Form & Feeling

Appreciating Poetry:EIGHT CENTURIES OF SONNETS

‘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)

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.

Let us begin…

EIGHT CENTURIES OF SONNETS

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.

Sonnets

HistoryThe 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.

Features (continued)

Type of sonnet Rhyme scheme

Structure

Petrarchan named after the Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch

abbaabba cdecde orabbaabba 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 EnglishShakespeare 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

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

More on the coupletThe 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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Structure

Volta (meaning ‘turn’)

Volta is the change in thought or feeling which separates the octave

from the sestet in a sonnet.

Quatrain

A stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed, is the most common of all

English stanzaic forms.

Rhythm

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

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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Meter

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

Pentameter(five feet)

Is the most popular metrical line in English poetry.

Literary Devices

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.

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.

PararhymeThe 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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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’).

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.

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.

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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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.

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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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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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.

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)

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.

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.

FrraraThat's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will't please you sit and look at her? I said"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myselfthey turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle lapsOver my Lady's wrist too much," or "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20For calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe 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 muleShe rode with round the terrace — all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech, 30Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thankedSomehow — I know not how — as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech — (which I have not) — to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark" — and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--E'en then would be some stooping, and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretence 50Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether 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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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.

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”.

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.

Let us sleep now ...

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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."

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.

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.

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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