Sonnets are classified into three major types, which are classified below: Let us gather some more information on the different types of sonnets that exists. The regular rhyme pattern is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. The English alphabets are used to show the rhymes pattern in the 14 lines in a sonnet.Most modern writers have broken the traditional style of rhymes pattern and styles. However, by the 20th century, the rigid format of a sonnet was out of practice, though some modern poets still followed the style.Emma Lazarus and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were poets from the United States who wrote sonnets.Famous poets like John Keats, William Wordsworth, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Donne have adopted this style in their writing.William Shakespeare's sonnets have given their major contribution to English literature and other writers of his time were Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton who also wrote and published sonnet sequences.A famous painter and sculptor, Michelangelo also wrote sonnets.
Spenserian sonnet examples by students series#
Soon sonnet sequence styles became popular among writing with connected series of sonnets.Let's find out some more historical facts about poems and sonnets. Sonnets in Poland were written by Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski, Sebastian Grabowiecki, and Jan Kochanowski. The Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, and Thomas Wyatt introduced this style to England. This poetic style was introduced into Portuguese literature by Francisco de Sa de Miranda. Petrarch, the Italian poet, was popular for his sonnets and many writers adopted his form of sonnets. Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti, and Francesco Petrarca were notable writers of the early times who adopted the style. The sonnet form started during the Middle Ages in Italy and broadly spread during the Renaissance. Many writers started adopting the poetic style after him. Giacomo da Lentini was a poet who lived in the 13th-century that invented this poetic style and the first sonnet. The history of sonnets is drawn back to the 13th century in Italy, and it was spread popular in the 14th century by a scholar called Francesco Petrarca. The Spenserian has a variation with quatrains tagged to their rhyming scheme. The Shakespearean sonnet imbibes in it three quatrains rhyming with ABAB CDCD EFEF and concludes with a rhyming heroic couplet. The Petrarchan has its 14 lines framed in eight lines (octet). The three important sonnets are Italian or Petrarchan sonnets, the Spenserian sonnets, and the English or Shakespearean sonnets. The third quatrain should conclude the theme of the sonnet with four lines and an EFEF rhyme scheme. The second quatrain develops the sonnet's theme with four lines and a CDCD rhyme scheme. The first quatrain establishes the subject of the sonnet with four lines and an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first three quatrains have four lines and apply an alternative rhyme scheme, and the final quatrain has only two lines where both rhyme.
All the sonnets have three important features 14 lines, a rhyme scheme, and they are written in iambic pentameter.Ī sonnet can be divided into four divisions called quatrains. Sonnets have a two-parts with a theme, a problem and solution, proposition and reinterpretation, question and answer in their 14 lines, and a volta between the two parts. The simplest form of the sonnet was known as the Shakespearian sonnet or English sonnet.Ī sonnet is a 14-line poem in one stanza. The word sonnet was derived from sonetto, an Italian word that means a sound or a song.Ī sonnet is a classical form of poetry.