Petrarchan /Sonnet Sequence

1. Petrarchan/Sonnet Sequence Tara Anderson Briana Corbett NicholaDehaven Zainab Mithani Jay Van

2. Petrarch • He was born Francesco Petrarca on July 20th, 1304. • He was born in exile in a town called Arezzo. • Petrarch was studying to become a lawyer because his father wanted him to study the field. • He did not enjoy law and believed that being a lawyer was a dishonest profession. • Petrarch wanted to be a man of letters. • When his father died, he did not leave a lot of money, so Petrarch had no choice than to become a priest. • Petrarch was known as the father of Humanism, and many call him father of the Renaissance.

3. Laura • In 1327, Petrarch met Laura for the first time. • She would be his inspiration when it came to writing poetry. • There is not a lot of information on Laura. It is said that her and Petrarch had little or no contact. He instantly fell in love with her although she was married. There was no affair. • Most of his poems in Il Canzoniere are about his love for Laura. • Some say that Laura was not an actual person but a way for Petrarch to generally talk about love in his poems.

4. Il Canzoniere • Il Canzoniere is Petrarch’s most famous work. • Il Canzonieremeans Song Book in English. It is also known as Rhyme Sparse or in English, Scattered Rhymes. • The poems were written over a span of about 40 years. • There are 366 love sonnets, mostly about Laura. 263 were written while she was alive and 103 after her death.

5. Sonnets • Sonnets are lyric rather than narrative poems. Instead of telling a story, they express different aspects of a single thought, mood, or emotion. These feelings are sometimes resolved or summed up in the last lines of the poem. Originally sonnets were short poems accompanied by music but evolved into more structured love poetry in thirteenth century Italy.

6. Italian Sonnet • These probably developed from the canzone or from Italian folk song. The earliest Italian sonneteer was Guittoned'Arezzo, but the most famous is the Italian poet Petrarch whose Canzoniere written in the fourteenth century includes 317 sonnets written for his beloved Laura. • Italian sonnet form has also been used by English poets. Milton, for example, was one of them.

7. Petrarchan Sonnet • Francesco Petrarca was an Italian scholar and poet who created the traditional sonnet form, which is known as both the Italian and Petrarchan sonnet. This type of sonnet has three main thematic conventions: 1) love goes unsatisfied, 2) the beloved of the poem is elevated to superiority and 3) the lover is self-abasing.

8. Sonnets The sonnet was introduced into English by Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of writers such as Ronsard. Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) started off a tremendous vogue for sonnet sequences; the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, FulkeGreville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others. These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; the exception is Shakespeare's sequence. In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants.

9. Sonnets cont. The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote several sonnets, of which the best-known are "The world is too much with us" and the sonnet to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modelled on Milton's. Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet "Ozymandias". Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, of which the greatest is The Windhover, and also several sonnet variants such as the 10 1/2 line Pied Beauty and the 24-line That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire. By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

10. Modern Sonnets Modernist period, Robert Frost was the only one to use the sonnet regularly, although William Butler Yeats wrote the major sonnet Leda and the Swan, which used half rhymes. Wilfred Owen's sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth was another sonnet of the early 20th century. W.H. Auden wrote two sonnet sequences and several other sonnets throughout his career, and widened the range of rhyme-schemes used considerably. Auden also wrote one of the first unrhymed sonnets in English, "The Secret Agent“ (1928). Half-rhymed, unrhymed, and even unmetrical sonnets have been very popular since 1950; perhaps the best works in the genre are Seamus Heaney'sGlanmore Sonnets and Clearances, both of which use half rhymes. The 1990s have seen something of a formalist revival, however, and several traditional sonnets have been written in the past decade.

11. Italian/Petrarchan SonnetQual Donna Attende A GloriosaFama(Francesco Petrarch) Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame a Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy? b Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy b Whom all the world doth as my lady name! a How honour grows, and pure devotion's flame, a How truth is joined with graceful dignity, b There thou may'st learn, and what the path may be b To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim; a There learn soft speech, beyond all poet's skill, c And softer silence, and those holy ways d Unutterable, untold by human heart. e But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill, c This none can copy! since its lovely rays d Are given by God's pure grace, and not by art. e

12. Petrarchan Sonnet • The rhyme scheme of a typical Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet. It uses end rhymes, rhymes at the end of a line. This sonnet follows an a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-e-c-d-e. • a: fame, name, flame, claim • b: courtesy, enemy, dignity, may be • c: skill, fill • d: ways, rays • e: heart, art • There can be variations on the last six lines as some Petrarchan Sonnets use instead of c-d-e-c-d-e, c-d-c-c-d-c. Another variation could be c-d-c-d-c-d

13. Structure of Petrarchan Sonnet • An Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet is usually broken up into two parts. The first part is the first 8 lines which are considered the octave. The octave is made up of two quatrains, a group of 4 lines (a-b-b-a). The content of the octave section of the poem usually is involved in presenting a problem or begins to paint in a certain idea. After the first 8 lines comes a group of 6 lines with a different rhyme scheme, The c-d-e-c-d-e in this sonnet. This is the sestet and is composed of two tercets, a group of 3 lines (c-d-e). The Volta usually comes at sestet.

14. Structure [Beginning of the Octave] Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame a First quatrain Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy? a Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy b Whom all the world doth as my lady name! A How honour grows, and pure devotion's flame, a Second quatrain How truth is joined with graceful dignity, b There thou may'st learn, and what the path may be b To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim; a [End of the Octave] [Beginning of Sestet] There learn soft speech, beyond all poet's skill, c First tercet (Volta or turn). And softer silence, and those holy ways d Unutterable, untold by human heart. e But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill, c Second Tercet This none can copy! since its lovely rays d Are given by God's pure grace, and not by art. e [End of Sestet]

15. The Shakespearean Sonnet (116) Let me not to the marriage of true minds a Admit impediments. Love is not love bWhich alters when it alteration finds, a Or bends with the remover to remove: bO no! it is an ever-fixed mark cThat looks on tempests and is never shaken; dIt is the star to every wandering bark, c Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. dLove's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks e Within his bending sickle's compass come: fLove alters not with his brief hours and weeks, e But bears it out even to the edge of doom. fIf this be error and upon me proved, gI never writ, nor no man ever loved. g

16. Shakespearean Sonnet This is a typical rhyme scheme for an English/Shakespearean sonnet. The sonnet follows end rhymes in the pattern of a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g. a: minds, finds b: love, remove c: mark, bark d: shaken, taken e: cheeks, weeks f: come, doom g: proved, loved

17. Structure of the Sonnet The English/Shakespearean sonnet uses the structural unit of quatrains as well (remember a quatrain is a group of four lines). But the structure of this sonnet is different as there are 3 quatrains and the quatrains are not grouped in to an octave. They stand independently. In these sonnets, rhymingcouplets follow as the last two rhyming lines of the sonnet. The volta in English/Shakespearean sonnets can come in the third quatrain but in Shakespeare's sonnets the volta comes in the couplet at the end. Let me not to the marriage of true minds a First quatrainAdmit impediments. Love is not love bWhich alters when it alteration finds, a Or bends with the remover to remove: b O no! it is an ever-fixed mark c Second quatrainThat looks on tempests and is never shaken; dIt is the star to every wandering bark, c Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. d Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks e Third quatraWithin his bending sickle's compass come: f Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, eBut bears it out even to the edge of doom. f If this be error and upon me proved, g Couplet,VoltaI never writ, nor no man ever loved. g

18. “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” (John Donne) At the round earth's imagined corners blow a Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise b From death, you numberless infinities b Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ; a All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow, a All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies, b Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes b Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. a But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ; c (volta) For, if above all these my sins abound, d 'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, c When we are there. Here on this lowly ground, d Teach me how to repent, for that's as good e As if Thou hadstseal'd my pardon with Thy blood. e

19. Structure • The rhyme scheme of this poem seems to take to both Italian and English sonnets. The a-b-b-a a-b-b-a is similar to a the Petrarchan sonnet we previously covered. But the next six lines follow more of an English style with the c-d-c-d and the rhyming couplet at the end. This seems to be a hybrid of the rhyming styles.