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AP® English Literature and Composition · Fixed Forms: Closed, Open, and What the Form Itself Argues

3.C The Petrarchan and Spenserian Sonnets

The Petrarchan sonnet splits fourteen lines into an eight-line problem and a six-line answer, while the Spenserian sonnet links its three quatrains by rhyme into one continuous argument that only breaks for the final couplet.

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A Petrarchan sonnet divides 8 against 6: an octave rhyming ABBAABBA sets out a difficulty, a tension, a question, and the sestet, usually CDECDE or some variation, answers it. The division is not arbitrary. Eight lines give a problem room to build complexity before anything has to resolve. Six lines give the answer room to reason its way through, not just state a verdict. That is why the hinge, called the turn or volta, usually lands right at line 9: everything before argued the trouble, everything after argues the response.

The Spenserian sonnet, built by Edmund Spenser, keeps the English frame of three quatrains and a couplet but refuses to let each quatrain stand alone. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE: the B rhyme that closes quatrain one opens quatrain two, and the C rhyme that closes quatrain two opens quatrain three. Each unit inherits a sound from the one before it, so the poem feels like one argument developing in linked stages rather than three separate observations. An ordinary English sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, gives each quatrain its own rhymes, so each can pose a fresh angle on the subject before the couplet snaps the whole thing shut.

Set these next to each other and you see two different machines for building an argument. Octave-and-sestet argues in two large movements, problem then answer, with the weight split 8-6. Three-quatrains-and-couplet, whether chained like Spenser's or separate like Shakespeare's, argues in smaller steps that a final couplet twists or seals. Neither shape is just decoration. Each one commits the poem to a certain way of thinking before a single word is written.

Key terms

Octave
The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, rhyming ABBAABBA, which set out a problem or tension.
Sestet
The final six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, which answer or respond to the octave's problem.
Volta
The turn in a sonnet where the argument shifts, typically at line 9 in a Petrarchan sonnet.
Spenserian sonnet
A sonnet form by Edmund Spenser using interlocking rhyme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE across its three quatrains.
Rhyme chain
The linking of one quatrain's rhyme sound into the next quatrain's scheme, as in the Spenserian sonnet.

Watch it explained

  1. How it worksHow does the octave pose a problem that the sestet has to answer?
  2. How it worksHow does the Spenserian scheme chain each quatrain's rhyme into the next one?
  3. Worked exampleCompare the rhyme chains of a Spenserian sonnet with the separate quatrains of an English one.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't every fourteen-line poem a sonnet?
  5. Ties togetherHow does an octave and sestet argue differently from three quatrains and a couplet?

Check yourself

Your turneasy1 of 3
The first eight lines of a sonnet set out a difficulty: the speaker has been offered a place 294 miles away and cannot take it while his mother lives. The ninth line begins 'Yet —' and the last six lines describe the 7 letters he has written to the employer and never sent. What is the relation between the two parts?

End of topic.

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