Meta: intro to sonnet week

[lnhammer]

I'm lnhammer, and I'll be hosting a week on sonnets.

You can find as almost many definitions of a sonnet as you can prosodists: fourteen lines, rhyming, yadda yadda. "Rhyming," yes, but exactly how is not important. In fact, historically a particular rhyme scheme has never been a defining characteristic of sonnets -- the now-standard abbaabba octave of the various Italian schemata wasn't introduced until a generation after the form was invented in the early 13th century (using abababab).

The closest thing to a definitive marker is 14 lines containing an asymmetric two-part structure with a "turn" of thought, volta in Italian, slightly more than halfway through, most orthodoxly giving it a 8+6 structure (as emphasized by Italian rhyme schemes) but sometimes moved a line or two in either direction. But even that definition can be carped at, given that Elizabethan rhyme schemes with their final couplet often suggest using a 12+2 argument.

But enough of that. This week I'd like to explore some other aspects of sonnets -- starting with my next post later today.

Until then, though, a question: how do YOU define a sonnet?

---L.

Comments

[bookblather]

My first introduction to sonnets was Shakespeare, so in my mind, those are sonnets. I know there are others-- Petrarchian/Italian comes to mind the most, and Spencerian-- but I always look at the Shakespearian sonnet as a "proper sonnet."

[lnhammer]

Out of curiosity, how do sonnets from other languages (such as Italian) feel to you?

---L.

[bookblather]

Ah, hmm. Like poetry, always-- I love translated Petrarch, for example-- but there's a tiny voice going "not a sonnet, doesn't rhyme right" so I think of them more generally as poetry, I guess? I dunno, my mind works in tortured and convoluted ways.

[lnhammer]

*nod*

And, just wait a moment till I get my next post up ...

---L.