Entry #585576, added on 05-17-08 @ 1:26 pm EDT
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| The Petrarchan Sonnet - the oldest sonnet form | Entry #585576 |
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
~~Carol Ann Duffy, contemporary British poet, playwright, and freelance writer
The oldest and sonnet form is the Petrarchan, also referred to as the Italian Sonnet. The Petrarchan has been called the most common of sonnet forms, but on Writing.com, the sonnet of choice seems to be the Shakespearean Sonnet. In my search, I found only four Petrarchan poems and many Shakespearean poems on our site.
The Petrarchan Sonnet is named after one of its original users, the Italian poet Petrarch. Some of the more famous poets who frequently used the Petrarchan Sonnet were Milton and Elizabeth Barret Browning.
The Petrarchan Sonnet is a rhyme-rich poetry form written in iambic pentameter, which means each line has ten syllables written in 5 iambs (or iambic feet) of unstressed/stressed syllable combinations. Generally, the Petrarchan is divided into two stanzas. The first stanza is an octave (eight lines) and the second stanza is a sestet (six lines). Some poets, while keeping the proper rhyme scheme and other requirements of the form, choose to compose the Petrarchan in one complete 14-line stanza.
The first stanza, the octave, has a consistent two rhymes:
abbaabba.
The second stanza, the sestet, has two or three rhymes, depending on the rhyme scheme chosen by the poet. The sestet have one of three rhyme schemes:
cdecde
cdcdcd
or
cdedce
Put together, the rhyme scheme is:
abbaabba cdecde
abbaabba cdcdcd
or
abbaabba cdedce
The octave (first stanza) presents an argument, observation, question or some other answerable charge. Between lines 8 and 9, a turn or volta occurs and the sestet (second stanza) marks a shift in the argument or narrative of the first stanza and presents a counterargument, clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.
Here is one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Petrarchan Sonnets:
Sonnet XXXVIII
My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee tonight.
This said-he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand. . . a simple thing,
Yes I wept for it-this . . . the paper's light. . .
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine-and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this . . . 0 Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
~~ Elizabeth Barret Browning
Notice that the famous poet used the abbaabba cdcdcd rhyme scheme. Here her poem is composed as one stanza, but the requirements of the octave and sestet and the turn or volta at line is evident as the last six lines give response to the narrative of the first eight lines.
http://www.forwardpress.co.uk/04_workshop/workshop_09.htm
http://books.guardian.co.uk/fentonserial/story/0,,800278,00.html
http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5791 |
© Copyright 2008 Brenpoet - Happy Valentine' (UN: brenmaple at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Brenpoet - Happy Valentine' has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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