Sonnets

   To be honest, I don't know much about sonnets. The only time I've ever really come across sonnets is in shakespeare I've read in either middle school or high school. I know they have a specific structure that consists of 14 lines. They usually deal with themes of love and they usually have a specific rhyme scheme, but that rhyme scheme depends on the author. I know that Petrarch was one of the founders/ early users of sonnets and that he was one of the influences that shaped sonnets into what they are now. In my research, I came across a webpage on the Folger Shakespeare Library that detailed the history of the sonnet. According to Folger, Giacomo Da Letini invented the sonnet in thirteenth century Italy. Francesco Petrarch is credited with bringing sonnets to a high form of development in the fourteenth century. His sonnets were dedicated to an idealized woman named Laura who Petrarch fell in love with at first sight, or so his sonnets say. Petrarch's model and uses of extreme feeling was brought to England by Sir Thomas Watt and Henry Howard in the sixteenth century. They adjusted the rhyme scheme and the meter to accommodate the English language. They, like Petrarch, used various imagery to convey their feelings of love, mainly the pain it brings and the passion that makes it worth it. This English sonnet model strongly influenced English Renaissance poets including Shakespeare himself. It became common place in England for men to write sonnet sequences and circulate them in manuscript form. Shakespeare published 154 sonnets in 1609 and they were written in a new style. It borrowed from the Petrarchan and English sonnet writing fashion but included a new rhyming scheme that became known as Shakespearian style. According to Folger, Shakespeare's sonnet writing was actually too good and it ended up contributing to the fall of the sonnet as no one could come close to matching his skill and versatility.
   In addition to the Shakespearean form, there is another style of sonnet called the Spenserian sonnet. This form of sonnet was invented by Edmund Spenseras. The rhyme scheme of this style of sonnet is a-b-a-b b-c-b-c c-d-c-d e-e. In this style of sonnet, the three quatrains develop three distinct but closely related ideas, with a different idea in the couplet.
   Moving away from the history and towards the mechanics, sonnets have a specific set of rules. In The English Sonnet, T.W.H. Crosland outlines the requirements for a sonnet. According to Crosland, a sonnet must be 14 lines long and consist of an a-b-a-b  c-d-c-d  e-f-e-f  g-g rhyme scheme. It must consists of 3 quatrains and 1 couplet.