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Use of sonnet throughout the ages (Shakespeare, Milton and Rossetti) - page 1
Keywords: english literature lit sonnet poetry william shakespeare john milton christina rossetti
By exploiit on 19/06/2010
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 1 of 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8The term “sonnet” is derived from the Provençal word “sonet” and the Italian word “sonneto”, both meaning little song. By the thirteenth century, a sonnet was traditionally found to contain fourteen lines, and conform to a strict rhyme scheme. It was also regular for sonnets to be written using iambic pentameter. A sonnet could fit the conventions of one of three subtypes – an Italian sonnet, and English sonnet or a Spenserian sonnet.
The Italian sonnet was invented by Giacomo da Lentini in the early stages of the thirteenth century, and was later made popular by poets such as Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti and (most notably) Petrarca. The typical structure of an Italian sonnet is devised into two parts; first is the octave, in which a problem is discussed. This is followed by a sestet, where we find the resolution to this problem. The ninth line of a sonnet sees a “turn” or a volta which represents the change from proposition to resolution, and sees the change of tone, mood or pace. The rhyme scheme for the octave was a fixed one, rhyming a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. The sestet on the other hand was open to alteration, and could rhyme c-d-e-c-d-e or c-d-c-c-d-c. This form was not only popular amongst Italian poets – it was used by the likes of William Wordsworth and John Milton, and was also the form in which Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey first decided to write.
The English sonnet was introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. Sir Wyatt was ultimately responsible for establishing the sonnet in English, but Surrey was accountable for the rhyme scheme, meter and quatrain divisions that we use to recognize a traditional English sonnet. Its more famous practitioners included Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, the Earl of Surrey’s nephew Edward de Vere and most famously, William Shakespeare. Divided into three quatrains and a couplet, an English sonnet usually follows the rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. There were occasional exceptions however, to the final two lines – they sometimes did not rhyme. Like in the Italian sonnet, a volta is characteristically introduced, instead in the third stanza of the sonnet.
The Spenserian sonnet is a slight adaptation of the English sonnet. It too is divided into three quatrains and then complimented with a finishing couplet, and follows a similar rhyme scheme, a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e. Unlike the Italian
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