What Is a Sonnet? | Definition & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Jul 4
- 8 min read
The sonnet is a staple of English literature. It is usually associated with love poems. But this poetic form is much more versatile than that. A formal description of this style of poetry would be as follows:
A sonnet is a type of poem that is typically written in iambic pentameter, which consists of 14 lines and follows a particular rhyme scheme.
It was a poetic form that was adopted by the English during the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) from Italy, where Petrarch had popularized it during the early Italian Renaissance period. Besides its strict rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter, sonnets are usually defined by a love in some sort of crisis. This could take the form of unrequited affections, love for a lady who is already married, love for a lady who is physically separated from the person who loves her, or love for a lady who dies.
Here is an example of a Petrarchan sonnet, namely, Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 31” (published in 1591), which focuses on unrequited love:
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that even in heav'nly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!
Sure, if that long-with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case,
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?
The poem is written in iambic pentameter and has fourteen lines with a regular rhyme scheme. This consists of ABBAAABBA, for the first eight lines of the poem, known as the octave. This is supposed to be followed by a rhyme scheme of CDECDE or CDCCDC. Our example from Sir Philip Sydney fails to follow this scheme, with the last six lines (or sestet) taking the form of CDCCEE.
Nonetheless, the poem will suffice for our analysis. Most sonnets, in addition to being written in iambic pentameter and having a regular rhyme scheme, also have a turn, which occurs as a transition between the octave (the first eight lines) and the sestet (the last six lines). This turn is known as the volta. We see this in Sonnet 31. The first eight lines spend time establishing the moon as suffering from love sickness using pathetic fallacy as a literary device. Pathetic fallacy involves projecting human emotion onto things of nature.
The next six lines address the moon with a series of rhetorical questions or erotema. All these questions relate to the vanity of ungrateful and cruel women who break men’s hearts, as the poet’s or persona's own heart has been broken. In short, the octave first establishes the moon as suffering from love sickness through imaginative analogies and metaphors. The turn occurs when the moon is treated as being in a position to comment on the similarity between women on earth and women in the celestial universe that it occupies.
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The Petrarchan versus Shakespearean sonnet
Sonnets typically fall into two main categories: the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet or the Shakespearean or English sonnet. The latter was, of course, popularized by Shakespeare himself. You can say that the main difference is the rhyme scheme.
Let’s look at an example of a Shakespearean sonnet, namely Sonnet 91:
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.
The Shakespearean sonnet follows a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It seems much simpler than the Petrarchan's scheme of ABBA AABBA CDCCDC/CDECDE. Nonetheless, it still features the “turn” between the octave and the sestet.
The octave lists the various things that men take pride and pleasure in, such as high birth, skill, and hobbies such as hawks and horses. However, by the sestet, the poet sets himself apart from others, claiming that “Thy love is better than high birth to me,” as well as than all the other things that men delight in, which were detailed in the preceding octave.
Many sonnets focus on themes of love. For example, Keats' Bright Star can be described as an example of a traditional love sonnet. You can check it out here in my close reading of the poem: Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art: Summary & Analysis.
However, they don’t necessarily have to. Some of the more famous sonnets are political or even philosophical in nature. You need to only browse through Shakespeare’s large catalogue of sonnets to see how varied the themes can be, although the soul of Shakespeare's 154 sonnet collection is love-themed.
Milton is famous for turning the Petrarchan sonnet into a vehicle for both political and personal commentary. You can check out my analysis of Milton's Sonnet 1, here, and Sonnet 23, here. Sonnet 23 in particular is everything. It is a traditional Petrarchan love poem, an elegy, and an ode to his deceased wife. To see my close reading of Sonnet 23 by Milton, you can read my article on elegies: What Is an Elegy?
I also covered in a previous analysis Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, a more philosophical poem about the nature of tyrannical power. In that same article, I compared it to Shelley’s more overt political poem "England in 1819." Feel free to take a look.
The Petrachan Sonnet: A manly exercise in frivolity
The Petrarchan sonnet, and by extension, the Shakespearean sonnet, is responsible for some of the finest poems written in either the English language or in Western literature in general. However, it has a certain hint of artificiality about it. This is especially so when we take into account the attitude toward women displayed in this form of poetry.
Most sonnets were not written by women. Women only existed as the subject of the poem, where they were typically elevated as saints deserving of worship or goddesses whose wrath or indifference the poet had to suffer. In other words, you could say that women in the sonnet were positively objectified.
One wonders how sincere the feelings expressed typically were. The Petrarchan sonnet constituted a courtly culture that made a spectacle of unrequited love and that emphasized the paradox of sweet sorrow that such love in crisis personified. The poets themselves were aware of the affectations of this type of love. Shakespeare tackled the subject in Sonnet 130:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
Here, the poet is taking all romance out of the sonnet by providing a number of negative or ugly images to compare his "mistress" with. She is even described as having bad breath, with the description "the breath that from my mistress reeks." Ouch! Shakespeare goes even further in his plays. In Twelfth Night, the character Orsino can be seen as the embodiment of the more hollow aspects of the Petrarchan sonnet or at least the courtly culture and attitudes often associated with it.
Orsino is in pursuit of Lady Olivia, who has shown no interest in him whatsoever. He is advised to simply take no for an answer. The one advising him is Viola, who tells him to put himself in the place of a woman who loves him as much as he claims to love Olivia. If he has no love for such a lady, surely he would expect to reject her affections as well as Lady Olivia has rejected his advances.
He finds the very idea offensive and even insulting for a peculiar reason. In Act 2, Scene 4, he explains:
There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much. Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.
Orsino believes that his capacity for love is superior to any woman's. To put it bluntly, he is full of it. By the end of the play, he falls out of love with Olivia and falls in love immediately with his page, Viola, after finding out that she is a woman disguised as a man. This proves that his love for Olivia was simply infatuation, a man in love with a romantic concept of love. He embodies the shallow and vain logic that women should only serve as the objects of passion and desire, without having the capacity to display or articulate such emotions, which many sonnets seem to imply.
The sonnet in modern literature
In modern literature, free verse dominates. This is a form of poetry that would seem counterintuitive to a poetic form as formal as the sonnet, where poetry is written with little regard to formal rhyme and meter structure.
However, there are a number of modern sonnets that manage to balance the charm of the traditional sonnet with our modern sensibilities. A good example of this would be Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer" (published in 1920):
Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, [5]
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise, [10]
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, with a theme and setting that are decidedly non-Shakespearean. It is set in a Harlem dance club and features "young prostitutes" and "wine-flushed" boys. They are cheering on a mesmerizing dancer who feels out of place in the club while giving a soul-stirring performance. The poem's theme can be described as modernist.
It is about displacement and alienation. The alienation and displacement seem to be focused entirely on the dancer at first glance. However, the poem is subtle. The dancer stands in as an avatar for the poet himself. He is a deracinated immigrant from Jamaica living a disillusioned life as a Black writer in the United States. McKay does not exactly follow the traditional turn or division between the octave and the sestet to reveal the surprise of the poem.
Instead, he relies on slightly shocking us in the last couplet by contrasting the enthusiastic reception of the performance with the dancer's "falsely-smiling face." However, throughout the poem, we are given clues that McKay identifies himself with the dancer. For example, she is compared to "a proudly-swaying palm / Grown lovelier for passing through a storm." This is a reference to the landscape and climate of his home country, Jamaica.
The poem works well because of the complete treatment it offers the dancer, portraying her as an elegant, dignified, and sophisticated figure with a mysterious and seemingly impenetrable interior life. All while serving as a symbol for the poet's own feelings of alienation and homesickness.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, July 03). What Is a Sonnet? | Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/what-is-a-sonnet |