History of the Sonnet
Around 1200, sonnets appeared as expressions of romantic love in Italian courtyards 2. Petrarch made the 14 lines popular with Canzoniere, a sequence of 366 poems dedicated to his beloved, Laura. Because the sonnet is short, it obliges poets to use condensed expressions. Petrarch influenced Shakespeare's English sonnet. Both the Italian and English sonnet usually have a shift in tone, stance and view point. During the early Renaissance the sonnet was used as an expression of love to court an elusive woman. Then during the late Renaissance the sonnet turned for the most part to religious, philosophical and political themes. Recent sonnets are rarely written using strict traditional rhyme schemes and iambic pentameter. The unique structure of the Italian sonnet in particular allows the poet to develop a viewpoint in the first eight lines and then shift to a different position for the remaining six lines of the poem.
Most sonnets are 14 lines long and contain a variety of rhyme schemes. There are two types of sonnets, the Italian(or Petrarchan) and the English (or Shakespearean). The Italian sonnet contains an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). The octave rhyming pattern is typically abbaabba and it contains a narrative, poses a question or presents a proposition. The sestet is identified by cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce makes a conceptual comment, applies the proposition and solves the problem. The sudden change of mood in the sonnet, when it occurs, is called a volta.
The Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains with its own individual rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg. It was practiced predominantly by William Shakespeare. His sonnets usually end with a couplet—two consecutive lines that rhyme at the end of the poem. Quatrains by the way are stanzas with four lines.
My wish to steer clear of the sonnet reveals in itself the reason why I should be teaching it. Sonnets contain powerful words with nuances of meaning. The exploration of unanswerable question about love, war, mortality, suffering, change and adversity touches on all the topics adolescents at times struggle with and love to discuss.
Even though they are challenging to read, I think we will start first by identifying the different types of sonnets. Then we will begin to use pre-reading strategies, during reading strategies and after reading strategies to help us read and simultaneously organize our thoughts. While we are doing this we will identify figurative language. Simile, metaphor, alliteration, hyperbole, personification, paradox, symbol, assonance, onomatopoeia, apostrophe, imagery, metonymy, and understatement are a few examples of figurative language that my students will identify while reading the poems. Simile is a comparison using like or as but a metaphor is a comparison that doesn't use those words. Alliteration is a sequence of words that mainly begin with the same sound. A hyperbole is exaggeration. Whereas an understatement makes something that's big deal seem minor. Personification gives animals or objects human characteristics. A paradox is a statement that seems to contradict itself. A symbol is something that stands for something else. Assonance is a repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyme. Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it is describing. Apostrophe is a figure of speech that talks to the dead or an absent person or object. Imagery is a description of something that conveys an image, sound, taste, smell or feeling to the reader. Metonymy is a figure of speech that replaces the literal thing with a more vivid closely related thing or idea.
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