Sonnet

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A sonnet - pronounced SONN-it, IPA: /ˈsɒn ɪt/ - is a poem of fourteen lines, usually following a strict rhyme scheme and having a distinctive structure. The sonnet is a verse form widely used in English poetry and in the poetry of many other European languages.

The sonnet was invented in Sicily in the thirteenth century by Giacomo da Lentini, a poet at the court of the emperor Frederick II, but the practice of sonnet-writing quickly spread to the Italian mainland, and several of the great Italian poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth century composed large numbers of sonnets, the greatest of the sonnet-writers of this period being Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)). (The word 'sonnet' comes originally from the Italian sonetto, which means: a little song.) The sonnet was brought to England early in the sixteenth century, and it was an extremely popular verse form during the Elizabethan period - Shakespeare wrote more than 150 sonnets. Since this time the sonnet has not lost its popularity as a verse form, and almost all the greatest English poets have composed sonnets.

English sonnets are usually, but not always, written in iambic pentameters - a well-known exception is The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). Sonnets in other languages are usually written in other metres - e.g., Italian sonnets in hendecasyllables (i.e., lines of eleven syllables), and French sonnets in Alexandrines (i.e., iambic hexameters).

Usually, but again not invariably, the ninth line of a sonnet introduces a 'turn' or change in the poet's line of thought - for example, in Italian sonnets the first eight lines typically state a problem, and the final six lines offer the solution to the problem. (Incidentally, the technical term for a unit of eight lines of verse is an octave, and for a unit of six lines a sestet.) However, this 'turn' or change may take many other forms - it may amount to no more than a change in the poet's mood or point of view - and sometimes there may be no change in the line of thought at all. (The technical name for this 'turn' or change is volta, this being the Italian word for 'turn'.)

Most sonnets fall into one or other of three types, according to the rhyme scheme they follow. For an example of each type of sonnet see further Three types of sonnet.

  • The Italian sonnet uses two rhymes for the octave - the pattern is either a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b or a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a - and two or three rhymes for the sestet - the pattern is either c-d-e, c-d-e or c-d-c-d-c-d or c-d-c, c-d-c.
  • The Shakespearean or English sonnet follows the pattern a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.
  • The Spenserian sonnet follows the pattern a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e.

However, not all sonnets are covered by this classification according to rhyme scheme - not least because some sonnets do not employ rhyme at all!