Poets break conventions and enjoy mastering strict rules, seen in traditional sonnet forms such as Petrarchan, Spenserian, and Shakespearean. These forms have 14 lines with strict rhyme schemes and iambic pentameter. The Spenserian sonnet has an intricate rhyme scheme, while the Shakespearean sonnet has more rhyming pairs. The curtal and Pushkin sonnet forms are variations of the traditional sonnet.
Poets are interesting creatures. On the one hand, they are likely to get on the other side of the conventional fence. They look at the world differently than more conservative individuals and question everything. On the other hand, they take enormous pleasure in inventing and mastering very strict poetic rules and regulations and then breaking those rules in unexpected ways. Sonnet forms including the Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and Spenserian have produced descendants such as the Curtal and Pushkin sonnet forms.
All traditional sonnets contained a total of fourteen poetic lines which were woven together with a series of rhyme schemes. These traditional shapes were also tightly contained by lines measured in five beats, called pentameters. The words themselves were strung together in such a way that the stress fell on every other syllable, meaning that each line began with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Interestingly, differences in how rhymes were organized produced very different effects.
The first type of sonnet was made in Italy and polished to perfection by Francesco Petrarca, called Petrarch by the English. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet brings together the first eight lines of the iambic pentameter, called octave, and assigns them an arrangement in rhyme ABBAABBA. The sextet, or last six lines, introduce three new sets of rhymes which may be arranged in the form CDECDE, CDEECD or some other way. The rigidity of the octave with its limited number of rhymes and absolute configuration is balanced in the relative freedom of the sextet.
The Spensarian sonnet is one of the sonnet forms popularized by English writers. Although it too is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, the flow and structure of the rhyming pairs are vastly different. Petrarchan sonnets force a separation between the octave and the sextet, which results in a volta, or change, of subject from one stanza to another. Spenserian sonnets, by contrast, produce an intricate, interwoven sense by arranging rhymes as ABABBCBCCDCDEE. There is a connection between each set of four lines in that the next line echoes the previous one; this sonnet form also introduces a two-line coda, in this case a couplet.
The Shakespearean sonnet is the least rigid of the traditional sonnet forms. Also called an English sonnet, this version organizes the poem into three groups of four rhyming iambic pentameter lines that rhyme ABABCDCDEFEF. These twelve lines are followed by a rhyming couplet of two lines, GG. With more rhyming pairs, the opportunity to introduce more ideas becomes easier.
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins created the curtal as a challenge based on Petrarch’s sonnet. Among sonnet forms, this complex version is essentially three-quarters of an Italian sonnet with fewer lines and reversed accents. The Pushkin sonnet, or onegin, is written in iambic trameter, which gives it shorter lines and alternates between male and female endings that alternate back and forth accents, giving the poem a galloping quality.
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