Sonnet

A fourteen-line poetic form traditionally organized by meter and a rhyme scheme. Its conventions vary across languages and historical traditions.

Iambic pentameter: A metrical line of five iambs, each typically alternating an unstressed syllable with a stressed one. It is the characteristic English sonnet meter, though poets often vary its rhythm.
Petrarchan sonnet: A sonnet form organized into an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet. Its octave–sestet structure contrasts with the English sonnet’s three quatrains and couplet.
Giacomo da Lentini: A thirteenth-century Sicilian poet traditionally credited with developing the sonnet. His work is associated with the form’s early emergence in the Sicilian school.
William Shakespeare: An English playwright and poet whose works include 154 sonnets published in 1609. His sonnets made the English form a lasting model for love, time, and poetic art.
Sonnet 18: A sonnet by William Shakespeare beginning “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Its movement from comparison to claims about poetry’s endurance illustrates a familiar sonnet argument.
Rhyme scheme: A pattern describing how the final sounds of poetic lines correspond. Sonnet traditions use recurring end-rhyme patterns to organize fourteen lines.
Shakespearean sonnet: An English sonnet form with three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. It is the best-known English arrangement of the fourteen-line form.
Sicilian School: A group of thirteenth-century poets at the court of Frederick II in Sicily. The sonnet first took shape among poets linked to this literary circle.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A nineteenth-century English poet known for the collection Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her sequence recast the sonnet as an intimate record of love and self-expression.
Sonnet 130: A sonnet by William Shakespeare that rejects conventional idealized comparisons of a beloved. Its playful reversal shows how a sonnet can challenge the genre’s inherited love-language.

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