ENGL 1F95 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Petrarchan Sonnet, Petrarch, Sestet
Document Summary
Literary terms for sonnet: convention (the codes of genre, octave (8 lines of poetry) Sestet (6 lines of poetry: quatrain (4 lines of poetry, volta (a change in thought, in feeling etc. , rhyming couplet (two lines of poetry that rhyme) Lambic pentameter (5 feet, with each foot following a pattern of unstress/stress) Scansion (analysis of metric patterns in poetry, see pages 1000-1004 for more on scansion) History of the english sonnet: mid-sixteenth century; the english renaissance. In the 1370s, a collection of poems by italian poet francesco petrarch, called the rima sparse (scattered poems) begins circulating on the continent. Fewer words that rhyme in english so they had to switch the format to write a sonnet. The volta heralds a change: in feeling, in thought, in an answer to a question. Subject matter: passion and pain of an adoring male lover, and beauty and cruelty. Changes to form in shakespearean or english sonnet.