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I need help understanding the Sonnet

Jack Denfeld

00:23 / 25.01.04

I remember them from my school days and looked online for a refresher. I got this.

"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."

Are there any other rules for the English sonnet? Is there a mandatory amount of syllables to use per line or could each line be just one word? Is this technically an English sonnet?

Hey
Ho
Yay
Yo

Fun
Man
Gun
Stan

Fox
hand
Box
Stand

why
fly

bump?

It doesn't have to have a rhyme scheme like that. That's a Petrarchan sonnet. Wordsworth's had different schemes.

I think that is a sonnet. It isn't awful good, though, is it?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:51 / 25.01.04

Sorry, Falcon, but I have to correct you. The Petrarchan sonnet has an octave (or octet) and a sestet (or sextet) - 8 lines and 6 lines. Mike robot's sonnet is a Shakespearean sonnet (three quatrains and a couplet, as above). Wordsworth, IIRC, wrote Petrarchan.

Unfortunately, the other thing about the Shakespearean sonnet is that it is generally written in iambic pentameter (likewise the Petrarchan sonnet in English). So, I think Mike Robot's work, although in sonnet form, would be seen as a rather adventurous in its construction.

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16:41 / 25.01.04

There's also the "twist". No a rule as such, but one of the form's powerful little tools. It usually starts in the the closing couplet or the last quatrain and is the sonnet's version of Kevin Spacey starting to walk faster at the end of Usual Suspects.

5% nation

03:11 / 26.01.04

The twist, better known as a "volta", occurs between the octet and the sestet of a Petrarchian sonnet.

An "English" sonnet, as it is in iambic pentameter, requires 5 iambic feet per line, resulting in ten syllables per line. The ending couplet of this kind of sonnet is known as the throw-away part of the sonnet, something silly dashed off and not necessary to the sonnet as a whole.

My favorite sonnet writer is Marilyn Hacker. She writes really very erotic sonnets, although she will strategically break the rules, so stick to looking at Shakespeare 'til you get a sense of how they work. Then melt over Marilyn.

Jack Denfeld

07:45 / 26.01.04

So iambic pentameter is a requirement of the English sonnet?

The Strobe

10:03 / 26.01.04

Well, as Haus and others have already pointed out, there isn't really such thing as the English sonnet. To me, all that means is a sonnet by an English author. English authors have written in Petrarchian sonnets, Shakespearean sonnets, and there's even a Meredithean sonnet.

Of course, Petrarch isn't English, but I'm aware of at least one other sonnet form that's English and not Shakesperean.

So: to best answer your question, Shakespearean sonnets are in iambic pentameter.

Incidentally, I love cube's description of the twist.

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16:48 / 26.01.04

Scanning a few pages of a book on "Versification and the Technicalities of Poetry" as we speak. It's 1918, so I think I'm happy with copyright. If not, sorry R F Brewer.
Will post a link soon.

■

19:21 / 26.01.04

Here we are.
Old fella wibbling about sonnets badly OCRd and screwed by Microsoft
Good god I hate Word. I want to see what happens when you run Shakspeare through the forced UK default spellchecker (ie. US English... HOW do you get rid of that?) and accept the results. Watch this space.

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