Renaissance Poetry

1. Renaissance Poetry Sonnets

2. Sonnets Sonnets are fourteen-line lyric poems focusing on a single theme. Sonnets are usually in iambic pentameter (ten syllable lines with stress on every second syllable) and have a specific rhyme scheme.

3. Renaissance Sonnets Renaissance poets often wrote sonnet sequences. Sonnet sequences are groups of sonnets (often times one hundred or more) linked by a theme or the addressee (the person to whom the sonnet is addressed).

4. Renaissance Sonnets The most important Renaissance sonnet writers are Edmund Spenser Sir Philip Sidney William Shakespeare Sir Thomas Wyatt

5. Renaissance Sonnets The most popular Renaissance sonnet rhyme schemes include the Petrarchan sonnet (also known as the Italian sonnet) the Spenserian sonnet The Shakespearean sonnet (also known as the English or Elizabethan sonnet)

6. Renaissance Sonnets Students need to memorize the sonnet rhyme schemes in order to identify a sonnet by its scheme.

7. Petrarchan/Italian Sonnets This sonnet contains an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). The octave often presents a problem that the sestet answers. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abbaabba The rhyme scheme of the sestet may vary. It is most frequently cdecde, but also appears as cdedce, cdcdcd, and others.

8. Spenserian Sonnets The Spenserian sonnet consists of three quatrains (4 lines) and a couplet (2 rhymed lines). The rhyme scheme of a Spenserian sonnet is abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.

9. Shakespearean/English/Elizabethan Sonnets The Shakespearean sonnet also utilizes 3 quatrains (4 lines) and a couplet (2 rhymed lines). The first twelve lines often present a problem resolved in the couplet. The couplet often contains irony which turns the meaning suggested in the first 12 lines. The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is abab, cdcd, efef, gg