What is a Sonnet?  Sonnets are short lyric or sometimes narrative poems  Great diversity of form and subject matter  Initially about love and courtship  Over time it began to be used to address religious, political, and personal issues  Can be presented as occasional poem— poems that memorialize or celebrate specific day or occasion  Can be presented in sequence

Basic Sonnet Structure  14 lines  Single stanza  Iambic pentameter line  Intricate rhyme scheme  Rhyming couplet at the end  Contain a twist in ideas or in the narrative

English Sonnet  Also known as Shakespearean sonnet  Three quatrains (4 line poetic section) with a final couplet  abab cdcd efef gg It can:  Present three views of perspectives on a problem or scenario with conclusion in final couplet

The English Sonnet Or in its modified form it can have :  2 main units  Octave—eight line section—rhyming abbaabba  Sestet—six line section—rhyming cdecde or variation (e.g. cdccdc)  Ends with rhyming couplet (e.g. gg)  Octave presents problem or poses scenario that is answered or resolved in sestet  As a result, The meaning of the poem is often emphasized by the structure of the sonnet

Modification of the Sonnet  Sometimes poets utilize imperfect rhyme at the of stanzas instead of perfect rhyme  They can also dispense with the rigid quatrain structure (4 lines explicating one central idea) and simply utilize the octave-sestet structure