VARIATIONS AND FORMS OF THE ENGLISH SONNET (PART I)

Origin

    The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonnetto, a diminutive version of suono, meaning, a little sound or little song. It acquired its basic template of fourteen lines with an intricate rhyme scheme in the court of Emperor Frederick II of Sicily around 1230 by the emperor’s notary and legal assistant, Giacomo da Lentino (Regan 5). Dante Alighieri and Francis Petrarch are two early exponents credited for perfecting the Italian sonnet as a form of love poetry and their influence on the “amatory tradition”.

Defining the English sonnet

    In England, before the 1590s, the term sonnet was used to describe any short lyric poem. The Elizabethan poet George Gascoine offers one of the earliest definitions of the form in 1575:

Then have you sonnets: some think that all poems (being short) may be called sonnets, as in deed it is a diminutive word derived of sonare, but yet I can best allow to call those sonnets which are of fourteen lines, every line containing ten syllables. The first twelve do rhyme in staves of four lines by cross metre, and the last two rhyming together do conclude the whole (Regan 10-11)

    It is important to note that Gascoine defines the sonnet according to the works of his contemporaries like Drayton and Shakespeare. Therefore, the sonnet is generally defined or identified by pointing out its form; a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. Robert Burns also remarks in his Sonnet upon Sonnets: “Fourteen good measur'd verses make a sonnet”. However, reiterating Bera’s question, “Should we then identify the sonnet by its length, and say that it is a poem of 14 lines?” (64). 

    The length of a poem is not only the determinant of a sonnet (65). (For instance, the quatorzain is a poem of 14 lines, all quatorzains are not sonnets.) Also, the term, sonnet cannot be diminished to a mere short poem because short poems like Haiku can certainly not claim to be sonnets. 

The sonnet is defined in various ways and there is no concrete definition because the sonnet has assumed multiple denominations and undergone several mutations according to the features and structure of particular languages and their idiosyncrasies (The early English Sonnet writers copied the Italian or Petrarchan style, but since it didn't quite match the English language's natural flow, they had to adapt it to fit the "pausing line" rhythm inherent in English verse. Thus, they needed to restructure it to better suit the English language).

Thus, the terseness of the sonnet cannot be a defining factor alone. 

The Survival of the Sonnet

    Hecht comments on the survival of the sonnet form as “astonishing” (134). Regarding the sonnet's survival powers Hecht applies Vitruvius’ notion that our bodies react with excitement to not only a proportionate human body, but an architecture or sculpture whose mathematical proportions are” recognized somehow unconsciously but kinesthetically and immediately…that were most enduringly pleasing and elevating to contemplate.” (135)

    Thus, it is unanimously considered that the sonnet caught the attention of many poets and readers by its form and structure (Davis 6). Indeed, the sonnet is one of the oldest poetic forms and also

one of the most widely travelled. 

    Originally a love poem and other expressions of sexual desire and disillusionment, the sonnet has developed into a form ideally suited for religious devotion (John Donne’s Holy Sonnets also known as Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets are a series of 19 devotional poems published posthumously in the year 1633); 

elegiac mourning (Charlotte Turner Smith's Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems is a hallmark of the English sonnet revival in the 18th century. As the genre suggests, her sonnets deal with themes of bleak sadness, melancholy, loneliness and suffering and most intriguingly in the poetic female version of such themes);

political protest, 

philosophical reflection (When I Consider How My Light Is Spent by John Milton popularly known as On His Blindness brings forth religious philosophy as the poet reflects and draws a parallel of spiritual blindness and physical blindness) 

and topographical description (The River Duddon: a series of sonnets : Vaudracour and Julia: and other poems by William Wordsworth is a perfect example where he appraises the river Duddon which is “remote from every taint/ of sordid industry.” In Seathwaite Chapel, Wordsworth writes a picturesque scene of serene, slow waters and as it goes further, it dances from rock to rock). 

    It proves to be a resilient and flexible form that continually invites experimentation and renewal.

The traditional division of the sonnet into fourteen lines into an octave and a sestet opens up considerable intellectual and emotional possibilities in terms of playing off one kind of statement or expression against another. The other division of fourteen lines into a quatrain and a tercet multiplies these possibilities, encouraging a close correlation between intricate form and

complex thought.

    Musicality in the sonnet produced by rhyme provides room for variation and experimentation encouraging patterns that can be adhered to or denied, in keeping with the subject matter and the

function of each individual sonnet.

The development or the evolution of the sonnet helps us to identify common and persistent structural feature and observe how it evolves under changing social conditions.

Reference

Bede, Lew Icarus. “Thirty-One Sonnets: Renaissance to New Millennial | Society of Classical Poets.” The Society of Classical Poets, 3 Mar. 2018, classicalpoets.org/2018/03/03/essay￾thirty-one-sonnets/#:~:text=Of%20Life%2C%20or%20dower%20in. Accessed 25 Jan.

2022.

Bera, Dr. Sunit Kr. “The History of English Sonnet.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, vol. 3, no. 4, Apr. 2014, pp. 64–80, www.ijhssi.org. Accessed

25 Jan. 2022.

Birkan Berz, Carole. “Mapping the Contemporary Sonnet in Mainstream and Linguistically Innovative Late 20th– and Early 21st–Century British Poetry.” Études Britanniques Contemporaines, no. 46, 3 June 2014, 10.4000/ebc.1202. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Davis, Bertha Mattie. Growth and Development of the Sonnet in England in the Sixteenth Century. 1940, pp. 4–8, hdl.handle.net/2144/4434. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Grace, Stephen William. Forms of Memory: The Sonnet in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. Sept. 2019, pp. 6–20, etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/26008/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2022.

Hecht, Anthony. “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History.” The Antioch Review, vol. 55, no. 2, 1997, pp. 134–147, www.jstor.org/stable/4613483. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Lindsay, Alan, and Candace Bergstrom. “The Sonnet, History and Forms.”

Introtopoetry2019.Pressbooks.com, Good Words Unlimited, 1 June 2019,

introtopoetry2019.pressbooks.com/chapter/9-the-sonnet/.

Marsico, Lynn. “Studying the Sonnet: An Introduction to the Importance of Form in Poetry.” Teachers.yale.edu, teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_05.01.11_u. Accessed

25 Jan. 2022.

Milton, John. “Sonnet 19: When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.” Poetry Foundation, 2019,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44750/sonnet-19-when-i-consider-how-my-light-is￾spent. Accessed 23 Jan. 2022.

Regan, Stephen. The Sonnet. Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2019, books.google.co.in. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Richardson, Rachel. “Learning the Sonnet by Rachel Richardson.” Poetry Foundation, 19 Feb. 2020, www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70051/learning-the-sonnet. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Smith, Charlotte Turner. Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems. 1784. 9th ed., vol. 1, London, T. Cadell, Junior, and W. Davies, 1800, pp. 2–86, books.google.co.in. Accessed 23 Jan. 2022.

Wang, Jiancheng, and Jilian Niu. “Metrical Art of Thomas Wyatt’s Sonnets.” International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature, vol. 2, no. 8, Aug. 2014, pp. 40– 43, www.arcjournals.org. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Wordsworth, William. The River Duddon : A Series of Sonnets : Vaudracour and Julia: And Other Poems. To Which Is Annexed, a Topographical Description of the Country of the Lakes, in the North of England. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820,

archive.org/details/riverduddonserie00word/page/n5/mode/2up. Accessed 23 Jan. 2022.