28/10/2010

THE SONNET
The sonnet is a lyrical form of poetry that means that it is about personal or private feelings and emotions.
The sonnet has been written for the first time in Italy by Petrarch in XIV century and it entered England one century later, during the Renaissance.
At the beginning Thomas Wyatt, the first English sonneteer only translated Italian sonnets (called also Petrarchan sonnets) into English language but then Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey elaborated and adapted them, because English rhythm was different from Italian one.

English rhythm consists of alternation between stressed and unstressed words; the second instead depends on the length of the syllables.
The differences between Petrarchan sonnet and English (Shakespearean or Elizabethan one) are that the first is arranged in an octave and a sestet. In the octave a problem or questions are posed, in the sestet the possible solution is given. The second one consists of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The function of the three quatrains is the same of the italian's octave. Therefore the solution is given only in the rhyming couplet so the reader either can read the poet's solution and the reader could reflect.
But in order to be a sonnet it should have fourteen lines.
The sonnet is not necessarily about love not returned.

Sonnet XVIII or Shall I Compare

The Sonnet number 18 is a Shakespearean sonnet, in fact it is arranged in fourteen lines: three quatrains and a rhyming couplet.
the reader can understand from the title, that is the first line, that the sonnet belongs to a collection moreover this is William Shakespeare's eighteenth sonnet.
In the three quatrains the author tries to make a comparison between a young and the summer (also with the sun: usually when a poet compares something to the sun it means that he compares to something beautiful).
Nobody knows who is the young (the fair youth) whom Shakespeare refers; therefore the reader can understand who is because Shakespeare wrote a letter to somebody with the initials of his name: W.H.
Mr. W.H. seems perfect because in this sonnet Shakespeare compares him with summer, but also summer has got too imperfection to be compared to him.

In the first quatrain are highlighted imperfections of the temperature, in the second one those about the length.
In the third quatrain, instead, the focus on the summer changes and the young becomes the subject. In this part Shakespeare wants to underline that "the fair youth" will become eternal because of his sonnet.