Transcript Sonnets

Sonnets
• The most common forms of the English-language sonnet
are “Petrarchan” (Italian) or “Shakespearean” (English)
• A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in two parts:
– an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines.)
– The octave often presents a problem or question, or
situation; and the sestet answers it with a solution to the
problem, an answer to the question, or a comment on the
situation.
– The sestet, especially in the Shakespearean sonnet, is
divided into a four-line stanza and a couplet which sums
up the poet’s conclusion.
• In between octave and sestet there is often a shift, a
changing of gear, called the “volta.” Sometimes the volta is
indicated by a line break, sometimes not.
• Caveat: not all sonnets, even Shakespeare’s, are
constructed this way—sometimes, for example, a poet
presents related images in three quatrains followed by a
couplet.
• Traditional sonnets normally use one of two basic
rhyme schemes.
– The Italian/ Petrarchan sonnet has a tight rhyme
scheme, typically abba abba cdcdcd
– The English /Shakespearean sonnet is looser, abab,
cdcd, efef, gg.
• Many sonnets use a combination of the Italian
and English patterns.
• The sonnet’s hallmarks are really this “way of
thinking,” not a particular rhyme scheme.
• In fact, many contemporary sonnets depart from
rhyme and meter altogether, although they are
still restricted to 14 lines.
If We Must Die
1.
Claude McKay
If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, 2.
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
3.
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
How do we
know it’s a
sonnet?
What line has
the volta?
What
conclusion
does the
couplet
show?
Prologue to Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare 1.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
2.
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
3.
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Mutiny—rebellion against authority
Piteous—evoking pity
How do we
know it’s a
sonnet?
What line has
the volta?
What
conclusion
does the
couplet
show?
Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem
Helene M. Johnson
1.
You are disdainful and magnificent—
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
2.
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so despise—
Your shoulders towering high above the throng, 3.
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.
Let others toil and sweat for labor's sake
And wring from grasping hands their need of gold.
Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
I love your laughter arrogant and bold.
You are too splendid for this city street.
Supercilious—haughty
Efface--Erase
How do we
know it’s a
sonnet?
What line has
the volta?
What
conclusion
does the
couplet
show?
Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus(1)
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus(2)
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
1. How do we
know it’s a
sonnet?
2. What line has
the volta?
3. What
conclusion
does the
couplet
show?
1. a legendary king of Lydia condemned to stand up to the chin in a pool of water in Hades and beneath fruit-laden
boughs only to have the water or fruit recede at each attempt to drink or eat
2. a legendary king of Corinth condemned eternally to repeatedly roll a heavy rock up a hill in Hades only to have it
roll down again as it nears the top