Sonnets

1. Sonnets Course Target: I can create poetry that emphasizes various forms and figurative language. Write down whatever is in blue!

2. A brief history of sonnets • Invented in Italy in the thirteenth century, the sonnet was brought to a high form of development in the fourteenth century by Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) • He’s an Italian poet and humanist best remembered now for his sonnets dedicated to an idealized lady named Laura glimpsed in a church, and with whom he fell in love at first sight. • (Laura’s true identity is unknown; supposedly, she married someone else and, being ideally virtuous as well as beautiful, was permanently unavailable.There’s no evidence Petrarch ever talked to her).

3. Petrarchan conventions • Petrarch’s sonnets about a beautiful, unattainable lady became known as Petrarchan conventions. These are that: • love is excruciatingly painful; • the angelically beautiful and virtuous lady is cruel in rejecting the poet’s love; • love is a religion, the practice of which ennobles the lover. • love usually begins at first sight

4. The sonnet spreads… • Sir Thomas Wyatt (1502–42) and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey (1517–47) introduce Petrarchanmodel to England in the sixteenth century. • Adjust the rhyme scheme and the meter to accommodate the English language. • Like Petrarch, they use religious imagery and terms to convey the holiness and intensity of the lover’s passion for the unattainable love-object • make frequent allusions to both classical deities and Christian symbols. 

5. To shakespeare! • Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets published in 1609 are a “collection” rather than a sequence, • They are remarkably various: Shakespeare explores the same theme in different ways but never exactly repeats a pattern. He is keenly aware of Petrarchan conventions and often uses them, but just as often upends them. • The cruel loved one in many of his sonnets is a young man, not a woman, and the “Dark Lady” of sonnets 127–152 is neither virtuous nor ideally beautiful.

6. What are sonnets about? Sonnets are a way to express a poet’s passion-an overwhelming expression in a strict structure that helps them to contain their overwhelming feelings.

7. Structure of a Sonnet: • A set Rhyme Scheme (ababcdcdefefgg) • 14 Lines • Iambic Pentameter • 1 Stanza • A powerful emotion

8. Rhyme Scheme of a Sonnet When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, aAnd dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, bThy youth's proud livery so gazed on now, aWill be a totter'd weed of small worth held: bThen being asked, where all thy beauty lies, cWhere all the treasure of thy lusty days; dTo say, within thine own deep sunken eyes, cWere an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. dHow much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use, eIf thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine fShall sum my count, and make my old excuse,' eProving his beauty by succession thine! fThis were to be new made when thou art old, gAnd see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. g

9. Iambic Pentameter • Iambic Pentameter is a type of meter used in poetry which describes the rhythm used in each line. • That rhythm is measured into small groups of syllables, called feet. • The word iambic describes the type of foot used and pentameter describes how many feet are used.

10. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Example: “good BYE”. • Pentameter means “five meters” so, there are five sets of iambs (one unstressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable). A line of iambic pentameter flows like this: baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM.

11. Here are some examples from Shakespeare’s sonnets: When I /do COUNT / the CLOCK / that TELLS / the TIME When IN / dis GRACE / with FOR / tune AND / men’s EYES

12. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

13. Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know'st thy estimate: The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gavest,thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgment making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

14. They that have power to hurt and will do none They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.