sonnet (redirected from English sonnet)

sonnet, poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. There are two prominent types: the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet, composed of an octave and a sestet (rhyming abbaabba cdecde), and the Elizabethan, or Shakespearean, sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet (rhyming abab cdcd efef gg). Variations of these schemes occur, notably the Spenserian sonnet, after Edmund Spenser (rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee). The sonnet is generally believed to have developed from medieval songs. In Italy, where it was cultivated during the Renaissance, it achieved great expression in the work of Petrarch, Dante, Tasso, and Michelangelo. The form was introduced into Spain by Almogáver, into Portugal by Camões, into France by Saint-Gelays and Marot, and into England by Wyatt and Surrey. The sonnet came into prominence in Germany during the romantic period in the work of Goethe, Schlegel, Heyse, and others. Innumerable sonnets and sonnet sequences appeared in Elizabethan England, notably by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Around the time of Milton's great sonnets, the use of the form began to decrease, but with the advent of romanticism in the early 19th cent. the sonnet again achieved popularity in the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats. Poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Rossettis, and George Meredith in the 19th cent. and Dylan Thomas and W. H. Auden in the 20th cent. also wrote sonnets. American poets noted for their sonnets include Longfellow, E. A. Robinson, Elinor Wylie, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

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sonnet

Fixed verse form having 14 lines that are typically five-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme. The sonnet is unique among poetic forms in Western literature in that it has retained its appeal for major poets for five centuries. It seems to have originated in the 13th century among the Sicilian school of court poets. In the 14th century Petrarch established the most widely used sonnet form. The Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet characteristically consists of an eight-line octave, rhyming abbaabba, that states a problem, asks a question, or expresses an emotional tension, followed by a six-line sestet, of varying rhyme schemes, that resolves the problem, answers the question, or resolves the tension. In adapting the Italian form, Elizabethan poets gradually developed the other major sonnet form, the Shakespearean (or English) sonnet. It consists of three quatrains, each with an independent rhyme scheme, and ends with a rhymed couplet.

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sonnet Prosody

a verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme, usually divided either into octave and sestet or, in the English form, into three quatrains and a couplet