The Sonnet
A fourteen-line poem form with fixed rhyme and meter, in its Italian and English traditions.
The sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter, with a fixed rhyme scheme. Two forms dominate. The Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet divides into an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet with a variable scheme such as cdecde; the English (Shakespearean) sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet, abab cdcd efef gg. The form originated with Giacomo da Lentini in thirteenth-century Sicily and was perfected by Petrarch, whose sonnets to Laura established the love-sonnet convention that dominated European poetry for centuries.
The structure carries the argument. In the Italian form, the octave presents a situation or problem and the sestet answers or resolves it; the turn, or volta, typically falls at line 9. The Shakespearean form develops the subject across three quatrains and often reserves a summarizing turn for the final couplet — a space for epigrammatic closure that poets exploit to striking effect. The Italian form favors a single sustained contrast, while the English form supports layered, cumulative development.
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, published in 1609, that remain the most famous examples in English. The form was practiced by Sidney and Spenser (whose interlocking rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee bears his name), Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, and in the twentieth century by Frost, whose "Design" shows the form's continuing vitality. Its brevity imposes compression: every word must carry weight, and the rhyme scheme creates patterns of expectation and resolution that reward rereading.
Sonnets rely heavily on metaphor, conceits, and wordplay, and their fixed length makes them a favorite form for teaching the craft of poetry: the constraints are severe enough to demand discipline and flexible enough to allow endless variation.
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literature meter poetry rhyme sonnet
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