Sonnet

This article is about the form of poetry. For other uses, see Sonnet (disambiguation).

A sonnet is a form of a poem that originated in Europe, mainly Italy: the Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. They commonly contain 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives only from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound". By the thirteenth century, it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history. Writers of sonnets are sometimes called "sonneteers," although the term can be used derisively. One of the best-known sonnet writers is William Shakespeare, who wrote 154 of them (not including those that appear in his plays). A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

Traditionally, English poets employ iambic pentameter when writing sonnets, but not all English sonnets have the same metrical structure: the first sonnet in Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophel and Stella, for example, has 12 syllables: it is iambic hexameters, albeit with a turned first foot in several lines. In the Romance languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used metres.

Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet

Main article: Petrarchan sonnet

The Italian sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II. Guittone d'Arezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Neo-Sicilian School (1235–1294). He wrote almost 250 sonnets. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–1300) wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarca (known in English as Petrarch). Other fine examples were written by Michelangelo.

The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of this time included two parts that together formed a compact form of "argument". First, the octave (two quatrains), forms the "proposition," which describes a "problem," followed by a sestet (two tercets), which proposes a resolution. Typically, the ninth line creates what is called the "turn" or "volta," which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that don't strictly follow the problem/resolution structure, the ninth line still often marks a "turn" by signaling a change in the tone, mood, or stance of the poem.

Later, the a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets. For the sestet there were two different possibilities: c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced, such as c-d-c-d-c-d.

The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, used this Italian scheme, as did sonnets by later English poets including John Milton, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Early twentieth-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote most of her sonnets using the Italian form.

This example, On His Blindness By Milton, gives a sense of the Italian rhyming scheme;

When I consider how my light is spent (a)
 Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, (b)
 And that one talent which is death to hide, (b)
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (a)
To serve therewith my Maker, and present (a)
 My true account, lest he returning chide; (b)
 "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" (b)
 I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent (a)
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need (c)
 Either man's work or his own gifts; who best (d)
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state (e)
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed (c)
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (d)
 They also serve who only stand and wait." (e)

Dante's variation

Most Sonnets in Dante's La Vita Nuova are Petrarchan, but some are not. Chapter VII gives sonnet O voi che per la via, with two sestets (AABAAB AABAAB) and two quatrains (CDDC CDDC), and Ch. VIII, Morte villana, with two sestets (AABBBA AABBBA) and two quatrains (CDDC CDDC).

Occitan sonnet

The sole confirmed surviving sonnet in the Occitan language is confidently dated to 1284, and is conserved only in troubadour manuscript P, an Italian chansonnier of 1310, now XLI.42 in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. It was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d. This poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. Peter III and the Aragonese cause was popular in northern Italy at the time and Paolo's sonnet is a celebration of his victory over the Angevins and Capetians in the Aragonese Crusade:

Valenz Senher, rei dels Aragones a qi prez es honors tut iorn enansa, remembre vus, Senher, del Rei franzes qe vus venc a vezer e laiset Fransa    Ab dos sos fillz es ab aqel d'Artes; hanc no fes colp d'espaza ni de lansa e mainz baros menet de lur paes: jorn de lur vida said n'auran menbransa.    Nostre Senhier faccia a vus compagna per qe en ren no vus qal[la] duptar; tals quida hom qe perda qe gazaingna.    Seigner es de la terra e de la mar, per qe lo Rei Engles e sel d'Espangna ne varran mais, si.ls vorres aiudar.

Valiant Lord, king of the Aragonese to whom honour grows every day closer, remember, Lord, the French king that has come to find you and has left France    With his two sons and that one of Artois; but they have not dealt a blow with sword or lance and many barons have left their country: but a day will come when they will have some to remember.    Our Lord make yourself a company in order that you might fear nothing; that one who would appear to lose might win.    Lord of the land and the sea, as whom the king of England and that of Spain are not worth as much, if you wish to help them.

An Occitan sonnet, dated to 1321 and assigned to one "William of Almarichi", is found in Jean de Nostredame and cited in Giovanni Crescembeni, Storia della volgar Poesia. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory. Its authenticity is dubious. There are also two poorly-regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano.

English (Shakespearean) sonnet

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c.1542 by Hans Holbein

William Shakespeare, in the famous "Chandos" portrait. Artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery (UK).

See also: Shakespeare's sonnets

When English sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century, his sonnets and those of his contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave it a rhyming meter, and a structural division into quatrains of a kind that now characterizes the typical English sonnet. Having previously circulated in manuscripts only, both poets' sonnets were first published in Richard Tottel's Songes and Sonnetts, better known as Tottel's Miscellany (1557).

It was, however, Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) that started the English vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others. These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; with the exception of Shakespeare's sequence. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn"; the volta. In Shakespeare's sonnets, however, the volta usually comes in the couplet, and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme. With only a rare exception, the meter is iambic pentameter, although there is some accepted metrical flexibility (e.g., lines ending with an extra-syllable feminine rhyme, or a trochaic foot rather than an iamb, particularly at the beginning of a line). The usual rhyme scheme is end-rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form (with some typical variances one may expect when reading an Elizabethan-age sonnet with modern eyes):

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments, love is not love (b)*
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)*
O no, it is an ever fixèd mark (c)**
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)***
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)**
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)***
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)*
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)*
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)*
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)*

* PRONUNCIATION/RHYME: Note changes in pronunciation since composition.
** PRONUNCIATION/METER: "Fixed" pronounced as two-syllables, "fix-ed."
*** RHYME/METER: Feminine-rhyme-ending, eleven-syllable alternative.

The Prologue to Romeo and Juliet is also a sonnet, as is Romeo and Juliet's first exchange in Act One, Scene Five, lines 104–117, beginning with "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" (104) and ending with "Then move not while my prayer's effect I take." (117).

In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants.

The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote hundreds of sonnets, of which amongst the best-known are Upon Westminster Bridge, The world is too much with us and the sonnet London, 1802 addressed to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modelled on Milton's. Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet "Ozymandias". Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. In Canada during the last decades of the century, the Confederation Poets and especially Archibald Lampman were known for their sonnets, which were mainly on pastoral themes. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, such as "The Windhover", and also several sonnet variants such as the 10½-line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

This flexibility was extended even further in the 20th century. Among the major poets of the early Modernist period, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and E. E. Cummings all used the sonnet regularly. William Butler Yeats wrote the major sonnet Leda and the Swan, which used half rhymes. Wilfred Owen's sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth was another sonnet of the early 20th century. W. H. Auden wrote two sonnet sequences and several other sonnets throughout his career, and widened the range of rhyme-schemes used considerably. Auden also wrote one of the first unrhymed sonnets in English, "The Secret Agent" (1928). Robert Lowell wrote five books of unrhymed "American sonnets," including his Pulitzer Prize-winning volume The Dolphin (1973). Half-rhymed, unrhymed, and even unmetrical sonnets have been very popular since 1950; perhaps the best works in the genre are Seamus Heaney's Glanmore Sonnets and Clearances, both of which use half rhymes, and Geoffrey Hill's mid-period sequence 'An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England'. The 1990s saw something of a formalist revival, however, and several traditional sonnets have been written in the past decade.

Spenserian sonnet

A variant on the English form is the Spenserian sonnet, named after Edmund Spenser (c.1552–1599) in which the rhyme scheme is, abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. A Spenserian sonnet does not appear to require that the initial octave set up a problem that the closing sestet answers, as with a Petrarchan sonnet. Instead, the form is treated as three quatrains connected by the interlocking rhyme scheme and followed by a couplet. The linked rhymes of his quatrains suggest the linked rhymes of such Italian forms as terza rima. This example is taken from Amoretti.

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands, (a)
Which hold my life in their dead doing might, (b)
Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands, (a)
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight. (b)
And happy lines on which, with starry light, (b)
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,(c)
And read the sorrows of my dying sprite, (b)
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book. (c)
And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook (c)
Of Helicon, whence she derived is, (d)
When ye behold that angel's blessed look, (c)
My soul's long lacked food, my heaven's bliss. (d)
Leaves, lines, and rhymes seek her to please alone, (e)
Whom if ye please, I care for other none. (e)

Urdu Sonnet

In the Indian Sub-continent sonnets have been written in Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, English, Gujerati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Malyalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi and Urdu language.Urdu poets also influenced by English and other European poets took to writing sonnets in Urdu language rather late. Azmatullah Khan (1887-1923) is believed to have introduced this format to Urdu Literature in the very early part of 20th century. The other renowned Urdu poets who wrote sonnets were Akhtar Junagarhi, Akhtar Sheerani, Noon Meem Rashid, Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi, Salaam Machhalishahari and Wazir Agha. This example, a sonnet by Zia Fatehabadi taken from his collection Meri Tasveer which is in the usual English (Shakespearean) sonnet rhyme-scheme is also end-rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

          ڈبکںی
پس پردہ کسی نے میرے ارمانوں کی محفل کو،
کچھ اس انداز سے دیکھا، کچھ ایسے طور سے دیکھا،
غبار آہ سے دے کر جلا آینہ دل کو،
ہر اک صورت کو میں نے خوب دیکھا، غور سے دیکھا
نظر آئی نہ وہ صورت ، مجھے جس کی تمنا تھی
بہت ڈھونڈا کیا گلشن میں، ویرانے میں، بستی میں
منّور شمع مہر و ماہ سے دن رات دنیا تھی
مگر چاروں طرف تھا گھپ اندھیرا میری ہستی میں
دل مجبور کو مجروح الفت کر دیا کس نے
مرے احساس کی گہرایوں میں ہے چبھن غم کی
مٹا کر جسم، میری روح کو اپنا لیا کس نے
جوانی بن گئی آما جگہ صدمات پیہم کی
حجابات نظر کا سلسلہ توڈ اور آ بھی جا
مجھے اک بار اپنا جلوہ رنگیں دکھا بھی جا

Sonnet 'Dubkani' ڈبکںی by Zia Fatehabadi taken from his book titled Meri Tasveer

" Dubkani "

Pas e pardaa kisii ne mere armaanon kii mehfil ko (a)

Kuchh is andaaz se dekhaa, kuchh aise taur se dekhaa (b)

Ghubaar e aah se de kar jilaa aainaa e dil ko (a)

Har ik soorat ko maine khoob dekhaa, ghaur se dekhaa (b)

Nazar aaii na woh soorat, mujhe jiskii tamanaa thii (c)

Bahut dhoondaa kiyaa gulshan mein, veeraane mein, bastii mein (d)

Munnawar shamma e mehar o maah se din raat duniyaa thii (c)

Magar chaaron taraf thaa ghup andheraa merii hastii mein (d)

Dil e majboor ko majrooh e ulfat kar diyaa kisne (e)

Mere ahsaas kii ghahraiion mein hai chubhan gham kii (f)

Mitaa kar jism, merii rooh ko apnaa liyaa kisne (e)

Jawanii ban gaii aamaajagaah sadmaat e paiham kii (f)

Hijaabaat e nazar kaa sisilaa tod aur aa bhii jaa (g)

Mujhe ik baar apnaa jalwaa e rangiin dikhaa bhii jaa. (g)

Free translation:

(Staying concealed, from behind a curtain someone has watched

The congregation of my longings and desires (grow),

Have done so in the manner that has caused my sighs

To bring alive my heart wherein I have frantically sought to find

Reflected that face which I have failed to locate anywhere else

Be it in a garden or in a desolate place or a crowd.

Even though the Sun and the Moon keep alit this world day and night

Yet my own world stays surrounded by pitch-black darkness

(I ask) who has forced my helpless heart to lose faith?

Who has deeply wounded my feelings pricking them with sadness?

Who has after obliterating my body come to own my soul?

That my youth has caused me to suffer endless grief.

Come, end this game of hide and seek and reveal yourself

And show me for once your bright and radiant self.)

Modern sonnet

With the advent of free verse, the sonnet was seen as somewhat old-fashioned and fell out of use for a time among some schools of poets. However, a number of modern poets, including Wilfred Owen, John Berryman, George Meredith, Edwin Morgan, Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke, George Sterling, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Federico García Lorca, E.E. Cummings, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Robert Lowell, Joan Brossa, Vikram Seth, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jan Kal, Ernest Hilbert, Kim Addonizio, and Seamus Heaney continued to use the form. Elizabeth Bishop's inverted "Sonnet" was one of her last poems. Ted Berrigan's book, THE SONNETS, is an arresting and curious take on the form. Paul Muldoon often experiments with 14 lines and sonnet rhymes, though without regular sonnet meter. The advent of the New Formalism movement in the United States has also contributed to contemporary interest in the sonnet. The sonnet sees its revival with the word sonnet. Concise and visual in effect, word sonnets are fourteen line poems, with one word per line. Frequently allusive and imagistic, they can also be irreverent and playful. The Canadian poet Seymour Mayne published a few collections of word sonnets, and is one of the chief innovators of the form. Also, Futility, by Wilfred Owen, is a good example of a 14 lined sonnet, around and about the first world war.

See also

Types of sonnets

• Caudate sonnet
• Curtal sonnet
• Pushkin sonnet

Groups of sonnets

• Crown of sonnets
• Sonnet cycle
• Sonnet sequence

Forms commonly associated with sonnets

• Fourteener
• Quatorzain

Bibliography

• I. Bell, et al. A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets. Blackwell Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-4051-2155-6.
• Bertoni, Giulio (1915). I Trovatori d'Italia: Biografie, testi, tradizioni, note. Rome: Società Multigrafica Editrice Somu.
• T. W. H. Crosland. The English Sonnet. Hesperides Press, 2006. ISBN 1-4067-9691-3.
• J. Fuller. The Oxford Book of Sonnets. Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-280389-1.
• J. Fuller. The Sonnet. (The Critical Idiom: #26). Methuen & Co., 1972. ISBN 0-416-65690-0.
• J. Hollander. Sonnets: From Dante to the Present. Everyman's Library, 2001. ISBN 0-375-41177-1.
• P. Levin. The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-058929-5.
• S. Mayne. Ricochet, Word Sonnets - Sonnets d'un mot. Translated by Sabine Huynh. University of Ottawa Press, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7603-0761-2
• J. Phelan. The Nineteenth Century Sonnet. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1-4039-3804-0.
• S. Regan. The Sonnet. Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-289307-6.
• M. R. G. Spiller. The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction. Routledge, 1992. ISBN 0-415-08741-4.
• M. R. G. Spiller. The Sonnet Sequence: A Study of Its Strategies. Twayne Pub., 1997. ISBN 0-8057-0970-3.

External links

• Sixty-Six: The Journal of Sonnet Studies
• BBC discussion on "The Sonnet". Radio 4 programme In our time. (Audio, 45 minutes)