Sonnets

Sonnets!!

 I love the sonnets we’ve been reading in class. I have yet to write a successful one. My favorite has to be Sir Phillip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. Sidney uses the normal sonnet conventions of love and emotion to exemplify the love between the star lover and his star.

The sonnet was once the most common poetic form written in 18 lines and usually in iambic pentameter. There’s usually a problem or question (octave) and an answer or solution (sestet). There are many types of sonnets the most important ones are Petrarch or Italian, and Shakespearean Sonnets.

The Petrarch Sonnet usually follows one of these forms:

            a-b-b-a a-b-b-a c-d-e-c-d-e

a-b-b-a a-b-b-a c-d-c-c-d-c

This sonnet was invented in the 13^th Century in Italy and was developed by Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374).

The Shakespearean Sonnet, I believe, is the most popular and widely used now. The form of these sonnets is usually:

            a-b-a-b c-d-c-d  e-f-e-f  g-g

Shakespeare was the best and no one could out do him so that made the sonnets big. He was one of the best playwrights and sonnet poets. Shakespeare’s sonnet collection includes 154 sonnets. Shakespeare also does not follow conventions as closely as a lot of other poets. He never clearly follows one pattern to a tee. Shakespeare also turns convention on its head when the focus of his sonnets is sometimes a young man.

One of my favorite sonnets is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1:

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

 That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

 But as the riper should by time decease,

 His tender heir might bear his memory:

 But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

 Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

 Making a famine where abundance lies,

 Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

 Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

 And only herald to the gaudy spring,

 Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

 And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:

 Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

 To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

            In this sonnet he speaks about that you create your own hell even when there should not be one. He follows conventions here and form but it isn’t clearly about love. One could argue it could be about a lot of people who are making their own life harder.