Hello students, I'm Roxana and let us together explore the form of a sonnet.

In the next few minutes we

will get acquainted with the history and types of sonnets written in English, and also the structure of the
sonnet. You will by the end of this presentation be able to identify the types of sonnets presented to you,
understand what we mean by the iambic pentameter, workout the rhyme scheme of a sonnet, and maybe
even try your hand at writing a sonnet or two? Why not?

The word sonnet comes from an Italian word for a ‘little song’ - ‘sonetto’. It is a 14 line poem and it
was most popular in 14th century Italy, where the most prolific writer of sonnets was Francesco Petrarch
- who in the 14th century popularised this form, basically to write love poems. He wrote so many of them,
317 in fact, that he lends his name to a form of sonnet called the Italian or the Petrarchan sonnet.

This Italian form traveled from Tuscany in Italy to England in the 16th century. During the period of
the English Renaissance, when everything Italian was in fashion, two noblemen, Sir Thomas Wyatt and
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, courtiers in the court of Henry VIII, are credited with popularising the
sonnet form in England. While Thomas Wyatt satisfied himself with translating Petrarch’s sonnets, Henry
Howard made a few changes to Petrarch’s form. He invented what we now know as the English sonnet.

The original Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into 2 parts. An octave and a sestet - 8 lines and 6 lines
equal to 14. Well, what the Earl of Surrey did, he brought in a new form. He transformed this into 3
quatrains and a couplet. Of course it was a little later that this prodigious talent we know as William
Shakespeare who popularised the sonnet by bringing in something new, something that only
Shakespeare can carry off with aplomb - the epigrammatic couplet. His couplets were witty, funny,
succinct, wise, pithy sayings and brilliantly written, unforgettable, most memorable - the way only
Shakespeare can wing it!

So the kind of sonnets Shakespeare wrote followed the same form that Henry Howard started. The
three quatrains ending in a couplet. Shakespeare’s was an epigrammatic couplet, and this became the
fashion for writing love poetry. In fact the form traveled from England to other parts of Europe as well. So
let us now look at these forms.

We have by now established the following : The sonnet is made up of 14 lines. It has a certain
structure and it has a rhyme scheme. We say that it has 14 decasyllabic lines.What do you mean by
decasyllabic? It means 10 syllables in one line. It has a particular meter called the iambic meter. Stay
with me - in the next few seconds I will explain what I mean by the iambic meter.

So a sonnet has either an octave and sestet or three quatrains and a couplet. All of these are
different words for different kinds of stanzas in poetry, so it has a particular stanza form, and it has a
rhyme scheme. Let us go back and look at the two major forms in which the English sonnet is written. It
is written in the original Italian/Petrarchan form, which is made up of the octave and sestet, or it is written
in the form of three quatrains and a couplet. (Shakspearean/Elizabethan or English Sonnet ) A
quatrain is a stanza with four lines, so that's 12 lines - three quatrains - and a concluding couplet, which
in Shakespeare's case, becomes an epigrammatic couplet.
 OK so I told you, I will explain what we mean by iambic pentameter . For what I am about to explain, if
you’ve to understand that we need to know what a syllable is? Alright. For example - for a very quick
background to the iambic pentameter. When you take a word like communication. It is made up of five
syllables. Comm/ u/ ni/ ca/ tion. When you take a word like advertisement. It is made up of 4 syllables.
Ad/ ver/ tise/ ment. You will see that in any word we generally stress one syllable while the other
syllables remain unstressed. communication, in advertisement, right? So this is the way in which a
word is divided into syllables.

Just as as a matter of interest - to do with syllables. For example, the word /called/. We don't say call -
ed right so it's just one syllable, or the word.Drawer - the drawer of a table. it is not draw -er. Its - /draw/,
so that's only one syllable and some gibberish. (on the Ppt ) You see, that there on your screen is not
really any elvish or a language from Star Wars. It is actually the phonetic script, what we call the
International Phonetic Script. (IPA). You don't really have to bother about it - unless you're doing spelling
Bees. Then it becomes important. So basically, meter has to do with the pattern of stressed and un
stressed syllables.
OK. let’s look at a line of poetry. Syllables are arranged into groups of two or three called feet, and the
iambic foot - the iambic meter is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The
ta tum, ta tum, ta tum - short- long, short- long,short- long where the x is short and you can see on your
screen a small forward slash over the alphabets - it is above a stressed syllable. Let’s do an example of
this. Shakespeare, sonnet 130. Alright, let's look at the first line.

‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,’

OK, let me exaggerate it a bit of it so that you can make out the pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables.

‘ My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun’......... OK, so you got that pattern of unstressed syllables
followed by stressed syllables.

Look at the next line. In the next line you will see forward slashes - they are where I have divided the
syllables into feet. ( a ‘foot’ in poetry - pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables put together).

‘ Coral is far more red than her lips red’

You see the slashes? You see five groups of short- long, short-long, short-long, short- long, short-long in
the second line and that is what we call feet - 5 feet make up the Iambic Pentameter. 5 is penta; iambic
pentameter - 5 Iambs. So, the line is divided into 5 iambs - this is the basic line structure of any sonnet.

Alright, so that's what we’ve done till now (on the screen)

We’ve established that sonnet has 14lines, it has a certain meter called the iambic pentameter. Now let's
look at the stanzas.
 The Italian or the Petrarchan sonnet, as I said earlier, is divided into an octave and a sestet. The
octave presents a problem that has to be solved. It expresses a desire, a doubt or conflict within the
speakers, heart, mind and soul, and as almost 90% of sonnets are love poems, so this generally is
unrequited love. It is about the transience of youth and beauty, a sense of hopelessness,
of romantic longing and desire for an unattainable lover who is generally an aristocratic married lady who
the poor, broken hearted poet - speaker knows, will never be his.

So once the problem is presented, then suddenly then there's something called the ‘volta’, a change.
Alright, so all of this is presented. Let's come to that.

So let's tackle this octave for now. The problem is introduced in the first 4 lines.Then it is developed in the
next quatrain. And then, we come to the 9th line, so the 8 lines are done; the problem has been
presented. Now the poet works towards a resolution of this problem, the tone changes completely and so
does the rhyme scheme. The purpose of the sestet is to make a wise comment, to assess reality and
come to terms with our human limitations. So that is the function of the sestet in an Italian or Petrarchan
Sonnet.

Right, so what have we done until now? We talked about meter. We talked about stanzas. Now
Shakespeare is the ‘enfant terrible’ of poetic rules; So in a Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet the
‘vollta’ comes at the beginning of the ninth line, the 3rd quatrain; or it could even happen at the beginning
of the couplet - very typically with Shakespeare. Shakespeare writes both kinds of sonnets. Sonnets
where the ‘ volta’ occurs in the third quatrain, or it occurs at the end of the 13th line. Let us look at this
with a practical example in front of us. This is sonnet 130 by Shakespeare. You will see - I have colour
coded the rhyme scheme. So if you see there are alternate lines rhyming - sun-dun; red - head; white -
delight; cheeks-reeks….. OK, these are the first 8 lines. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd. There's a
problem there. He's talking about how you know his mistress is not good looking. Her lips are not red.
She doesn't have rosy cheeks.Her breasts look like cow dung. She has wires instead of, you know, flaxen
golden hair on her head. When she walks by, there is no waft of perfume - that wouldn't be right during
Elizabethan times now would it ? People generally had a bath once a year at the beginning of June, and
you know, generally stank! That's why weddings and marriages were held in June. Every girl wanted to be
a ‘June Bride’. ( just a bit of a trivia). But yeah, so the problem you know - Shakespeare talks about how
his lover, the woman whom he has lost his heart to, has none of the standards of ideal beauty. He says I
like to hear speak but when she speaks her voice is not musical at all and when she walks he doesn't see
a goddess float on air - But - YET, he says, YET …….and that volta, that change, that thing, that, that
magic that only Shakespeare can do in the 13th line, when you think the sonnet is ending ! Now all the
lines are over. Where is the time for him to come to a resolution? Where is the time? The space? 11 lines
are over ! And there he does it !

‘ And yet by heaven I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.’

He says - I don't need false comparisons to validate my love, my passion. So tha ist an example of a
volta that occurs only in the 13th line.
 Let's look at what we have done. We have done Italian and Petrarchan sonnets. We have done
Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets. There are variations to these. For example Spenser, Edmund
Spenser, who came before Shakespeare, also changed the rhyme scheme a bit and his sonnet
sequences use what is called the ‘Spenserian Stanza’. You will do them in Semester 3.
And of course, when it comes to modern poetry, anything and everything goes! A lot of sonnets are
written even now in modern poetry. Many are written in free verse, ‘vers libre’. So with modern forms -
they are all over the place. Example on your screen. That's an example of a sonnet by an American poet
called e. e. cummings. You will see the lines are all haywire. There are run on lines, there is nothing which
is as strict as what we see in the earlier times.

To conclude. Sonnets were very popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in the hands of
Shakespeare and then Donne and Milton. Generally it became a convention that when love sonnets were
written, they were written in the Shakespearean mode or the Elizabethan mode. But when it came to
more stylised sonnets like serious ones, on serious subjects, ‘ Holy Sonnets’ , poets chose the Italian or
the Petrarchan form. After the 17th century, the popularity of writing sonnets died out. They were not
very popular. But they were revived after the French Revolution at the hands of the Romantics, and
Wordsworth, in fact wrote, you know, many sonnets - approximately 520/523. All the Romantic poets
loved writing sonnets. And even today sonnets are written on any and every topic.

So there you have it. We have just seen Friendship Day go by - and you don't need a special day or
month or year. Try your hand at writing a sonnet! It could be to a friend. It could be to somebody you
admire. It could be to an ‘ideal’ or an ‘ idol. It could be to one of your family members. Old love ? new
love? Current love? Why don't you try? It would be a fun activity.

The last slide has the references.

Thank you students.