnet
A variant on the English form is the Spenserian sonnet, named after Edmund Spenser (c.1552–
1599) in which the rhyme scheme is, abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. In a Spenserian sonnet there does not
appear to be a requirement that the initial octave set up a problem that the closing sestet answers,
as is the case with a Petrarchan sonnet. Instead, the form is treated as three quatrains connected
by the interlocking rhyme scheme and followed by a couplet. The linked rhymes of his quatrains
suggest the linked rhymes of such Italian forms as terza rima. This example is taken from
Amoretti

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands, (a)

Which hold my life in their dead doing might, (b)
Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands, (a)
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight. (b)
And happy lines on which, with starry light, (b)
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,(c)
And read the sorrows of my dying sprite, (b)
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book. (c)
And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook (c)
Of Helicon, whence she derived is, (d)
When ye behold that angel's blessed look, (c)
My soul's long lacked food, my heaven's bliss. (d)
Leaves, lines, and rhymes seek her to please alone, (e)
Whom if ye please, I care for other none. (e)