how would you describe a shakespearean sonnet?

Question

summarise a shakespearean sonnet please.

it is for my younger sister as she needs homework help!

Answer 1

can I compare thee to a summers day....

its a love poem.

Italy was the birth place of the Renainnence, and he word Sonnet comes from the Italian word "sonetto," - meaning "little song". The Renaissence in England was in Litrature, not painting or sculpture.

By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and logical structure. The conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history.

Traditionally, when writing sonnets, English poets usually employ iambic pentameter. In the Romance languages (French, Spanish and Italian), the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used metres.

The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, used this Italian scheme, as did sonnets by later English poets including John Milton, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet. Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophil and Stella (1591) started a tremendous vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others.These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; the exception is Shakespeare's sequence.

Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, and mortality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets were written over a number of years, probably beginning in the early 1590s.

The conditions under which the sonnets were published are unclear. The 1609 text is dedicated to one "Mr. W.H.", who is described as "the only begetter" of the poems in the dedication. It is unknown if the dedication was written by Shakespeare or Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. It is also unknown who this man was, although there are many theories, including those who believe him to be the young man featured in the sonnets.[1] In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the sonnets was even authorised by Shakespeare.

Answer 2

Describe A Sonnet

Answer 3

I've always regarded Shakespear's Sonnets as not being dissimilar to the 'Parables' found within the 'Bible': i.e both try to portray an occasion/event/emotion/description/reason etc.etc.
by using more exciting or colourful language to emphasise a situation or happening.

Answer 4

Look at this site
http://www.english.ilstu.edu/students/ckerick/Repurposing/sonnet/definition.htm

Answer 5

boring