Sonnet: History and types

What is Sonnet?

• A Sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme. Often, sonnets use iambic pentameter: five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables for a ten-syllable line.
• The term “sonnet” is derived from the Italian “sonetto”, a “little sound or song”.
• The Italian (sometimes called "Petrarchan") sonnet was probably invented by Giacomo da Lentini, (1230) head of the Sicilian school under Frederick II.  Later rediscovered by Guittone d'Arezzo. Other Italian poets of the time who followed this trend including Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–1300) wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304–1374).
• The Petrarchan sonnet, perfected by the Italian poet Petrarch, divides the 14 lines into two sections: an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBA ABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDECDE.

Italian Sonnet Form

• Rigid structural form: the poet is asked to express his thoughts and feelings in fourteen lines Petrarchan sonnet
• Fourteen iambic pentameters are divided into two stanzas, one octave and one sestet, usually rhyming: • ABBAABBA. • CDECDE or CDCDCD (even if the rhyme scheme sometimes varies).
• The function of the octave is: • to introduce a problem or a situation
• The function of the sestet is: • to provide an answer or comments on the situation and expresses the personal feelings of the poet.
• Typically, the ninth line created a "turn" or volta, which signaled the move from proposition to resolution.

Why did Petrarch become famous in Italy?

• The sonnet collection of Petrarch is titled “Canzoniere” (started in 1335)
• Petrarch describes his love for his beloved Laura using the typical features of courtly love.
• A poet is a man who suffers because of a disdainful lady who is beautiful, and often cruel.
• The Petrarchan lady is a woman who is both real and ideal, full of the highest physical and spiritual qualities.
• The poet feels contrasting sensations: happiness or sorrow, love or hatred according to the presence or absence of the lady or to his different states of mind.

 English Sonnet

• The sonnet in England Sir Thomas Wyatt (1500 – 1542) – was the first English poet to introduce the Italian Sonnet to England.
• Initially, he simply translates the poems into English; then, to adapt the Italian pattern to the English language, he left the octave unchanged and modified the sestet dividing it into a quatrain and a couplet.
• Sometimes Wyatt’s quatrain and couplet seem more like a sestet.
• The Petrarchan theme of love remains unchanged.
• With Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517 -1547) the final couplet becomes separate from the quatrain and comments on the previous twelve lines.
• It was Surrey who gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet.
• Surrey also changes the octave into two quatrains with different rhymes.

English or Shakespearean Sonnet

•  Sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
• It is also called also a Shakespearean sonnet.
• The final couplet often exhibits a turn or volta containing a shift in perspective or makes a witty comment about the foregoing material.

 Spenserian Sonnet

• The Spenserian sonnet is a 14-line poem developed by Edmund Spenser in his Amoretti, that varies the English form by interlocking the three quatrains (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE)
• There does not appear to be a requirement that the initial octave sets up a problem which the closing sestet answers, as is the case with a Petrarchan sonnet.
• Three quatrains are connected by the interlocking rhyme scheme and followed by a couplet.
• The rhyme scheme is ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE.

Other Types of Sonnets

• curtal sonnet or curtailed or contracted sonnet is a shortened version devised by Gerard Manley Hopkins
• The caudate sonnet, adds codas or tails to the 14-line poem
• The sonnet redoublé, also known as a crown of sonnets, is composed of 15 sonnets that are linked by the repetition of the final line of one sonnet as the initial line of the next, and the final line of that sonnet as the initial line of the previous; the last sonnet consists of all the repeated lines of the previous 14 sonnets, in the same order in which they appeared
• A sonnet sequence is a group of sonnets sharing the same subject matter and sometimes a dramatic situation and persona.
• The stretched sonnet is extended to 16 or more lines, such as those in George Meredith’s sequence Modern Love. 
• A submerged sonnet is tucked into a longer poetic work; see lines 235-48 of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”