As the sonnet evolves, the only constant is its name-and the enduring appeal of the "little song" in poetry. Contemporary poets will often keep one element of the traditional form (for example, the fourteen-line structure) while doing away with others they will also sometimes invent their own formal containers for sonnets without much regard for the traditional strictures of line counts, meter, or rhyme. Traditionally, a sonnet would meditate on a single problem or subject, with a turn (volta) happening either between the octave and sestet in the Italian form or before the closing couplet in the Elizabethan form. ![]() The Elizabethan Shakespearean sonnet (so called because of Shakespeare's fondness for the form) is comprised of three quatrains and a couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet comes to us from Petrarch, writing in Italian it is divided into an eight-line octave and a six line-sestet, with a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA CDECDE or ABBAABBA CDCDCD. ![]() In English, the sonnets that made the form famous during the Renaissance used iambic pentameter (ten-syllable lines alternating weak and strong stresses: for example, "i CAN'T beLIEVE i FAILED that STUpid TEST") and adhered to one of two rhyme schemes. A sonnet is (traditionally) a fourteen-line rhymed poem.
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