I. Definition of the Form

• Laura's Sonnet Handout for Wed. 9/17
• Reading Questions for Wed. 9/17/97

II. A HISTORY OF SONNETS:

A. THE EARLY PERIOD:

1. Origins of the Sonnet
2. To frind poetic resources on a subject in Renaissance Poetry see the Cahiers Elisabethans Subject Index (click on the letter of the alphabet which corresponds to the subject you want to research).
3. Petrarch
   • An essay on " The Shift Away from Pure Petrarchism in the Sonnets of Ronsard and du Bellay" (James H. Wyman, 1993, Independent Scholar)
   • Early Sonnets and Gender
     1. From Tuscan came my lady's worthy race (HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517?-1547): an "English equivalent of Dante and Beatrice or of Petrarch and Laura")
     2. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: XV (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586): also based on Petrarch and Laura
4. Sir Thomas Wyatt--the Sonnet Enters English
   • My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness (tr. from Petrarch)
   • Alas Madam for Stealing of a Kiss
   • Avising the Bright Beams
   • Farewell Love and all thy Laws for ever
   • The Heart and Service
   • I Abide and Abide and Better Abide
   • I Find no Peace
   • In Spain
   • Is it Possible
   • The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour
   • The Lover Beseecheth his Mistress
   • The Lover Having Dreamed Enjoying of His Love
   • Madam, withouten many Words
   • My Galley, Charged with Forgetfulness
   • My Lute Awake
   • Of the Mean and Sure Estate
   • Satire I
   • Since ye so Please
   • They flee from me that Sometime did me Seek
   • Unstable Dream
   • What Needeth these Threat'ning Words
   • What should I Say
   • Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind
   • And Wilt thou Leave me Thus?
   • Ye Old Mule
5. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517?-1547)
   • Love that doth reign and live within my thought
6. Sir Philip Sydney
   • "Gender and Genre in the Sonnet Sequences of Philip Sidney and Mary Wroth" (Jennifer Laws; University of Otago, Department of English: Deep South v.2 n.1 [Autumn, 1996]
7. Shakespeare

B. THE MIDDLE PERIOD: Sonnets by Romantic Poets (late 18th-early 19th Century British):

1. THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771), "SONNET [ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD WEST]."

2. CHARLOTTE TURNER SMITH (1746-1809), from ELEGIAC SONNETS AND OTHER

POEMS (1784-1797).

3. HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS (1762-1827), "TO TWILIGHT."

4. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), "SONNET ON SEEING MISS HELEN MARIA

WILLIAMS WEEP AT A TALE OF DISTRESS."

5. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES, "TO THE RIVER ITCHIN"

6. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "TO THE RIVER OTTER" AND

"INTRODUCTION" TO *SONNETS, ATTEMPTED IN THE MANNER OF REV. W. L. BOWLES, PP. 71-74 (SELECTIONS).

7. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), "NUNS FRET NOT" AND "SCORN NOT THE

SONNET"

8. JOHN KEATS, "ON THE SONNET"

9. CHARLOTTE TURNER SMITH (1746-1809), SONNET LXXVI: "TO A YOUNG MAN

ENTERING THE WORLD"

10. MARY ROBINSON (1758-1800), "SONNET: TO LIBERTY"

11. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), "I GRIEVED FOR BUONAPARTE" AND

"COMPOSED ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE"

12. PERCY SHELLEY (1792-1822), "TO WORDSWORTH" AND "ENGLAND IN 1819".

13. PERCY SHELLEY AND HORACE SMITH, "OZYMANDIUS" AND "On a Stupendous Leg

of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the

Inscription Inserted Below"

III. An Exercise with Form:

Compare this Haiku and Sonnet on the Holocaust by William Heyen. What difference does it make to write in a sonnet rather than a haiku and why do you think Heyen chose these forms? How is form related to ethnicity?