AP English: Literature

1
The Sonnet

• AP English Literature

2
Definition

• The sonnet is a fourteen-line poem usually
  written in iambic pentameter with a variety of
  rhyme schemes.

3
History

• The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word
  sonetto that means little song. The form was
  invented by Giocomo de Lentini, an Italian
  notary in the court of Frederick II, an emperor
  of the Holy Roman Empire in the thirteenth
  century.

4
History

• Petrarch popularized the form in the fourteenth
  century with a sequence of 366 poems entitled
  Canzoniere that was dedicated to an idealized
  lover named Laura.

5
History

• Dante wrote a book entitled La Vita Nuova (The
  New Life) that included twenty-five sonnets as
  part of chapters that had a variety of poems and
  prose. His writing of sonnets helped popularize
  the form however, Dante abandoned the book when
  Beatrice Portinari, the love of his life, died.
  He later dedicated the Divine Comedy
• to her. He also included Petrarch as a
• character in the narrative.

6
History

• The first English sonnets were composed by Sir
  Thomas Wyat and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey,
  in the sixteenth century. These sonnets were
  mostly translations of Petrarchs sonnets.

7
History

• Sir Philip Sydney wrote Astrophel and Stella, a
  sonnet sequence in the 1580s. This popularized
  the English fascination with the sonnet
  sequencea collection of sonnets grouped under a
  theme that can be read as both a single work and
  as separate poems.
•  

8
History

• With Sydneys sequence, the English sonnet became
  a dominate form of the poem. It differed from
  the Italian sonnet in basic structure. Many
  poets used this form, but William Shakespeare
  popularized it thus, the form is often called
  the Shakespearean sonnet.

9
Two Main Categories of the Sonnet

• The two main types of sonnets are the Petrarchan
  sonnet (the Italian sonnet) and the Shakespearean
  sonnet (the English sonnet).

10
Petrarchan Sonnet

• The Petrarchan sonnet has two main sections the
  octave and the sestet. This form of poem forms
  an argument or narrative.

11
Petrarchan Sonnet

• The octave, the first eight lines, presents the
  narrative problem through descriptiondescribing
  the problem, situation or question. The octave
  usually has an abbaabba rhyme scheme.

12
Petrarchan Sonnet

• The sestet , the final six lines, solves the
  problem by stating an abstraction, applying the
  idea proposed by the problem, or solving the
  problem directly. The sestet has three common
  rhyme schemes. The first is a quatrain and a
  couplet cdcd ee. The second is an alternation
  of two rhymes cdcdcd. The third is three
• rhymes cdecde.

13
English Sonnet

• The English sonnet has three quatrains and a
  couplet. This can be divided into stanzas that
  are three quatrains and one couplet, or an octave
  (the first two quatrains) and a sestet (the third
  quatrain and the couplet).

14
English Sonnet

• The basic rhyme scheme of an English sonnet is
  abab cdcd efef gg.

15
English Sonnet

• In the English sonnet, the first two quatrains
  tell a kind of story or focus on an idea or
  feeling. The third quatrain then makes a change,
  sometimes by introducing something new, something
  unexpected. The couplet functions as an epigram,
  a brief, clever and memorable statement that
  comments on the quatrains by summarizing the poem
  or continuing the idea introduced in the third
  quatrain.

16
English Sonnet

• A variety of the English sonnet is the Spenserian
  sonnet with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee.
  This version of the English sonnet combines the
  Italian and English sonnets with the rhyme
  connections between the quatrains.

17
Basic Content

• Overall, sonnets have two main sections with a
  line that serves as a transition between
  description (the first eight lines) and
  generalization (the last six). It may be useful
  to think of the sestet as beginning with the word
  therefore since the lines that follow are a
  thought about the overall situation. It can be
  six lines used as a statement or four lines
  generalizing and a couplet that gives an ultimate
  statement about the topic.

18
Basic Content

• Traditionally, the subject matter of sonnets has
  been love and philosophical considerations
  however, there have been sonnets about many other
  topicsespecially those written by contemporary
  poets. As you consider the form, look at how the
  content is represented in the formboth the
  line/stanza arrangements and the sound devices
  that unite the poem as a whole.