Some of the major authors covered here have their own journals, which are further scholarly resources. Although the Shakespearean sonnet does not maintain so obvious a formal division between octave and sestet, nonetheless the same kind of transitional move may be observed. The transitional point between the two, that is, the move from line 8 to line 9, is known as the volta or turn. The Petrarchan sonnet maintains an interesting division between the octave and the sestet, and usually the sestet develops or varies a statement made in the octave.
In other words, the sestet is disguised in the Shakespearean sonnet form. The Shakespearean order is of three quatrains of varying rhyme followed by a final couplet. (Although Shakespeare made his version famous, he did not in fact invent it that was largely Surrey’s doing.) In Petrarch, these rhyme abba abba in the octave and variously as cde cde or cde dce, and so on, in the sestet. We may further distinguish between the shape and ordering of the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean sonnet. The exact division of 7/7 is in fact an unwieldy combination: seven lines give limited flexibility, whereas eight lines divide neatly into two quatrains equally, six lines divide into two tercets. Petrarch’s predilection for fourteen lines makes perfect sense if you think how a short poem may best be divided into two parts. In English, the line length is ten syllables in iambic pentameter, corresponding to the Italian hendecasyllabic (eleven-syllable) form. Why fourteen lines? It is not just a question of the number of lines it is also a matter of their length and order. It means simply “little sound” or “song” ( sonetto) in Italian. The name sonnet gives no indication as to its form or appearance. However, 317 of the 366 poems making up the collection are sonnets, and they develop the theme of Petrarch’s love for Laura. Petrarch interspersed his famous Canzoniere (loosely translated as song book) with other lyric forms, principally the canzone, but with the sestina and ballata also. Petrarch famously perfected the art of the sequence, though the description “sonnet sequence” is slightly inaccurate. Giacomo da Lentini is credited with being the first poet to write the fourteen-line sonnet, but it was his Italian compatriot Francesco Petrarca (or Petrarch) who became its most celebrated and inspiring practitioner. Although our brief here is to concentrate on the fortunes and achievements of the sonnet (and sonnet sequences) in Renaissance England, it is necessary to look first to its antecedents abroad, particularly in Italy.
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