Sonnets

A brief history of sonnets

 Invented in Italy in the thirteenth century,
the sonnet was brought to a high form of
development in the fourteenth century by
Francesco Petrarch (1304–74)
 He’s an Italian poet and humanist best
remembered now for his sonnets dedicated
to an idealized lady named Laura glimpsed in
a church, and with whom he fell in love at
first sight.
 (Laura’s true identity is unknown; supposedly, she
married someone else and, being ideally virtuous as well
as beautiful, was permanently unavailable. There’s no
evidence Petrarch ever talked to her).

2
Petrarchan conventions
 Petrarch’s
sonnets about a beautiful,
unattainable lady became known as
Petrarchan conventions. These are that:
 love is excruciatingly painful;
 the angelically beautiful and virtuous lady is
cruel in rejecting the poet’s love;
 love is a religion, the practice of which
ennobles the lover.
 love usually begins at first sight
Petrarchan sonnet
(Background)
 Petrarch is considered one of the fathers of
the modern Italian language
 In 1327, in Avignon, Petrarch allegedly
encountered Laura de Noves, a woman he
fixated on for the rest of his life.
 From 1327 to 1368, Petrarch wrote 366
poems as part of a sequence, centered on the
theme of his love for Laura.
 Saw her at church and fell in love with her (this
love was unrequited!)
 Wrote about her for most of his life, even after
her death as a result of the Black Death of 1348
 About Petrarch’s legacy, the poet J. D.
McClatchy has said, “True love—or rather,
the truest—is always obsessive and
unrequited. No one has better dramatized
how it scorches the heart and fires the
imagination than Petrarch did, centuries ago.
He dipped his pen in tears and wrote the
poems that have shaped our sense of love—
its extremes of longing and loss—ever since.”
 Themes of the Petrarchan sonnet: the
beloved is ideally beautiful, unattainable,
cruel in rejecting the poet’s love, the lover
suffers from extreme of feeling; the poem
will immortalize the beloved
The sonnet spreads…
 Sir Thomas Wyatt (1502–42) and Henry
Howard, the Earl of Surrey (1517–47)
introduce Petrarchan model to England in the
sixteenth century.
 Adjust the rhyme scheme and the meter to
accommodate the English language.
 Like Petrarch, they use religious imagery and
terms to convey the holiness and intensity of
the lover’s passion for the unattainable love-
object
 make frequent allusions to both classical deities
and Christian symbols.
To shakespeare!
 Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets published in 1609
are a “collection” rather than a sequence,
 They are remarkably various: Shakespeare
explores the same theme in different ways
but never exactly repeats a pattern. He is
keenly aware of Petrarchan conventions
and often uses them, but just as often
upends them.
 The cruel loved one in many of his sonnets is a
young man, not a woman, and the “Dark Lady” of
sonnets 127–152 is neither virtuous nor ideally
beautiful.
What are sonnets about?
Sonnets are a way to express a poet’s
passion-an overwhelming expression in a
strict structure that helps them to contain
their overwhelming feelings.
 Structure of a Sonnet:
A set Rhyme Scheme
 Petrarchan is ABBAABBA for octave but varies for
sestest
 Shakespearean is ABABCDCDEFEFGG
 14 Lines
 Petrarchan is an octave and a sestet
 Shakespearean = 3 quatrains (4) & a couplet (2)
 Iambic Pentameter = 5 feet of iambs =
10syllables
 1 Stanza
 A powerful emotion—unrequited love, anger,
hate, heartache, etc.
Iambic Pentameter
 IambicPentameter is a type of meter used in
poetry which describes the rhythm used in each
line.

 That rhythm is measured into small groups of

syllables, called feet.

 Theword iambic describes the type of foot used

and pentameter describes how many feet are
used.
 An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one
unstressed syllable followed by one stressed
syllable.
Example: “good BYE”.

 Pentameter means “five meters” so, there are

five sets of iambs (one unstressed syllable
followed by one unstressed syllable). A line of
iambic pentameter flows like this:

baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM.

 Here are some examples from
Shakespeare’s sonnets:

When I /do COUNT / the CLOCK / that TELLS / the TIME

When IN / dis GRACE / with FOR / tune AND / men’s EYES

Petrarchan sonnet
Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose,
The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile
Could my own soul from its own self beguile,
And in a separate world of dreams enclose,
The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows,
And the soft lightning of the angelic smile
That changed this earth to some celestial isle,
Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.

And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,

Left dark without the light I loved in vain,
Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

What is the rhyme sceme?

What are the names of the 2 stanzas for this sonnet?
Sonnet 94--shakespeare
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Find an approximate end rhyme?

Sonnet 130
 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
 I have seen roses damask'd, 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.