RHYME AND RHYTHM IN POETRY
The sonnet today is defined as a lyric of fourteen lines in the iambic pentameter form. However, originally it was a stanza in the Italian. There have been sonnets in the hexameter as for instance the first of Sidney’s Astleoplzil and Stella and Milton’s ‘ On the New Forces of-Conscience’, which is in twenty lines. Most of the sonnets, however, fall into two or three categories – the Pentrarchan, Shakespearean and Spenserian.
The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts of eight andsix lines each called the octave and the sestet. Originally the sonneteer set ,forth a problem in the octave and resolved it in the sestet. However, Milton did not follow the convention nor did he use it as a medium for the expression of his amorous inclinations as Petrarch had done before him. Wordsworth and Keats both wrote Petrarchan sonnets. A Petrarchan sonnet follows the rhyme scheme abba abba in the octave. In the sestet two or three rhymes may be employed such as cdc cdc or cde cde.
The Shakespearean sorlnet is usually divided into three quatrains to be followed by a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet: is abab cdcd efef gg.
A Spenserian sonnet is also divided into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. However, there are fewer rhymes in a Spenserian sonnet than in the Shakesperean The fonner follows the following rhyme scheme : abab bcbc cdcd ee.
