1. Form & Feeling
Appreciating Poetry:
EIGHT CENTURIES OF SONNETS

2. ‘Poetry cannot be
manufactured…the technical devices
are, as are technical devices in the
composition of music, employed at
the less conscious level of the mid to
put experience into order.’
- David Holbrook (poet, novelist, critic)

3. Teacher’s notes – SLIDE 2
Nevertheless, there is a need to at least be made aware
of form and historical context. There is no easy was to
present the relationship between a nation’s literary
productions and the
political, economic, religious, social, and cultural
processes that exist within, and, alongside them. It is, of
course, true that literature is conditioned by the culture
that generates it, BUT it can also resist or defy that
culture, and the reciprocal forces between the two are
much too complex to permit neat relations between
works of art and the “contexts” or “backgrounds” that
produce or inform them.

4. Let us begin…
EIGHT CENTURIES OF SONNETS

5. This area of study will look at the
poetic form of the SONNET
• All sonnets have fourteen lines
• They are written in the rhythm of
iambic pentameter, while rhyming in
a set pattern.

6. Sonnets
History
The sonnet originated in Italy where it was made popular by the poet
Petrarch. The form was introduced into England in the sixteenth
century by the poets Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and the Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey (ca.1517-1547).
Although the sonnet form is very rigid, it has remained popular with
poets throughout the centuries. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets.
Edmund Spenser and John Milton also used the form; while Romantics
like William Wordsworth, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley were
able to capture the spontaneity of their feelings and thoughts in this
poetic mode. Similarly, Gerard Manley Hopkins, sometimes said to be
the ‘father of modern poetry’ and well known as a ‘poetic
experimenter’, disciplined himself to write within the confines of the
form, as have more contemporary poets such as Robert Frost and
Bruce Dawe.

7. Features (continued)
Type of sonnet Rhyme
scheme
Structure
Petrarchan
named after the Renaissance Italian
poet Petrarch
abbaabba cdecde
or
abbaabba cdcdcd
• the first eight lines are the octave; the
last six lines are the sestet
• the octave develops the main idea or
problem; the sestet provides a response
or resolution
Shakespearean or English
Shakespeare used this form
throughout his cycle of 154 sonnets
abab cdcd efef gg • the four quatrains develop different
aspects of the main idea
• the final rhyming couplet resolves the
argument
Spenserian
named after the Elizabethan English
poet Edmund Spenser
abab bcbc cdcd ee • the four linked quatrains develop the main idea
• the final rhyming couplet generates a sense of
closure and resolution

8. The couplet
• The couplet, two lines of verse, usually coupled
by rhyme, has been a principal unit of English
poetry since rhyme entered the language.
• The first poet to use the form consistently was
Geoffrey Chaucer, whose “General Prologue” to
The Canterbury Tales exhibits great flexibility.
Click here for more on the couplet

9. More on the couplet
The first poet to use the form consistently was Geoffrey Chaucer, whose “General
Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales exhibits great flexibility. His narrative momentum
tends to ovrerrun line endings, and his pentameter couplets are seldom the self-
contained syntactic units one finds in Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son”. The sustained
use of such closed couplets attained its ultimate sophistication in what came to be
known as heroic couplets (“heroic” because of their use in epic poems or
plays), pioneered by John Denham in the seventeenth century and perfected by John
Dryden and Alexander Pope in the eighteenth. The Chaucerian energies of the iambic
pentameter were reined in, and each couplet made a balanced whole within the
greater balanced whole of its poem, “Mac Flecknoe”, for example, or, “The Rape of
the Lock”. As if in reaction against the elevated (“heroic” or “mock heroic”) diction and
syntactic formality of the heroic couplet, more-recent users of the couplet have
tended to veer toward the other extreme of informality. Colloquialisms, frequent
enjambment, and variable placing of the caesura mask the formal rhyming of Robert
Browning’s “My Last Duchess” as the speaker of that dramatic monologue seeks to
mask its diabolical organization. Wilfred Owen, with the pararhymes of “Strange
Meeting”, and William Yeats with the off-rhymed tetrameters of “Under Ben
Bulben”, achieve similarly informal effects.
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to ‘the couplet’ slide

10. Structure

11. Volta
(meaning ‘turn’)
Volta is the change in thought or
feeling which separates the octave
from the sestet in a sonnet.

12. Quatrain
A stanza of four lines, rhymed or
unrhymed, is the most common of all
English stanzaic forms.

13. Rhythm

14. Iambic
(the noun is “iamb”)
The ‘x’ sign indicates an unstressed syllable and the ~ indicated a stressed syllable
Is an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, as in “New York.”
Iambic meter is also found in the work of prose writers such as
Charles Dickens. His novel A Tale of Two Cities, for example, begins:
x ~ x ~ x ~ x ~ x ~ x ~
It was | the best |of times | it was | the worst | of times

15. Trochaic
(the noun is “trochee”)
The ‘x’ sign indicates an unstressed syllable and the ~ indicated a stressed syllable
Is a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable, as in
the word “London” or the line from the nursery
rhyme:
~ x ~ x ~ x ~
London | bridge is | falling | down
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16. Meter

17. Tetrameter
(four feet)
William Shakespeare’s “Fear No More
the Heat o’ the Sun” is written in
trochaic tetrameter.
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couplet’ slide

18. Pentameter
(five feet)
Is the most popular metrical line in
English poetry.

19. Literary
Devices

20. Caesura
(Latin: ‘a cutting’)
A break or a pause in a line of
poetry, dictated by the natural rhythm
of the language and/or enforced by
punctuation.

21. Enjambment
(Derived from French word: ‘in-striding’ from
jambe, ‘leg’)
Running on of the sense beyond the second line of one
couplet into the first line of the next. This device was
commonly used by 16th and 17th c. poets by much less
frequently in the 18th c. The Romantic poets revived it use.
This was a part of the reaction against what were felt to be
restrictive rules governing the composition of verse.

22. Pararhyme
The repetition in accented syllables of the final consonant sound but
without the correspondence of the vowel sound. Therefore, it is a
form of consonance, which is also known as approximate, embryonic,
imperfect, near, oblique, and slant rhyme.
The following well-known example comes from Emily Dickenson’s I like
to see it lap the miles:
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare.
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23. Francesco Petrarch (Petrarca in Italian)
(1304 –1374)
Petrarch was an Italian scholar and
poet, and one of the earliest humanists. His
sonnets were about unattainable love
(specifically for a woman named ‘Laura’).

24. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 –1599)
Spenser was an English poet best known for
The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and
fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor
dynasty and Elizabeth I.

25. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded
as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-
eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and
the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some
collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long
narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some
of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every
major living language and are performed more often than those of
any other playwright.

26. Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
“On My First Son”
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
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27. John Milton (1608 –1674)
Milton was an English poet, a scholarly man of
letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of
England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of
religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known
for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

28. John Dryden (1631 –1700)
Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and
playwright who was made Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen
as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to
such a point that the period came to be known in literary
circles as the
‘Age of Dryden’.
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29. Alexander Pope (1688 –1744)
Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best
known for his satirical verse and for his
translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the
heroic couplet, he is the third-most frequently
quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson.
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30. John Keats (1795 –1821)
Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of
the main figures of the second generation of Romantic
poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe
Shelley, despite his work only having been in
publication for four years before his death.

31. Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest
lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as his political and social
views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily
following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that
included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the
author of Frankenstein.
His close circle of admirers, however, included some progressive thinkers of the day, including his
future father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output
remained steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for
fear of being arrested themselves for blasphemy or sedition. Shelley did not live to see success and
influence, although these reach down to the present day not only in literature, but in major
movements in social and political thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 –1822)

32. William Wordsworth (1770 –1850)
Wordsworth was a major English Romantic
poet who, with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic
Age in English literature with the 1798 joint
publication Lyrical Ballads.

33. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806 –1861)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (6 March 1806 – 29 June
1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the
Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both
England and the United States during her lifetime.[1] A
collection of her last poems was published by her
husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.

34. Frrara
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myselfthey turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace — all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thanked
Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning
(1812 –1889)
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35. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 –
1889)
Hopkins was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and
Jesuit priest, whose postmortem fame established him
among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental
explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his
use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a
period of largely traditional verse.

36. Christina Georgina Rossetti
(1830 –1894)
Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a
variety of romantic, devotional, and
children's poems. She is perhaps best known
for her long poem “Goblin Market”, and her
love poem “Remember”.

37. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Strange Meeting
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
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38. William Yeats
(1865 –1939)
Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century
literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later
years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force
behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward
Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief
during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as
the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee described as
"inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a
whole nation."

39. Robert Frost (1874 –1963)
Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic
depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His
work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the
early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and
philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected
American poets of his generation, Frost was honored frequently during his
lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

40. Bruce Dawe (1930 - )
Widely recognised as Australia's most popular poet, Bruce Dawe was born in
Fitzroy, Victoria in 1930 and was educated at Northcote High School, Melbourne. After
leaving school at 16, he worked in various occupations
(labourer, farmhand, clerk, sawmill-hand, gardener and postman) before joining the
RAAF in 1959. Upon leaving the RAAF in 1968, Bruce began a teaching career at
Downlands College, Toowoomba in 1969. Bruce holds four university degrees
(BA, MLitt, MA and PhD), all completed by part-time study.
http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=136&intversion=31
.

41. Gwen Harwood
(1920-1995)
Gwen Harwood was an Australian poet and liberalist. Gwen Harwood is regarded as one
of Australia's finest poets, publishing over 420 works, including 386 poems and 13
librettos. She won numerous poetry awards and prizes. Her work is commonly studied in
schools and university courses.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/gwen-harwood-selected-poems-20130211-2e7lg.html