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Heroes And Ideals Online

Important Links For Mr. Moran's Honors Class

Some Important Renaissance Poetry Links

Luminarium's Renaissance Pages

The best site on the Web for the study of English Renaissance poetry. Pick a poet, follow the links, and keep clicking!

Absolute Shakespeare
Easy one-stop shopping (informational!) for everything you need to know about Shakespeare but didn't know where to find.

PAL Elements Of Poetry Site

Excellent site for the review of all the basic elements of poetry; it will be the basis for our test on the technical aspects of poetry.

Shakespeare On The Internet

Links to background and analysis, including several Shakespeare timelines.

UCSB Renaissance Links Page

Massive number of links to a truly impressive group of online sites related to every aspect of the English Renaissance.

Wikipedia On Shakespeare's Sonnets

An unusually good (for Wikipedia) and comprehensive article on Shakespeare's collection.


Representative Poetry OnLine

The University of Toronto's famed web page with a selection of poetry in English, a sort of greatest hits collection of poets and poems, with an emphasis on Renaissance writers.

Shakespeare Sonnet Page

Complete texts of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, arranged numerically with first line cited.

How To Read Poems Website
Good advice from a college literature class.

The Metaphysical Conceit and Late Renaissance Poetry
An excellent and comprehensive study guide from a literature class at CalPoly.

Sonnet 18 - Recited By Bertram Selwyn




Sonnet 18 - Sung By David Gilmour Of Pink Floyd
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Sonnet General Information

SONNETS

The sonnet is one of the principal poetic forms used by Renaissance poets in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originating in Italy and often attributed to the Italian poet Petrarch, the form was brought to England and refined by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, during the time of Henry VIII in the early sixteenth century.

Wyatt and Surrey adapted the original form (see below) and made it so popular that many major poets in English since their era has employed the form at one time or another.
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and many others have used sonnet structure to great effect.

The quality of a good sonnet depends largely on the skill that the poet demonstrates in saying something original, insightful, and/or beautiful within the tight and highly
formalized structure of the form.

Sonnets in English often follow one of two primary formats.

The Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet

a. Usually fourteen lines
b. Usually iambic pentameter (every other syllable stressed, starting with the second)
c. Thematically divided into an octave (eight line section) that presents a situation or
problem, often stated in two different ways in individual quatrains of four lines
each,
and a
d. Sestet (six lines) that often presents a response or answer to the octave.
e. Rhyme scheme is abbacddc (octave) and efefef(sestet)

The Shakespearean or English Sonnet

a. Again, fourteen lines typically.
b. Primarily organized into three quatrains (first two often forming an octave as above)
and
c. A couplet - two rhyming lines - at the end of the poem that often expresses
succinctly the theme or conclusion of the poem.
d. Rhyme scheme is usually abab cdcd efefgg.