FREE ESSAY ON SONNET

SONNET

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme
scheme. Other strict, short poetic forms occur in English poetry (the sestina, the
villanelle, and the haiku, for example), but none has been used so successfully by so
many different poets. The Italian, or Petrarchan sonnet, named after Francesco Petrarch
(1304-1374), the Italian poet, was introduced into English poetry in the early 16th
century by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). Its fourteen lines break into an octave (or
octet), which usually rhymes abbaabba, but which may sometimes be abbacddc or even
(rarely) abababab; and a sestet, which may rhyme xyzxyz or xyxyxy, or any of the multiple
variations possible using only two or three rhyme-sounds. The English or Shakespearean
sonnet, developed first by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), consists of three
quatrains and a couplet--that is, it rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. The form into which a poet
puts his or her words is always something of which the reader ought to take conscious
note. And when poets have chosen to work within such a strict form, that form and its
strictures make up part of what they want to say. In other words, the poet is using the
structure of the poem as part of the language act: we will find the meaning not only in
the words, but partly in their pattern as well. The Italian form, in some ways the
simpler of the two, usually projects and develops a subject in the octave, then executes
a turn at the beginning of the sestet, which means that the sestet must in some way
release the tension built up in the octave. (Example: see Wyatt's Farewell Love and all
thy laws for ever.) The Shakespearean sonnet has a wider range of possibilities. One
pattern introduces an idea in the first quatrain, complicates it in the second,
complicates it still further in the third, and resolves the whole thing in the final
epigrammatic couplet. (Example: see Shakespeare's Sonnet 133.) You can see how this form
would attract writers of great technical skill who are fascinated with intellectual
puzzles and intrigued by the complexity of human emotions, which become especially
tangled when it comes to dealing with the sonnet's traditional subjects, love and faith.
Although the two types of sonnet may seem quite different, in actual practice they are
frequently hard to tell apart. Both forms break between lines eight and nine; the octave
in the Italian frequently breaks into two quatrains, like the English; and its sestet
frequently ends in a final couplet. In addition, many Shakespearean sonnets seem to have
a turn at line nine and another at the final couplet; and if a couplet closes an Italian
sonnet, it is usually because the poet wanted the epigrammatic effec t more characterstic
of the Shakespearean form. It behooves the reader to pay close attention to line-end
punctuation, especially at lines four, eight, and twelve, and to connective words like
and, or, but, as, so, if, then, when, or which at the beginnings of lines (especially
lines five, nine, and thirteen