SONNETS

Two Types:
1. Italian or Petrarchan
2. English or Shakespearean
 Characteristics

 14 line poem

 Iambic pentameter

 Follows specific rhyme scheme

 1. Italian or Petrarchan
 Created by Petrarch, 14th Century Italian
poet.
 2 parts:
a. octet with rhyme scheme: abbaabba
b. sestet with rhyme scheme: cdecde
 Example: William Wordsworth’s “The
World is Too Much With Us”
 “The World is Too Much With Us”
William Wordsworth
 The world is too much with us; late and soon, a
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; b
Little we see in Nature that is ours; b
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! a
This Seat that bares her bosom to the moon; a
The winds that will be howling at all hours, b
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; b
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; a
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be c
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; d
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, e
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; c
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; d
Or hear old Triton Blow his wreathed horn. e
 2. The English or Shakespearean
 Sir Thomas Wyatt brought Italian sonnet
home to England as a souvenir.
 It was adapted to account for the fact that
there are fewer rhyming possibilities in
English than in Italian
 Rhyme Scheme:
a. three quatrains: abab cdcd efef
b. final couplet: gg
 Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day?
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
By William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare
 Why the rigid structure?
“Poets found that the discipline of the form pushed
them to make leaps in meaning they might not
otherwise have made.

‘For me,’ wrote William Wordsworth, ‘'twas

pastime to be bound / Within the Sonnet's
scanty plot of ground.’ Too much liberty, he
says, can be a weight, for the writer” (Beyond
Books).
 Your Turn
You are going to become a sonneteer.
You may write about any topic you like.
You may choose whether to write a
Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnet.
You must stick to the prescribed rhyme
scheme, but iambic pentameter will be
extra credit.
 SONNET 40
 SONNET 40
 Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them
all;
 What hast thou then more than thou
hadst before?
 No love, my love, that thou may'st true
love call;
 All mine was thine before thou hadst this
more.
 Then if for my love thou my love
receivest,
 I cannot blame thee for my love thou
usest;
 But yet be blamed, if thou thyself
deceivest
 By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
 I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
 Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
 And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
 To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
 Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
 Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
 HOW TO STUDY SONNETS 1
 SOAPSTONE ANALYSIS
 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/100134791
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 FIND FIGURES OF SPEECH AND SYMBOLS

 FIND CONTRASTING ELEMENTS
 HOW TO STUDY SONNETS 2
 ESTABLISH THE NAME OF THE SONNET
 ESTABLISH THE KIND OF SONNET
 (LOOK A ITS RHYMIMG AND THE
MESSAGE DELIVERED)