Consider the sonnet as a verse form. With examples compare the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets and show developments in this form to the twentieth century.

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Lara Finnegan 20th January 2000

Consider the sonnet as a verse form. With examples compare the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets and show developments in this form to the twentieth century.

The first sonnets were written by a Sicilian lawyer named Giacomo da Lentino, during the first part of the thirteenth century. The form soon became very popular and was publicised through the works of many well-known Italian poets, such as Cavalcanti, Dante and Petrarch, thus becoming known as the Petrarchan sonnet form. It soon spread through Europe and finally to England during the sixteenth century, through Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who developed it slightly. Soon after, Shakespeare realised the limitations of such a strict format and therefore developed and changed it further, creating the Shakespearean form. However, not everyone agreed with his indifference towards tradition; John Milton and Wordsworth soon reverted to the strictly disciplined Petrarchan form again, preferring it to the relatively 'free and easy' style of Shakespeare. Through time, many poets have experimented with different styles and techniques, and by the twentieth century, writers such as Elizabeth Jennings wrote such undisciplined poetry that it could only be recognised as a sonnet by the fourteen lines.

The word 'sonnet' comes from the Italian word sonnetto, meaning 'little sound' or 'song,' and the standard form consists of fourteen lines and a strict but variable rhyme scheme. The underlying stresses in each line are usually iambic pentameters but variation does occur in most poetry in order to make the rhythm more interesting. The Petrarchan sonnet form has a very strict format and rhyme scheme, and the content almost always consists of one of three themes: love, time or change. In the first eight lines, known as the octave, there are only two rhyming sounds, so the poet needs four 'a' rhymes and four 'b' rhymes. Also, an idea or problem is usually argued or discussed in the octave, and then resolved in the sestet (the last six lines). This change in thought or development of an argument is called the volta. Rhyme schemes are variable in the sestet, and combinations such as cdcdcd, cdecde, and ccdccd are all permissible.

The Shakespearean form of the sonnet reduces the number of rhyming words needed because it is divided into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end. The most common rhyme schemes are abab cdcd efef gg and abba cddc effe gg, but some variation is allowed. In this form the volta after the octave is sometimes recognised, but not always. An idea is generally expressed in the first quatrain, developed and argued in the second and third, and resolved in the rhyming couplet at the end.
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The first sonnets written in English were by Sir Thomas Wyatt, and he used the Petrarchan form. He wrote about thirty sonnets altogether, ten of them translations of Petrarch. In some of his sonnets, however, he introduced the rhyming couplet at the end, which is never found in the true Petrarchan form. In the octave of his sonnet "Divers doth use, as I have heard and know," he describes how men "mourn and wail" when their ladies decide that they do not love them anymore, in order to "pease their painful woe." Some turn against the women who ...

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