What is a Sonnet?

1. What is a Sonnet? A focus on the English Sonnet

2. Sonnet Form • has 14 lines. • written in iambic pentameter • follows a specific rhyme scheme • about any subject, though they are often about love or nature. • introduces a problem or question in the beginning, and a resolution is offered after the turn.

3. Iambic Pentameter? •  the rhythm in which poets and playwrights wrote in Elizabethan England. • Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter in his writing. • it sounds like this: dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM. • There are five iambs per line • Penta is from the Greek for five. • Meter is really the pattern

4. English Sonnet • English Sonnet = Shakespearean Sonnet. • Includes three quatrains (groups of four lines) and a couplet (two lines). • The rhyme scheme is often abab cdcd efef gg. • The turn is either after eight lines or ten lines.

5. Quatrain? • Quatrains are four line stanzas of any kind

6. Turn? • The point where the sonnet changes from telling the problem to telling the solution

7. Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) Admit impediments. Love is not love (b) Which alters when it alteration finds,(a) Or bends with the remover to remove:(b) O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,(c) That looks on tempests and is never shaken;(d) It 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) Within his bending sickle's compass come;(f) Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,(e) But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(f)If this be error and upon me proved,(g) I never writ, nor no man ever loved.(g)

8. What does it mean? Let me not declare any reasons why twoTrue-minded people should not be married. Love is not loveWhich changes when it finds a change in circumstances,Or bends from its firm stand even when a lover is unfaithful:Oh no! it is a lighthouseThat sees storms but it never shaken;Love is the guiding north star to every lost ship,Whose value cannot be calculated, although its altitude can be measured.Love is not at the mercy of Time, though physical beautyComes within the compass of his sickle.Love does not alter with hours and weeks,But, rather, it endures until the last day of life.If I am proved wrong about these thoughts on loveThen I recant all that I have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved. Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) Admit impediments. Love is not love (b) Which alters when it alteration finds,(a) Or bends with the remover to remove:(b) O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,(c) That looks on tempests and is never shaken;(d) It 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) Within his bending sickle's compass come;(f) Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,(e) But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(f) If this be error and upon me proved,(g) I never writ, nor no man ever loved.(g)

9. Figuring Out a Sonnet • 1. Read for the idea. • 2. Read for the mood. • 3. Read to check imagery against theme. • 4. Translate the stated and the unstated parts of imagery into everyday words. • 5. Paraphrase the poem in plain English. • 6. State a theme for the poem that is consistent with all of it.

10. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Figuring Out a Sonnet:Sonnet 118

11. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. OOOOH Baby I think I shall compare you to a summer dayBut, you know, you're prettier and even better, even calmBecause sometimes it gets windy and the buds on the trees get shaken offAnd sometimes summer doesn't last very longSometimes it's too hotAnd everything gorgeous loses its looksBy getting hit by a truck Or just because everyone and everything gets old and ugly and shabbyBUT (and here's the turn) you're going to keep your looks for ever Your beauty will last for everI'm going to make sure that you never lose your good looksAnd that nasty old Death can never brag about owning youBecause I shall write this poem about youAs long as men can breathe (are you breathing?) As long as men can see (are you looking at this poem?)Then this poem lives, and it gives life and memory to your beauty.