Writing Assignment 2

ENG 102 104

Professor Kratz

Assignment Due Tuesday, October 18th

For your second writing assignment, I want you both to write a sonnet, and to write a paragraph reflecting on the process.You’ll be graded on how well you follow the sonnet form (described below), and on how successfully you’veincluded the following devices:

  1. Enjambment
  2. Alliteration
  3. Symbolism
  4. Simile
  5. Participant Narrator

Each of these elements MUST have a purpose in your poem, which you then MUST describe in your paragraph. However, you aren’t limited to using only these devices in your sonnet, nor to discussing only them in your paragraph. The thoughtfulness of your paragraph (which should describe the hurdlesconcerns you encountered fitting your own ideas & words to the sonnet form) will count heavily in your grade.

In most everything you write, you will have to write with care, attention to detail, and with an eye to fitting your language to a form. I want you to use this exercise as practice (albeit extreme). Attend to literal meaning, figurative meaning(imagery, simile, metaphor, symbol, allegory), point-of-view (narration & tone), sound (alliteration, assonance, & rhyme), and form (syntax, line, meter, rhyme scheme, & sonnet structure).Writing with this kind of intention and care—using the samemethods that authors, poets, and playwrights use to achieve their desired ends—will give you better control of the language and ideas in your own writing.

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Closed form poetryfollows a set of rules regarding rhyme scheme, meter, length, and even theme (sonnets are just one kind of closed form poetry). Below I give you information on the sonnet’s larger structure and traditional themes:

Form:

There are three kinds of sonnet: the Shakespearean (English) Sonnet which uses the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg; the Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet which uses the rhyme scheme abbaabbacdecde (or cd cdcd—really, the last six lines can take most any repeating pattern, as long as there is a repeating pattern); and lastly, the Spenserian Sonnet which uses the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg. All sonnets are fourteen lines long (as the rhyme schemes suggest) and use Iambic Pentameter meter.

Now, some more terminology: each four line stanza is called a quatrain; each three line stanza is called a tercet; and each two line stanza is called a couplet.

Theme:

Sonnets are lyrical—that is, from a speaker’s first-person point of view. They are traditionally about love: Petrarch was the first poet to use the form, and wrote his sonnet sequence (or, long series of sonnets) to a woman named Laura. Shakespeare wrote his to a “Dark Woman” as well as a young man—“the master mistress of his soul.” It’s sexy stuff, and is about the writer’s emotional/psychological state: he (usually not she) longs for an unattainable lover, is rebuffed by that lover, is upset at being thus scorned, etc…

Strangely enough, being able to write a good sonnet during the Renaissance (1400-1600 AD) not only made you popular with the ladies, but also a big-man-on-campus at the royal court. It’s how aristocrats showed off, so it’s not necessarily true that the “love” expressed in these poems reflected the author’s own, authentic love for a real woman, but may have just been part of the political game (i.e. my sonnet is longer than yours).

Structure:

Sonnets have two major parts: the Petrarchan is divided between the first two quatrains (or octave) and the second two tercets (or sextet); the English is split before the final couplet(the Spenserian Sonnet is split like the English).At the division, comes what’s called the turn, and it’s called this because it’s where the “plot” typically turns from a problem to the solution. The first half of a sonnet proposes a problem (i.e. how do I get this lady into bed), and the second half solves it (i.e. a nifty poem!). Notice the difference between the Petrarchan and English forms, though: the Petrarchan devotes six lines to a solution, while the English only devotes two. How well do you think these two lines typically solvethe problems that Shakespeare presents—and he has a lot of big ones…?