ఎస్సీ ఆన్ ది హిస్టరీ అండ్ క్రితిసిస్మ్స్ అఫ్ ది SONNET

The sonnet has a long period of history in its development, form, style and theme. The term sonnet is believed to have originated from an Italian and sonnetto, which also has its origin from the Old Provencan term sonet. The latter is in turn said to have developed from a Latin word sonus or son, meaning a little or short tune or song (usually about love).

The sonnet is however noted to have been composed first as an avenue to find a perfect form or style for writing or expressing one’s feelings. In that, the first sonnet was written by Giacomo da Lentini of Italy in 1200’s, whose form and style are similar to the one by Petrarch at a latter period. After Giacomo da Lentini came a Tuscan poet, Guittone d’Arezzo, who composed at least 300 sonnets of his own between 1235 and 1294. However, the sonnet came to be a hot cake in Italy , when Francisco Petrarca (Petrarch in English) started writing his in 1300’s. He wrote 312 sonnets, and thus was credited to be the greatest Italian sonneteer, though he might seem to have borrowed the form and style earlier on invented by Giacomo. Both Giacomo’s and Petrarcha’s sonnets have the octet, rhyming abab abab (later abba abba) and the sestet rhyming variantly in cde cde, cdc dcd cce dde or cde cde. The Italian or Petrachan sonnet was iambic hexameter or Alexandrine metrical outline common in Italy and French then. The sonnet presents a proposition (or a problem) in the octet (also the first stanza) while in the sestet (also the second stanza) suggests an explanation (or a solution). In contrast, the sonnet landed in England from Italy through the efforts of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (who became the first to develop the blank verse in his poetry). The duo did not deviate from the style and form as developed by the Italian Sonneteers but only that their sonnets were expressed in English. But in the late 1500’s and the start of 1600’s, the English sonnet developed a new style, form and theme of writing as different from its Italian counterpart. William Shakespeare was the greatest of the English Sonneteers, having written 154 sonnets, though he was regarded as a charlatan in his own time. However, the Shakespearean sonnet, credited in honor of its heroic writer, has many themes other than love, as seen in the Italian sonnet. Shakespeare was the first English sonneteer to have employed this pattern. During the Elizabethan period or perhaps in the Renaissance time in England , the English sonnet reached its apogee in that all sonnets written during the period were classed as the Elizabethan/English Renaissance sonnet. Many English sonneteers emerged. Notable among them were William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne and Edmund Spenser. The last three sonneteers had their peculiar styles: Milton developed a meditative style; Donne employed a religious theme while Spenser used an inter-stanza abab babc cdcd ee unlike the Shakespearean one, whose rhyme pattern has abab cdcd efef gg. The Spenserian sonnet, apart from having three quatrains and a couplet, it also combine the Italian sonnet pattern of proposing a problem in the quatrains while explaining or solving it in the couplet. Generally speaking, however, the English sonnet has three quatrains and a (rhyming or heroic) couplet. The couplet presents a volta, that is, a u-turn in tone, style or theme.

The sonnet is however a lyrical fourteen line, patterned according to some strict rules. This view on the sonnet is classical, traditional and thus, popular among the English/Shakespearean and the Italian/Petrarchan sonneteers as history has shown. These two famous classical or traditional sonnets vary greatest according to style, form and theme. However, modern and contemporary sonneteers in the like of Gerard Manley Hopkin, William B. Yeats, Robert Frost and E.E. Lummings combine two basic forms (the English and the Italian sonnet) to suit the poetic traditions. For instance, I can say that Frost’s Acquainted with the Night has four tercets (instead of the normal three quatrains) and a rhyming couplet, patterned according to aba, cdc, efe, fgf, ii of five stanzas, it is also written in terza rima, meaning a rhyme pattern that commonly suggests a continual progression. Frost is also famous for writing fifteen line sonnets. The sonnet, to me, in our contemporary times is any fourteen line poem which may or may not conform to any fixed pattern, notwithstanding. I do not preach that a sonnet should not have a decasyllabic or octasyllabic iambic/trochaic pentameter/hexameter as shown in the classical or in some modern days’ sonnets. But I am arguing that any fourteen Iine poem should be welcomed as a sonnet inasmuch as it brings out the linguistic system of any culture or the poetic choice of the writer. The English sonnet writers in the renaissance days varied their styles and themes when they found out that their language (English) system did not have enough rhyming words as could be seen in the Italian language. In the same way, Dennis Brutus’ The Sun on this Rubble is a fourteen live poem, and based on this new form abccddd efe ijaa, it is a sonnet. The poem centres on the theme of racial discrimination in the then apartheid South African society. This poem justifies my reason that every sonnet varies according to the poetic needs of the writer. Writing sonnet should be seen as a free (or if you like a fixed) method to express one’s emotional outbursts or physical experiences in a fourteen live form. And that is one reason why I wrote some sonnets in my unpublished works The Small Still Voice and Voice Within to justify my claim on the sonnet, even though my citics may seem to disagree with me on the basis that not all fourteen line poems are sonnets. Similarity, since today’s world is undergoing some progressive changes which give humans freedom to exploit heir creative abilities to help sustain the society meaningfully, a good measure should be given to the writing of a fourteen line poem as a sonnet to avoid making the form (the sonnet) going into extinction as it was during the restoration period. Finding rhyming words, at times, imposes restrictions on one’s free creative ability in writing a sonnet, and therefore, depriving one the right to express one’s poetic feelings in a form or style that suit oneself.

I conclude my view on the writing of sonnets by saying that if we think that every fourteen line poem MUST agree to any strict rule before it will be accepted a sonnet, therefore, we must stand upright to condemn the sonnets supposedly written by many English sonneteers who equally developed their own style of writing and did not follow the pattern as laid down by the Italian sonneteers who originated it.



Works for Further Reading :



1. Dennis Brutus’ The Sun on this Rubble in Nwachukwu-Agbada J. at el (2005), Exam Focus: Literature-in-English 2006-2010 for WASSCE. Ibadan : University Press PLC.



2. Robert DYanni (5th ed, 2002), Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. New York : McGraw-Hill Higher Education.



3. Krisc Ononukwe’s Voice Within (Unpublished poetry work)



4.__________ . The Small Still Voice (Unpublished poetry work)



5. Sonnet-Wikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia@en.wikipediaorg/wiki/sonnet



6. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (4th ed, 2007), Harlow Essex: Pearson Education Limited.



7. Obi Maduakor’s Five Modern African Poems: J.P. Clark, Kofi Awoonor, Dennis Brutus, Wole Soyinka and Leopold Senghor in Emmanuel Obiechina (1982). Literature for WAEC 1981-84. Nsukka: Okike Educational Supplement.

8. N.F. Inyama, John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud (Pp.88) in Emmanuel Obiechina (1982). Literature for WAEC 1981-84. Nsukka: Okike Educational Supplement.