History and Structure of the Sonnet
History of the Sonnet
Even though we think of the sonnet as the great traditional English form, it originated in Italy. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word, sonneto, meaning "little song". There is controversy among historians concerning the actual originator of the sonnet, but once devised, the form became very popular in Italy. Dante and Francesco Petrarch are credited with perfecting the form. Petrarch, a Tuscan, published his Canzoniere, which contained 366 sonnets, most of them about an idealized lover named Laura. The form created in Italian is known as the Petrarchan sonnet.
It took several hundred years for the sonnet to take hold in England. Two young poets are credited with bringing the form to England after studying and traveling in Italy in the mid 1500's: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. They each published very fine sonnets, and the form began to gain popularity. Wyatt's sonnet, "Whoso to hunt," is often considered to be one of the best. Both Wyatt and Surrey changed the Italian form and the result was what is now called the Shakespearean sonnet.
In the 16th century the sonnet form was widely used by Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, and others. Changes to the sonnet made by Spenser resulted in a third category of sonnet named after him; the Spenserian sonnet. This form never gained the popularity of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan forms. John Milton, writing in the 17th century, followed Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne and was an important figure in the history of the sonnet, although few other poets were writing sonnets during his life. Milton, best known for having written the epic poem Paradise Lost, is considered by some to be one of the greatest poets of the English language. After Milton, the form became almost extinct. Historians call our attention only to a single sonnet written by Thomas Gray, "On the Death of Mr. Richard West".
For a long period the sonnet remained an unpopular form but was revived again in the Romantic period, which is generally considered to span the years of 1789-1832. Several poets are given credit for calling attention to the sonnet during this time period. William Lisle Bowles, a vicar's son, toured northern England in the 1780s, and then wrote an influential collection of which was admired by Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and a large public. Charlotte Smith was an influential female sonnet writer during this time. A colorful figure, Helen Maria Williams, also influenced Wordsworth. She was a religious and a supporter of and of the ideals of the . She was even imprisoned in during the . Wordsworth wrote a poem for her in 1787. Although many sonnet writers of his day influenced him, William Wordsworth is credited with bringing the sonnet back to life and restoring its immense popularity during this period. Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats also led the list of sonnet writers during this time period.
A brother and sister, Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, helped to maintain the sonnet's presence in the 19th century. The Rossetti family read widely in Italian literature and used the sonnet as a literary exercise. Two other poets of this time period, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Meredith, wrote sonnet sequences (series of related sonnets) about romantic relationships. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese express passionate desire and Meredith's Modern Love charts a disintegrating relationship between a man and wife. During the 18th and 19th centuries, sonnet writers used both the Shakespearian and Petrarchan forms, and it may be that the Petrarchan form was used more. Gerard Manley Hopkins was also an important figure in the 19th century and may have been the most original sonneteer of this time period. He was not widely known during his life . Because his work became recognized during the 20th century, his innovations to the sonnet are thought to have influenced modern poets. (White, 1972, pp. 1-3 and Strand, 2000, pp. 56-57)
I've included here a timeline of influential sonnet writers.
- Francesco Petrarch 1304-1374
- Sir Thomas Wyatt 1503-1542
- Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 1517-1547
- Edmund Spenser 1552-1599
- Sir Philip Sidney 1554-1586
- Michael Drayton 1563-1631
- William Shakespeare 1564-1616
- John Donne 1572-1631
- John Milton 1608-1674
- Thomas Gray 1716-1771
- Charlotte Smith 1749-1806
- Helen Maria Williams 1762-1827
- William Lisle Bowles 1762-1850
- William Wordsworth 1770-1850
- Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822
- John Keats 1795-1821
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861
- George Meredith 1828-1909
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882
- Christina Rossetti 1830-1894
- Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889
- Robert Frost 1875-1963
- Claude McKay 1889-1948
- E.E. Cummings 1894-1962
- Countee Cullen 1903-1946
- John Berryman 1914-1972
- Robert Lowell 1917-1977
- John Hollander 1929-
The Sonnet's Structure and Important Characteristics
Certainly I hope that my students learn the basic rhyme schemes of the sonnet and its formal aspects. But I want them also to gain some understanding of its other qualities, since one of the underlying objectives of this unit is to develop an appreciation of form as it relates to the overall impact of the poem.
Many scholars who have written about the sonnet claim that the qualities of a good sonnet are found "not in its conformity to some external pattern, but in its unity of design, condensation of thought, exactitude of language and image, and – even at its most meditative and abstract – its essentially dramatic nature." (White, pp. 2-3) Commentaries on the beauty of the sonnet form are almost as plentiful as sonnets themselves. This is what C.F. Johnson wrote in 1904 in Forms of English Poetry.
- Sonnet beauty depends on symmetry and asymmetry both, for the parts are unequal
- in length and different in form and melody. In this it resembles things of organic
- beauty as opposed to things of geometric beauty. It involves the principle of
- balanced yet dissimilar masses, of formality and freedom, like a tree which has
- developed under the rigorous law of its growth and yet is shaped by the chance of
- wind and sunshine into something individual. The sonnet form could not have
- endured the test of time for so many years did it not embody some of the
- underlying principles of beauty. . .(Johnson, 1904)
The sonnet's length requires the poet to be concise. Paul Fry suggests that "The sonnet is a maximum thought unit. In other words, when a thought or train of thought gets any longer (e. g., in a stanzaic poem), it starts to seem linear and needs to be reconstructed one step at a time, whereas one can keep the whole thought of a sonnet in mind at once without it's being as simple as an aphorism or epigram." (Fry, July 25, 2005) This may help to account for the sonnet's immense popularity for so many years. The sonnet has also attracted poets because its exacting structure challenges them to solve an intellectual puzzle.
A question of categorizing the sonnet as a lyric poem or as a dramatic poem arises as one investigates scholarly writing on the sonnet. Many textbook definitions call the sonnet a lyric poem, and it does fit the definition of being a fairly short poem that expresses the personal mood, feeling or thoughts of a single speaker. But the drama of the sonnet comes with the change of thought that often occurs. White and Rosen state that, "It is far more logical in structure, more precise in thought, more concise and unified in both substance and design than the ordinary lyric." (White, p. 3)
Jennifer Ann Wagner, in her book A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteeth-Century English Sonnet, explains how William Wordsworth viewed the sonnet not as a form that limits the poet, but instead spoke of "the way the infinite can be contained in the finite; the way large ambition can be contained in a small form; and the way in which the constraints of this form force a poet to reflect on the nature of poetic form generally…" She goes on to explain Wordsworth's view of the sonnet as synecdoche, a reference to a part in place of the whole. (Wagner, 1996 p. 15)
For the purposes of our study here, there are two major forms of the sonnet and one minor form. They all contain 14 lines. Traditionally, sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a rhythmical pattern and is the template or pattern for a sonnet's poetic line. The "iambic" part means that the rhythm goes from an unstressed syllable to a stressed one, as happens in words like divine, caress, bizarre, and delight. It sounds sort of like a heartbeat: daDUM, daDUM, daDUM. The "pentameter" part means that this iambic rhythm, which is a "foot," is repeated five times. A fun exercise for teaching iambic pentameter to children can be found at the Folger Shakespeare Library website, which is listed in the bibliography of this unit. Suggestions are provided for encouraging students to stomp out the pattern as well as speak in the pattern.
The Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, consists of an octave of eight lines or two quatrains and a sestet of six lines or two tercets. The rhyme scheme of the octave is ababcdcd and the rhyme scheme of the sestet varies in many ways. A chart that identifies 18 of them with examples for each can be found in an article written by William Sharpe on the Sonnet Central website.
This distinct break between the two parts of the Petrarchan sonnet, sometimes called the turn, encourages the poet to present a subject in the octave and reflect on it in the sestet. In some sonnets these two parts take on the qualities of a proposal and a response or a problem and a resolution. Frances Mayes says that the sestet "resolves or consolidates or reflects on the concerns of the octave." (Mayes, p. 313) The subject of the poem must lend itself to this kind of resolution in order for the form to fit.
The Shakespearean sonnet has no octave/sestet structure. It consists of three quatrains and an ending rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland explain that the Shakespearean sonnet, "with its three quatrains and final couplet, allows a fairly free association of images to develop lyrically toward a conclusion." (Strand, p. 57) An easier way for eighth graders to view the progression in the Shakespearean sonnet is to think of the first quatrain as introducing the subject. The second and third quatrains can further develop the subject or introduce a conflict. In the final couplet the poet can resolve the conflict or offer a comment or summary statement. Others have talked about the three quatrains as being three points to an argument. No matter how one looks at the three quatrains, the ending couplet demands a strong conclusion and the subject matter should fit.
Although it may be more difficult to use the Petrarchan sonnet's rhyme scheme because the writer uses only four different rhymes instead of the six of the Shakespearean sonnet, in other ways the Petrarchan form offers more freedom for the poet. The Petrarchan form fits more with a certain contemporary view of poetry that allows for an open-endedness. There is no option of this in the Shakespearean sonnet because of its ending couplet.
The less popular Spenserian sonnet consists of a rhyme scheme of interlocking rhyme: abab,bcbc,cdcd,ee.
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