The Italian Sonnet

Originally, the Italian sonnet was divided into an octave of eight lines followed by a sestet of six lines. The octave rhymed a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. For the sestet there were two different possibilities, c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced. Typically, the ninth line created a shift, which signaled the change in the topic or tone of the sonnet.

In contrast, the English, or Shakespearean sonnet (named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form, but because he was its most famous practitioner) consists of three quatrains of four lines and a couplet of two lines. The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic shift. This form is seen in much of Claude McKay's poetry, including the poem "America":

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate.

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

This poem follows the usual rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b, c-d-c

Related Essays

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Analyses of 13 Poems The opening line of this .... with fourteen lines. This is an Italian sonnet and does not end in the couplet that a Shakespearian sonnet would. The theme of the .... (2800 11 )

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concern to turn back on one's own past, to recollect one's life in order to narrate it, is not at all universal. The authors of slave narratives certainly had more reason to engage in this activity than most. The public assertion of the self, is one major reason for the relevance of the slave narrative. Though it seems that this is a luxury for most of us, the public assertion of ones self was a matter of life and death for the ex-slave, whose previous social status was in itself a denial of his selfhood. In the slave narrative, the path of the plot obviously leads from slavery to freedom, and the moment of significance is the reacquisition of this selfhood. If for no other reason, the slave's reclamation of himself is an extremely important reason for the relevance of the slave narrative. Some good examples of this genre are Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an African Slave, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. If not for the aforementioned reasons, the importance of the slave narrative seems to rest in the fact that they are a historical record of courage not only for the slave, but as a work of American History. 8. The title work, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow is am

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