Students in high school are traditionally assigned the sonnet form in English class. Along with memorizing or reciting one or two of Shakespeare's better known sonnets, students are usually told to try writing the form themselves. Often this dry and frightening introduction to the form is all people know of the sonnet. The sonnet, however, in both its Shakespearean and Petrarchan types, is a highly malleable form, perfect for a range of content, from love to death, and one that takes the language in which it is composed to new heights of sonorousness and perfection.
The Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet
The sonnet was first written in Italy in the early thirteenth century. The revolutionary nature of the form was due to the fact that it was composed in the language of the people rather than that of the church and officials, Latin. Also it was created to serve a private function, that of the love letter between men and women and designed to be read quietly to oneself, rather than orated in public.
The Italian sonnet came to be known as the Petrarchan because Petrarch developed it into the form one is familiar with today. The first eight lines represent a dilemna, such as a quest for ineffable adoration, while the final six lines focus on the resolution, for instance how the lover resigns himself to his adored one's loss. There is often a "volta" or blank space between these two parts.
The fourteen lines rhyme, usually with the first eight ending with abbaabba, and the last six being cdecde. In English, iambic pentameter is the common metric pattern.
The Shakesperean Sonnet
This variation on the form was composed by Shakespeare several centuries later. Instead of eight lines followed by six, his version unfolded in three four line stanzas and a two line couplet for conclusion.
As with the Petrarchan sonnet, however, the Shakespearean one also presented a dilemma that required resolution. Often the problem was examined from three different angles, for instance the man's, the woman's and society's, before the poet offered his summation of the conflict in epigrammatic form.
Written in iambic pentameter, the Shakespearan sonnet progressed through the rhyme scheme: abab/cdcd/efef/gg. By the late sixteenth century, the majority of poets wrote sonnets, many of them women. The form's high popularity displeased authorities as it was seen to be a subversive kind of singing.
Modern Variations
Poets have never stopped playing with the sonnet form. While to be a sonnet, the poem must most often have fourteen lines, the metre, end rhymes and even content has been transformed by contemporary poets. Lines can be shorter, or even one word in length. The argument can evolve through couplets or in one chunk of text.
Although the content has shifted so it can be about anything from tennis to dog training, and not just the immense themes of love and death, to be a sonnet, there usually must be some form of statement of a situation and then a resolution or shift towards closure at the end.
Memorable sonnets have been written in the twentieth century and beyond by John Berryman, Edna St Vincent Millay, Dylan Thomas, Joe Rosenblatt, David McFadden and Archibald Lampman, among many others.
