Transcript Sonnet - Immaculateheartacademy.org

Forms of Poetry
The Sonnet
The sonnet shows the reader two related
but different things (ideas, emotions,
states of mind, beliefs, actions, images,
etc.) in order to communicate something
about them
The Sonnet
Sonnets are always 14 lines
All sonnets contain a volta.
Volta - “turn”, is the essential part of all
the sonnet forms.
- it is where the second idea is
introduced.
The Sonnet
There are three major types of sonnet
- distinguished by their structure
1. Italian or Petrarchan sonnet
2. Spenserian sonnet
3. English or Shakespearian sonnet
Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet
Divided into two sections by its rhyme
scheme.
First section - Octave (8 lines)
ABBAABBA
Second section - Sestet (6 lines)
Variety of possible rhyme schemes
CDCDCD/CDDCDC/CDECDE
London, 1802
by William Wordsworth
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: alter, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
London, 1802
by William Wordsworth
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
London, 1802
by William Wordsworth
The octave presents the image of the English in decline.
The sestet (CDDECE) compares that image of decline
to the greater qualities the narrator associates with
Milton.
Spenserian Sonnet
Variation of the sonnet invented by
Edmund Spenser.
Builds off the rhyme scheme Spenser
used to write his epic poem The Faery
Queene
ABAB BCBC CDCD EE
Creates three separate units plus a final
couplet
Sonnet 75
by Edmund Spenser
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Sonnet 75
by Edmund Spenser
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Sonnet 75
by Edmund Spenser
The first eight lines set up the speaker’s failed attempts
to immortalize his love and her comment that it’s
futile to immortalize a mortal creature.
The turn actually sets up two different responses to start
of the poem
1. The author vows to immortalize his love in a poem
2. Going with the Christian values of the time, he
acknowledges that they will continue their love in
heaven
English or Shakespearian
Sonnet
The simplest and most flexible of the
sonnet forms.
Consist of three quatrains and a final
rhyming couplet
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
The volta can be placed at the start of the
final quatrain, or as late as the rhyming
couplet.
Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare
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 there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare
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.
Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare
The first twelve lines of the sonnet set up
Shakespeare’s comparisons of his love to cliché
claims made by other poets (eyes like the sun, rosy
cheeks, breath like perfume, voice like music, etc.)
Only in the final rhyming couplet do we find the volta.
Shakespeare notes that his love is still far superior to
all of those other women who were falsely compared
to impossible things.