Schema: SAT – remember to skim the readings and then read the questions carefully and refer back to the passage.
Petrarch was in class today, sort of. His sonnets are called Italian sonnets and have a different structure than an English sonnet: 14 lines, iambic pentameter, an octave/octet and sestet/sextet, and a rhyme structure of abbaabba (for the octave), and cdcdcd, or cdecde (sestet). The octave starts the conversation with a problem, issue, idea, etc, and the sestet responds. The point the second topic or response begins is called the ‘volta.”
"Scorn Not the Sonnet"
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress wtih which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!
Wm. Wordsworth
Petrarch was in class today, sort of. His sonnets are called Italian sonnets and have a different structure than an English sonnet: 14 lines, iambic pentameter, an octave/octet and sestet/sextet, and a rhyme structure of abbaabba (for the octave), and cdcdcd, or cdecde (sestet). The octave starts the conversation with a problem, issue, idea, etc, and the sestet responds. The point the second topic or response begins is called the ‘volta.”
"Scorn Not the Sonnet"
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress wtih which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!
Wm. Wordsworth
Homework: essay and study for quiz (tomorrow)
1 comment:
Powerful post.
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