Download The Sonnet

The Sonnet
Sonnet
 Comes
from the Italina word “sonetto”
meaning “little song”
 A sonnet has 14 lines, strict rhyming
scheme and a specific structure
 Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets
Italian (Petrarchan)
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two parts which together form an “argument”
Octave (2 quatrains): forms the “proposition”.
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Followed by a sestet which proposes a
“resolution”
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This describes the “problem”
Rhyming scheme: ABBA ABBA
Rhyming scheme options: CDECDE, CDCCDC or
CDCDCD
The ninth line is typically the “turn” which signals
the move from the “proposition” to the
“resolution”.
English (Shakespearean)
 Fourteen
lines
 Each line has 10 syllables
 Each line uses Iambic Pentameter
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Unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable, repeated 5 times
 Rhyming
scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
 Last 2 lines are a rhyming couplet
Structure
 In
the three quatrains the poet establishes
a theme or problem and then resolves it in
the final two lines, called the couplet.
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http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetstyle.html
Iambic Pentameter
5
stresses or beats per line (10 syllables)
 The “stress” falls on the second syllabic
pairing
 Example of iambic beat:
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Today
Unless
For sure
I hope
Examples of Iambic Pentameter
 Rough
winds do shake the darling buds of
May (how would you read this?)
 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May
 If music be the food of love play on
 If music be the food of love play on
 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Sonnet 18
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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.