Sonnet

Created: November 5, 2020 9:58 AM
Forest status: #soil
Last Edited: June 20, 2021 12:34 PM
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Review Due: August 11, 2021 12:34 PM

A sonnet is a fourteen line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme. Often, sonnets use iambic pentameter: five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables for a ten-syllable line.

Originating in Italy in the thirteenth century (it was actually a little-known Sicilian poet named Giacomo da Lentini, rather than the later and more famous Petrarch, who invented this form), the sonnet (almost) always takes 14 lines and comes in a variety of forms, though the two most famous are the English or Shakespearean sonnet (three quatrains of alternate rhymes, i.e. abab cdcd efef, followed by a concluding rhyming couplet, gg) and the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (an octave rhymed abbaabba and a sestet that can be rhymed a number of ways, though often cdcdcd). The beauty of the sonnet form is that it’s just long enough to explore/argue an issue or work through a mental or emotional conflict, but will never outstay its welcome. Some poets have innovated with the sonnet form in surprising way: see our longer introduction to the sonnet here.