The Sonnet

• The Sonnet Defined
• Etymology
• Italian: sonnetto: little song
• Provençal: sonet: son: poem
• Latin: sonus: sound
• Examples
• Petrarch
• "Psalm 150 "
• Shakespeare  
• Sonnet CXXX
• Sonnet XVIII
• Sonnet XII 

• John Milton: "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"  
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

• William Wordsworth
• "The World Is Too Much With Us"  
• "Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room"
• "Scorn not the Sonnet"

• Too Much Glory
• Christina Rossetti  
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Robert Frost
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Billy Collins 
• Pop Sonnets

Advanced Studies: Meter

• Meter Defined

• Dr. Wheeler on Feet
• Dr. Wheeler on Scanning

Assignments

* Journal: Sonnet Analysis

• Find one Italian sonnet.  Locate the line of the turn (volta) and copy that line down.  Explain how the meaning of the poem shifts at that line. 
• Find one English sonnet.  Locate the line of the turn (volta) and copy that line down down.  Explain how the meaning of the poem shifts at that line.  

* Journal: Sonnet Imitation

• Find and hand copy one sonnet written before 1800 (this could be one above or another you find and like).  
• Find and hand copy one sonnet written after 1800 (this could be one above or another you find and like). 
• Now you will create your own sonnet using one of the poems you copied.  

1. Model your poem after one or the other that you copied. 
2. So, you need to have the same rhyme scheme (end-rhyme pattern). 
3. You also need to try to write it in a similar kind of meter, but you will not lose points if can't meet this requirement perfectly.  This is challenging for many people to do. 
4. You could choose the same theme or a different theme as that shown in your model. 
5. Your turn or volta should occur in the same line that your model does, which means your meaning should shift in the same line as your model.