Etymologically, sonnets are a popular classical form of poetry derived from the Italian word “sonetto”, defined as “a little sound or song”. For centuries, the sonnet form was reserved for unrequited love poems, but topics have seen a wide variety of subjects since the 17th century. All sonnets have a thematic structure: a problem, a solution and a “volta”, or turn, between the two sections. Sonnets are sometimes written in groups, like Shakespeare’s sonnets, where each individual sonnet can stand alone, but is also linked to others within a group. Sonnets were so popular that the form evolved over time to include many variations, including the Shakespearean Sonnet, the Italian Sonnet, the Spenserian Sonnet, and so on.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, most written in the meter of iambic pentameter and with a set rhyme scheme. The original sonnet consists of an octave (or two quatrains) and a sestet. Within these general guidelines, the sonnet opens itself up for a wide variety of variations. Sonnets have been written all over the world in many languages: French, Italian, English, Polish, Czech, and German poets have made significant contributions to the form of the sonnet. The most common variations being the Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet and the English (Shakespearean) sonnet. The main difference between the two being the rhyme schemes.
The Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet
The Italian sonnet is the original sonnet form, and the Shakespearean sonnet was derived from this form. The fourteen lines consists of an octave (or two quatrains making up the eight lines), followed by a sestet. The octave followed the rhyme scheme of ABBA ABBA, and the sestet rhymed CDECDE or CDCDCD.
The Shakespearean (English) Sonnet
The most well-known sonnets in the English language were written by William Shakespeare, though Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet to the English language in the 16th century by translating the works of the Italian Sonnet. Wyatt’s contemporary, The Earl of Surrey, innovated the form and rhyme structure to the English sonnet that we are familiar with today: fourteen lines, three quatrains ending with a couplet. The rhyme scheme follows ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. English sonnet typically turn in the third quatrain, but Shakespeare broke the rule by frequently placing the turn in the final couplet. Sonnet cycles or sequences is a group of sonnets linked by a single theme. Shakespeare wrote a sequence of 154 sonnets, becoming the most famous sonnet practitioner.
Other Sonnets
Sonnets lend themselves to variance. For example, Edmund Spenser created the “Spenserian Sonnet” that includes the rhyme scheme of ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. Word sonnets are modern and more extreme variations of the sonnet’s form. It came out of the poetic movement called “New Formalism” of the late 20th century, and is a fourteen-line poem, containing one word per line. There are, of course, other variations worth noting, but these seem the most applicable to Keats’s work and analysis relevant to today.
John Keats and The Sonnet
John Keats commonly used the sonnet to compose many of his poems, particularly the English form and the Italian form. The themes of Keats’s sonnets concerned romantic love, dominating quick-changing moods, the interplay of morality, timelessness, and the search for beauty. Even though many of his poems are written in the sonnet form, Keats did find the form confining due to the meter and rhyme. Keats learned about the form and intentionality of the sonnet by reading Shakespeare’s sonnets and William Wordsworth’s sonnets, which is where he registered a liminality. Wordsworth found that sonnets find formal closure by the couplet, resting in the completeness of utterance (Wagner, 1991). Keats resisted this formal closure himself, believing a poem should end how it wants. He wrote in a letter to Charles Cowden Clarke, an English scholar and Shakespearean scholar, that the sonnet typically “swells[s] loudly, up to its climax and then dies proudly”. Rather than soft closure, Keats thought the sonnets should be characterized by “pouncing lines” or line endings and clouting couplets. This idea is like Keats’s odes, thus why the odes became Keats’s vehicle for his genius as opposed to the sonnets.
The particular selections chosen for this collection and analysis are certainly not Keats’s most well-known sonnets. The sonnet, in Keats’s time, was not as enamored as before, but Keats still chose to write quite a few of his poems in sonnet form. This was something that contributed to his wide scale unpopularity among the critics. Included in this collection is perhaps Keats’s most famous sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”. It is cited to be the sonnet that solidified Keats’s poetic voice and helped him rise in recognition. This sonnet is pertinent in Keats’s work. Likewise, one of his most famous poems literally discusses poetry. The sonnets addressed to specific poets, Byron, Chatterton and Spenser, are included due to the influence these other poets had on Keats and his style. Particularly, Keats was a fan of Chatterton and Spenser, and their work prompted Keats to quit medicine and pursue poetry. Above all, the sonnets are a form that Keats kept to often, both the Italian and English sonnet, and even prompted Keats to venture from their formality, and to write his famous series of odes.
Resources
“Sonnet.” LitCharts, LitCharts, 2021, www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/sonnet.
Wagner, Jennifer. “Working Against the End: Keats’s Sonnets and Literary History.”Western Humanities Review, vol. 45, no. 3, 1991, pp. 230. ProQuest, www-proquest-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/scholarly-journals/working-against-end-keatss-sonnets-literary/docview/1291811972/se-2?accountid=14503.