1. WARM-UP Prepare warm-ups for me to check.

2. LESSON OBJECTIVE Introduce the sonnet. Go over the structure of Elizabethan sonnet and Spenserian sonnet by analyzing rhyme scheme and content. Students will be able to structure there own sonnet.

3. WHAT IS A SONNET?

4. SONNET a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line. The typical Elizabethan use of the sonnet was in a sequence of love poems in the manner of Petrarch. Although each sonnet was an independent poem, partly conventional in content and partly self- revelatory, the sequence had the added interest of providing something of a narrative development.

5. CONTENT OF A SONNET a change from one rhyme group to another signifies a change in subject matter. This change occurs at the beginning of Line 9 in the Italian sonnet and is called the volta, or "turn"; the turn is an essential element of the sonnet form, perhaps the essential element. It is at the volta that the second idea is introduced, as in this sonnet by Wordsworth:

6. EXAMPLE "London, 1802" Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on Volta: life's common way,In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heartThe lowliest duties on herself did lay.

7. ELIZABETHAN SONNET There are three stanzas and one couplet. Each stanza is four lines and called a quatrain. The last two lines are called a couplet. Rhyme Scheme: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g

8. EXAMPLE "Sonnet XXIX" When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, A I all alone beweep my outcast state, B And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, A And look upon myself and curse my fate, B Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, C Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, D Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, C With what I most enjoy contented least, D Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, E Haply I think on thee, and then my state, F (Like to the lark at break of day arising E From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate, F For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, G That then I scorn to change my state with kings. G

9. SPENSERIAN SONNET The Spenserian sonnet, invented by Edmund Spenseras an outgrowth of the stanza pattern he used in The Faerie Queen, has the pattern: a b b c b c c d c d e

10. EXAMPLE Sonnet No. 41, from Amoretti Is it | her na | ture or | is it | her will, A To be so cruel to an humbled foe? B If nature, then she may it mend with skill, A If will, then she at will may will forgo. B But if her nature and her will be so, B that she will plague the man that loves her most: C And take delight t'increase a wretch's woe, B Then all her nature's goodly gifts are lost. C And that same glorious beauty's idle boast, C Is but a bait such wretches to beguile: D As being long in her love's tempest tossed, C She means at last to make her piteous spoil. D Of fairest fair let never it be named, E That so fair beauty was so foully shamed. E

11. SPENSERIAN STANZA Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is "ababbcbcc.“ Used in the Faerie Queen

12. EXAMPLE So pure an innocent, as that same lambe, A She was in life and every vertuous lore, B And by descent from Royall Lynage came A Of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore B Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne Shore, B And all the world in their subjection held; C Till that infernall feend with foule uprore B Forwasted all their land, and them expeld: C Whom to avenge, she had this Knight from far compeld C

13. ASSIGNMENT You have to write your own sonnet now