The term sonnet derives from the Italian word sonetto. It refers to a fixed verse poetic form, traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme. Originating in 13th-century Sicily, the sonnet was in time taken up in many European-language areas, mainly to express romantic love at first, although eventually any subject was considered acceptable. Many formal variations were also introduced, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit – and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Poetry analysis is the process of investigating the form of a poem, content, structural semiotics, and history in an informed way, with the aim of heightening one's own and others' understanding and appreciation of the work.
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.
Thomas Newton was an English cleric, biblical scholar and author. He served as the Bishop of Bristol from 1761 to 1782.
A sestet is six lines of poetry forming a stanza or complete poem. A sestet is also the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet, which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines.
The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form consists of a total of fourteen hendecasyllabic lines in two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet.
Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney and Thomas Kyd.
The volta is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of written poetry. In the last two decades, the volta has become conventionally used as a word for this, stemming supposedly from technique specific mostly to sonnets. Volta is not, in fact, a term used by many earlier critics when they address the idea of a turn in a poem, and they usually are not discussing the sonnet form. It is a common Italian word more often used of the idea of a time or an occasion than a turnabout or swerve.
The Holy Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572–1631). The sonnets were first published in 1633—two years after Donne's death. They are written predominantly in the style and form prescribed by Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch (1304–1374) in which the sonnet consisted of two quatrains and a sestet. However, several rhythmic and structural patterns as well as the inclusion of couplets are elements influenced by the sonnet form developed by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
Milton's 1645 Poems is a collection, divided into separate English and Latin sections, of John Milton's youthful poetry in a variety of genres, including such notable works as An Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Comus and Lycidas. Appearing in late 1645 or 1646, the octavo volume, whose full title is Poems of Mr. John Milton both English and Latin, compos'd at several times, was issued by the Royalist publisher Humphrey Moseley. In 1673, a year before his death, Milton issued a revised and expanded edition of the Poems.
The sonnets of Petrarch and Shakespeare represent, in the history of this major poetic form, the two most significant developments in terms of technical consolidation—by renovating the inherited material—and artistic expressiveness—by covering a wide range of subjects in an equally wide range of tones. Both writers cemented the sonnet's enduring appeal by demonstrating its flexibility and lyrical potency through the exceptional quality of their poems.
"London, 1802" is a poem by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In the poem Wordsworth castigates the English people as stagnant and selfish, and eulogises seventeenth-century poet John Milton.
"The World Is Too Much with Us" is a sonnet by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In it, Wordsworth criticises the world of the First Industrial Revolution for being absorbed in materialism and distancing itself from nature. Composed circa 1802, the poem was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807).
"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" is a sonnet by the English poet John Milton inspired by the Easter massacre of Waldensians in Piedmont by the troops of Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy in April 1655. Also known as Milton’s “Sonnet 18,” “On the Late Massacre at Piedmont” has been described by the famous essayist William Hazlitt as filled with “prophetic fury.”
"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" is one of the best known of the sonnets of John Milton (1608–1674). The last three lines are particularly well known; they conclude with "They also serve who only stand and wait", which is much quoted though rarely in context. Variants of it have been used as mottos in a number of contexts, for example the Dickin Medal for service animals bears the motto "We also serve", and the Navy Wives Clubs of America uses the motto "They Also Serve, Who Stay and Wait". In U.S. popular culture it is perhaps best known for Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Vin Scully, who would quote it when showing a player not in the game.
The sonnet was a popular form of poetry during the Romantic period: William Wordsworth wrote 523, John Keats 67, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 48, and Percy Bysshe Shelley 18. But in the opinion of Lord Byron sonnets were “the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions”, at least as a vehicle for love poetry, and he wrote no more than five.
"Reuben Bright" is a (modified) Petrarchan sonnet written by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, early in his career, and published in Children of the Night (1897). The poem acquired some fame as teaching material for English teachers.
"Holy Sonnet XIV" – also known by its first line as "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" – is a poem written by the English poet John Donne. It is a part of a larger series of poems called Holy Sonnets, comprising nineteen poems in total. The poem was printed and published for the first time in Poems in 1633, two years after the author's death. In the 1633 edition the sequence of the poems was different from that found in Herbert Grierson’s edition from 1912; that is why Holy Sonnet XIV features as Holy Sonnet X in older publications. However, the majority of twentieth-century and later editions of Donne's Holy Sonnets are found to prefer and use the order proposed by Grierson and thus include the sonnet as the fourteenth in the cycle.
"Sonnet II", also known by its opening words as "As Due By Many Titles", is a poem written by John Donne, who is considered to be one of the representatives of the metaphysical poetry in English literature. It was first published in 1633, two years after Donne’s death.
