The Petrarchan Sonnet

Here's a brief guide to the form of sonnet known as the Petrarchan. Of interest, perhaps, to students of poetry and the general reader.

Like many poetic forms and terms, the sonnet is Italian in origin. It was used by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch (1304-74), and introduced to England in the sixteenth century by the poets Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)and Surrey (full name Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, ?1517-47). They made translations of Petrarch and wrote English sonnets which employed his rhyme scheme.

Basic form

The basic shape of the Petrarchan sonnet is 8 lines (the octave or octet) + 6 lines (the sestet). The octave is composed of two quatrains, closely linked by just two rhyme sounds: abbaabba. The sestet has various rhyme forms, using either two or three rhyme sounds: cdcdcd, cde cde  etc. Many variations are permitted, but the sonnet should not end with a couplet. The English iambic pentameter line is the standard metre. In graphic form, here is the rhyme scheme of a sonnet divided into octave and a sestet, the setet itself divided into two tercets liniked by rhyme.

1. ___________ a
2. ___________ b
3. ___________ b
4. ___________ a
5. ___________ a
6. ___________ b
7. ___________ b
8. ___________ a

     9. ____________ c
     10. ___________ d
     11. ___________ c

     12. ___________ d
     13. ___________ c
     14. ___________ d

One thing to look out for in a sonnet is the turn (Italian volta), the point between the octave and sestet, where the sonnet moves from one rhyme group to another.  With the change in rhyme scheme may come a change in subject  matter.  So in the second, shorter half, the poet may change register, comment on the first half (perhaps presenting it as an analogy), answer it, resolve its tensions or heighten them, or reverse  the feeling altogether, among many other strategies.

A sonnet is a little too long for simple lyrical expression, but too short to tell a complex narrative. It therefore suits short argument, and the representation of an internal mental / emotional experience, often involving conflicting feelings.  This figuring of an internal passage of thought invites metaphorical language. Originally, the predominant theme was love, with the Petrarchan lover in joy and agony, burning and freezing at the sight of his beautiful / remote beloved. Wyatt and Surrey were courtly poets, writing about the delicate sensitivities of the courtly lover. Later writers have adopted the form for a wide range of subjects. Rhyming is harder in English than Italian, so the form also represents a formidable technical challenge to the poet. The discipline of the form seems to be an effective way of presenting strong emotional content.

Here are some examples of English sonnets using the Petrarchan form.

Wyatt

The long love that in my heart doth harbor

And in mine heart doth keep his residence,

Into my face presseth with bold pretense,

And there campeth, displaying his banner.

She that me learneth to love and to suffer,

And wills that my trust and lust's negligence

Be reined by reason, shame, and reverence,

With his hardiness taketh displeasure.

Wherewith love to the heart's forest he fleeth,

Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry,

And there him hideth and not appeareth.

What may I do when my master feareth

But in the field with him to live and die?

For good is the life ending faithfully.

Let's look at this without reference to the Italian model. It stands or falls as a poem in English, after all. I like the way it gets on with telling its story straightaway. Each line in the first quatrain tells us about a new event, an internal experience figured in imagery. 'Long love' - the length is felt through the double stress, which lengthens the vowels and gives the liquid 'l' sound its full value ('l' does seem to have an erotic feel to it: the lovely long-legged lady whiplash; Nabokov comments on this at the start of Lolita). The poet / lover is talking about love felt for a long time, and along with this temporal sense we get a spatial one: we see a long ship in harbour (inactive, frustrated). Like a royal visitor, Love takes up residence in the heart, which we might see in line 2 as a country house (nobles were supposed to keep these vast houses just in case the monarch decided to honour them by living there with the attendant swarm of court locusts; is there a passing echo of a castle keep?). But then, in lines three to four, something happens. Bored of harbouring and residing - a passive, skulking state - Love announces himself. He presses into the lover's face: he must have made some sign (A smile? A blush? A leer? Can I buy you a drink?) to the Lady. Love is out in the open, exposed, displaying his banner like an army in its camp.

Huge faux pas! The second quatrain looks at the Lady's reaction to this boldness. She's not pleased. He should have been a proper English gentleman, reserved and repressed. She has been teaching him to love in painful discretion ('to love and to suffer') int he best traditions of courtly love, where love is a debilitating illness which can drive you crazy. The phrase 'trust and lust's negligence' doesn't quite work for me: the double rhyme is an awkward jingle, and I can see how he has neglected his 'trust' (she trusted him to keep quiet), but not his lust, whatever sense of 'lust' we take (at that time it could mean vigorous and healthy). Maybe the 'r' allteration is a little overdone, too. But the great debate with Wyatt is how much this rough metre and sound is deliberate, and how much a sign of apprenticeship. we've seen how he departs from iambic opentameter right at the start with 'The long love', and the jingly-jangly sound of these lines could possibly convey some of the nervousness of the lover. We notice, anyway, that the second quatrain, like the first, is a complete sentence; but while the first quatrain had a fresh clause in each line, each with its precise verb (harbour ... keep), this has just one. The whole construction builds to that tremendous disapproval: 'taketh displeasure'.

We're now at the volta, the turning point between the octave and the sestet, and sure enough we get a dramatic development. Love, abashed at the beloved's displeasure, flees 'into the heart's forest' (giving us the millionth pun on heart and 'hart' (deer), the Elizabethan equivalent of rhyming 'love' and 'stars above'). It's a remarkable figuring forth of an internal seizure, the actual experience of turning inwards in shame. (And it reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons, in which Lisa disappoints a suitor on camera: 'Freeze it there,' says Bart. 'You can see the exact moment when his heart breaks!'). 'Pain and cry' is the image of the internal wound, the freeze frame instant where the lover gives up. Wyatt has a cdccdd rhyme going on here, making the sestet a compact merging of triple rhymes. In the last lines Love transmutes again (Love has been a ship, a royal visitor, a herald or king displaying his banner, a hunted quarry), this time into a master whom the lover, faithful servant, must follow even unto death, as Kent follows Lear. The Lover is loyal, and with this stoical virtue, huddled under the bedclothes, a pitiful wreck, he leaves us. The poem is an elaborate game of codes, all based on the court: the visitation, battle campaigns, the accepted code of practice of courtly love, the hunt, the duty of service. All translated into the poetic code of the sonnet, which puts it all togetehr in a little drama of love and rejection. What is remarkable is that through all the elaborateness, the rhymes and alliterations and witty double senses, we do feel something real going on: the poem gets at the psychology of love in a way that reaches beyond the Renaissance community of understanding: love can take over us, be a bore even. It can be martial and predatory - a ship, a herald of war - but it can be awfully embarrassing, too, and, when dismissed, takes us over in self-pity and absurd self-dramatisation. The artifice of the sonnet is a gateway to the genuine.

Milton

When I consider how my light is spent
     Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
     And that one talent which is death to hide
     Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
     My true account, lest he returning chide,
     "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
     I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
     Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
     Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
     And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
     They also serve who only stand and wait."

Wordsworth, "London, 1802"

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Amy Lowell ‘A Fixed Idea’

What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.