1. What is a Sonnet?

2. What is a Sonnet?
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.
It must follow a specific rhyme scheme, depending on the type of sonnet
A sonnet can be about any subject, though they are often about love or nature

3. Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter is the rhythm and meter in which poets and playwrights wrote in Elizabethan England. It is a metre that Shakespeare uses.

4. A line of Iambic Pentameter is a line with 10 beats.
An “iamb” is two beats, or one “foot”
“Meter” is the rhythm of the poem
A “foot” is made of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable (in that order)

5. Heartbeat
Quite simply, it sounds like this: dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM. It consists of a line of five iambic feet, ten syllables with five unstressed and five stressed syllables. It is the first and last sound we ever hear, it is the rhythm of the human heart beat.

6. Pentameter? An ‘iamb’ is the ‘dee Dum’ – it is the heart beat.
Penta is from the Greek for five.
Meter is really the pattern, or rhythm
So, there are five iambs per line!
(Iambic penta meter )

7. It is percussive and attractive to the ear and has an effect on the listener's central nervous system. An Example of Pentameter from Shakespeare:
but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS
(from Romeo and Juliet)

8. The Volta
A vital part of all sonnets is the turn, or volta. Volta is actually the italian word for turn
Anytime the focus of the sonnet changes, or “turns”, it is called a volta

9. The English Sonnet
An English Sonnet is also called a Shakespearean sonnet .
It has three quatrains (a quatrain is a group of four lines) followed by a couplet (two lines)
The rhyme scheme is: abab cdcd efef gg.
The turn is either after eight lines or ten lines

10. The Italian Sonnet
An Italian Sonnet is also called a Petrarchan Sonnet
It includes an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).
The rhyme scheme must begin with abbaabba and can conclude with any variation of c, d, and e (cdecde, cdcdee, etc.)
The turn must occur between the octave and the sestet

12. Death of a Sonnet Writer
Where is the turn?
   Death of a Sonnet Writer
1. He turned the fourteenth glass and said, “Begin.” and I had fourteen minutes left to live; and I had fourteen unrepented sins, and fourteen people whom I would forgive,
5. and fourteen unread books upon my shelf, and fourteen loves I knew I’d loved in vain, and fourteen dreams I’d kept within myself (the fourteen I’d most wanted to explain.)
9. But fourteen minutes quickly passed away I filled my pen with fourteen drops of ink the fourteenth glass had offered one delay; and fourteen final grains retained the brink.
This sonnet flowed like fourteen final breaths the fourteenth line, the fourteenth grain, then death.

13. Lines 1-8 talk about some of the things the writer regrets, such as sins and unread books.
Then the writer “turns” in line 9 to talk about how time is passing away, like the grains of sand in an hourglass.

14. What type of sonnet is “What the Sonnet is”?
Fourteen small broidered berries on the hem
Of Circe’s mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso’s tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come of them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold;
Fourteen small drops, which Faustus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water Life’s dry stem.
It is the pure white diamond Dante brought
To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore
When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;
The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart’s core;
The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought
For his own soul, to wear for evermore.
~Eugene Lee-Hamilton

15. Ask yourself these questions:
What are the groupings of the lines
(how many lines are in each group)?
What is the rhyme scheme?
Where is the turn?
Based on your answers, what kind of sonnet is it?

16. Lines are in an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines)
The rhyme scheme is abbaabba cdcdcd
The turn in this sonnet is between the octave and the sestet, or after eight lines
The period at the end of line eight is a clue, especially because it is one of only two periods in the sonnet
Before the turn, the speaker is telling of groups of fourteen; after the turn he tells of who wrote the sonnets

17. What type of sonnet is “What the Sonnet is”?
It is an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet!

18. Themes in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Romantic love
The dangers of love
Several of Shakespeare’s sonnets equate love with causing despair and physical discomfort
Physical beauty vs. Stereotypical beauty
This goes back to love because real love begins when we accept others for what they are as well as what they aren’t

19. Symbols in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Weather and seasons
Shakespeare attributed human characteristics or emotions to elements in nature. For example he may associate his absence to a freezing day in winter.
Flowers and trees
Sometimes Shakespeare compares flowers and weeds to contrast beauty and ugliness
Lush foliage symbolizes youth whereas barren trees symbolize old age and death