Studying the Sonnet
A sonnet, in English poetry, is a poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter that has one of two regular rhyme schemes - although there are a couple of exceptions, and years of experimentation that have loosened this definition.
One of these schemes is known as the Petrarchan, after the Italian poet Petrarch; it consists of a group of eight lines, rhymed abbaabba, followed by a group of six lines with different rhymes. The distribution of these rhymes can vary, including cdcede, cdecde, cdedce, or even cdcdcd. Often, at the point where the eight-line section, known as the octave, turns into the six-line section, or sestet, there is a volta, from the Italian for 'turn' - this is a shift in the poem's tone, subject or logic that gains power from (or demands?) the matching shift in its structure.
The Shakespearean sonnet breaks into three quatrains, followed by a couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg - as the name suggests, this is the form Shakespeare used for his sonnets, although he did not invent it. In Shakespeare's usage, the three quatrains tend to make an argument in three stages, which the couplet will sum up or comment on.
The main exceptions are the curtal sonnet, a form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins that roughly maintains the 8:6 ratio over a ten-and-a-half line poem, and the Meredithian sonnet of 16 lines. The fact that these are still referred to as a curtal and a Meredithian sonnet, however, shows that they are not (yet?) considered sonnets per se. There are also innumerable individual exceptions to the form - a poet may refer to a poem as a sonnet because it meets some of the descriptions above, or even just because s/he says so. This means that calling a poem a sonnet is not necessarily to define it strictly, but to say that it stands in relation to the long tradition of sonnets.
Kit Wright's 'Sonnet for Dick' is in the Shakespearean scheme, but once the grief is admitted at the end of the first four lines, the following sentences overflow the shifts in the rhyme scheme, as grief does into life. Mimi Khalvati's 'Overblown Roses' begins with a Shakespearean scheme for its opening eight lines, then performs a volta by turning from the flower itself to what it says about mortality in a Petrarchan sestet. Brendan Kennelly's 'The Happy Grass' and J.D. McClatchy's 'My Mammogram' make similar blends of the two definitions, as does Peter Dale's 'Window', which further adapts the form by moving the second rhyme in each pair a syllable or two back into the line, muting the music of it gently.
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 list 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 sonnets 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 dissenter and a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution. She was even imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror. 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)
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
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 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.
1. William Shakespeare
"Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments" (From “Sonnets”, LV)
Shakespeare Version Paraphrased Version
| Not marble, nor the gilded monuments | Not marble, nor the gold-plated shrines |
| Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; | Of princes shall outlive the power of poetry; |
| But you shall shine more bright in these contents | You shall shine more bright in these verses |
| Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. | Than on dust-covered gravestones, ravaged by time. |
| When wasteful war shall statues overturn, | When devastating war shall overturn statues, |
| And broils root out the work of masonry, | And conflicts destroy the mason's handiwork, |
| Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn | the cause of war (Mars) nor the effects of war (fire) shall destroy |
| The living record of your memory. | The living record of your memory (this poem). |
| 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity | Against death and destruction, which render people forgotten, |
| Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room | Shall you push onward; praise of you will always find a place, |
| Even in the eyes of all posterity | Even in the eyes of future generations |
| That wear this world out to the ending doom. | That survive until the end of humanity. |
| So, till the judgment that yourself arise, | So, until you arise on Judgment Day, |
| You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. | You are immortalized in this poetry, and continue to live in lovers' eyes. |
2. Sonnet 30.
Shakespeare Version Paraphrased Version
| When to the sessions of sweet silent thought | When in these sessions of gratifying silent thought | |
| I summon up remembrance of things past, | I think of the past, | |
| I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, | I lament my failure to achieve all that I wanted, | |
| And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: | And I sorrowfully remember that I wasted the best years of my life: | |
| Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, | Then I can cry, although I am not used to crying, | |
| For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, | For dear friends now hid in death's unending night, | |
| And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, | And cry again over woes that were long since healed, | |
| And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: | And lament the loss of many things that I have seen and loved: | |
| Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, | Then can I grieve over past griefs again, | |
| And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er | And sadly repeat (to myself) my woes | |
| The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, | The sorrowful account of griefs already grieved for, | |
| Which I new pay as if not paid before. | Which (the account) I repay as if I had not paid before. | |
| But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, | But if I think of you while I am in this state of sadness, dear friend, | |
| All losses are restored and sorrows end. | All my losses are compensated for and my sorrow ends. |
G M Hopkins
“God’s Grandeur” (1877)-
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
W. B. Yeats
“Leda and the Swan”
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
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