English Literature / Unit 1 ENL 0037 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Naming a Form From the Shape on the Page
The idea
Many form questions can be answered by counting before reading. Start with the line count: fourteen lines suggests a sonnet, nineteen a villanelle. Then look at stanza breaks: an octave and a sestet point to the Petrarchan sonnet, three quatrains and a couplet to the Shakespearean. Next letter the rhyme scheme: abbaabba confirms the Italian sonnet, abab bcbc cdcd ee the Spenserian, aba bcb cdc terza rima, and abcb quatrains the ballad. Then check the meter: unrhymed pentameter is blank verse, while no regular meter and no rhyme is free verse. Finally check the speaker: one invented character addressing a silent listener makes a dramatic monologue, whatever its stanzas. If the passage is an excerpt, judge the form from the lines you have and do not guess the whole.
In practice
Count lines, see stanzas, letter rhymes, scan, then hear the voice.
Where people slip
An excerpt may not show its full form. A fourteen-line excerpt from a longer poem is not a sonnet, so look for a title or a closing couplet before naming one.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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