English Literature / Unit 1 ENL 0026 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Petrarchan Sonnet
Captions available
The idea
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into an octave rhymed abbaabba and a sestet, often cdecde or cdcdcd. The octave sets out a situation; the sestet answers it. Wyatt brought the form into English.
In practice
Eight lines, then six.
Where people slip
The sestet's scheme varies; the octave's does not.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- 0027The Shakespearean Sonnet
- 0037Naming a Form From the Shape on the Page
- 0504Wyatt and the English Petrarchan Sonnet
- 0520Reading an Elizabethan Sonnet
- 0804The Sonnets: "When I Consider"
- 1114Charlotte Smith's Sonnets
- 1125"Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"
- 1208"Ozymandias"
- 1216"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
- 1319Sonnets From the Portuguese
- 1333"God's Grandeur" and the Terrible Sonnets
- 1512"Leda and the Swan" and "The Wild Swans at Coole"
- 1817The Signature of Elizabethan Verse
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