SONNET (Fr. sonnet, OF., Prov. sonct, song, diminutive of son, sound, song, from Lat. sous, sound). As perfected by the Italian humanists, a stanza of fourteen hendecasyllabic verses, rhyming according to a clearly defined plan. The stanza is divided into two unequal parts. The first part, called the octave, is composed of two quatrains (or four-line strophes). The second part. called the sestet. is composed of two tercets (or three-line strophes). The octave runs on two and the sestet on two or three rhymes. Accord ing to a common type, the rhymes are arranged thus: abbe, abbe, cde, ede. This rhyme-scheme may vary considerably, especially in the sestet. An important point to observe is that the four divisions—particularly the octave and the sestet —are kept distinct. In this most rigid of all metrical forms, the idea, mond. or sentiment of the poet is developed by stages. Stated in the first, the idea is elaborated in the second quat rain; and then. gathering emotional intensity in the first tercet, it flows on full to the conclusion. The result in the hands of the masters is absolute unity. The sonnet was primitively a lyric sung with musical accompaniment. Indeed, the Pro vencal and French poets employed the word son or semi to designate a lyric in the vernacular. It is now generally held that the sonnet orig inated in Sicily. Some philologians. however, find its germ in the Proengaf mbla smIran.
The sonnet, widely cultivated in Italy and Provence during the thirteenth century. assumed its highest art under the hand of Tetrarch (1304-74). The form was also practiced by Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo. Tasso, and many others. From Italy the sonnet spread over Western and Northern Europe. In Spain it was naturalized by Juan Boscan (e.1493-c.1542). Portugal had the great Canoes (q.v.). The form seems to have been introduced into France by Mellin de Saint-Oelais, and at once adopted by his master ]Tarot. It received an immense vogue from the PlCdade. Du Bellay produced nearly two hundred sonnets, and Ronsard more than nine hundred. The fashion, after dying out in the eighteenth century, came in again with the ro mantics. Among recent French adepts in the sonnet are Sully-Prudhomme and H6redia.
The sonnet was introduced into England by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. Their collection, numbering thirty-six altogether, first appeared in 'rottel's Iliseellany under the title &Juges and Sonnetes (1557). Between 1591 and 1597 were published, according to the conserva tive estimate of Sidney Lee. more than two thou
sand English sonnets. Of the vast Elizabethan product, the sonnet-sequences of Sidney, Daniel, Spenser, and Shakespeare stand offf prominently. The Elizabethans did not follow strictly the Pe trarchan type. Spenser and Shakespeare, though logically developing the idea, reduced the sonnet to three quatrains clinched by a final couplet. Nl'ith rich musical effect Spenser interlaced his rhymes thus: abab, Lek% cdcd, cc. Shakespeare further simplified the sonnet by employing a dis tinct set of alternating rhymes in each quatrain. His rhyme-scheme is abut), cdcd, efef, gg. After 1600 the sonnet impulse, though weakened, was still a force. And then came Milton, with his small but grand group. Scholar as he was, he held very closely to the Italian octave, sestet, and rhyme scheme. For a century after Milton, few English sonnets were written, but with the romantic revival the sonnet returned (about 1750), though even Wordsworth. as late as 1827, thought it necessary to defend the form against the critics. Among the great English poets of the nineteenth century who practiced the sonnet, in the Petrarchan, Shakespearean, or some modi fied form, are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Mrs. Browning, and the Rossettis. In Germany, though the sonnet appeared as early as the sev enteenth century, with Weckherlin (1585.1653) and Opitz (1597-1639), it was not much cul tivated till taken up by the romantics and a few poets just preceding them: Burger, A. W. Schlegel. Arnim, Voss, Goethe, Rliekert, Eiehen dorff, Heyse, Geibel, and Redwitz. Consult: Bia dene, "Morfologia del Sonetto," in Stud) di Filo logia leomanz-a (Rome, 1889) ; WeIti. Oeschiehte des Sonettes (Leipzig, 1884) ; Schipper, Grundriss der enylisehen lletrik (Vienna, 1595) ; Tomlin son. The Sonnet, Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry (London, 1S74) ; Corson, A Primer of English Verse (Boston, 1892) ; Theodore de Dan ville, Petit traite de poesie francaise (Paris, 1891) ; Lee, A Life of Shakespeare, containing chapters on Italian, French, and English sonnets (London, 1S98) ; Vaganay, Le sonnet en Italie et en France uu XVIemc siecle (Lyons, 1902) ; Noble, The Sonnet in England (London, 1896) ; Main, A Treasury of English Sonnets (Manches ter, 1880) ; The Book of the Sonnet, edited with essays by L. Hunt and S. A. Lee (Boston, 1867) ; Sonnets of Europe, trans.. ed. by Waddington (London, 1886) ; and Herrick, A Century of Sonnets (New York, 1902).