Last updated on July 27th, 2024 at 01:32 pm
CLASS: SENIOR FOUR
CONTENTS
UNIT 1: REVIEW THE KEY ASPECTS OF PROSE
UNIT 2: INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
UNIT 3: LITERARY TECHNIQUES IN NOVELS
UNIT 4: THEMES AND MESSAGES IN A NOVEL
UNIT 5: HAIKU AND TANKA
UNIT 6: SONNET AND RHYME
UNIT 7: EPIGRAMS
UNIT 8: DIFFERENT FORMS OF DRAMA
UNIT 9: KEY ASPECTS OF DRAMA
UNIT 10: PERIODS OF AFRICAN DRAMA
…………………………………………………………
UNIT VI: SONNET AND RHYME
VI.1. SONNET
The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (“little song”, derived from the Latin word sonus, meaning a sound). By the 13th century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a very strict rhyme scheme and structure.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem/a poem of fourteen lines with regular rhythm and rhyme. This poem usually has a single theme with a standard or a fixed, rhyme pattern. Sonnets can explore all types of themes. However, love is the most common in sonnets.
Example: Teenage Love by Mohammed Adel
Why should we be in love though it’ll end?
And we both know so, so why should we start?
Knowing that our feelings and time in vain spent?
And we gain nothing but the aching of the heart
It is a matter of time till our parting
I think we should better not commence
A journey that has a joyful starting
But shortly in sadness and tears ends
Stop using your heart and use your mind
For the heart sometimes be so reckless
Think of our alleged love and you shall find
That our exertions will be worthless
Teenage love shall give us nothing but pain
And we may love each other, but in vain.
There are two types of sonnets: Shakespearean or English which is made of three stanzas, each has four lines (quatrain) and a final stanza made up of two lines (couplet). The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The second one is Petrarchan or Italian with an eight-line section (Octave) followed by a six-line section (sestet). Its rhyme scheme is either ABBAABBA (the first eight lines) and CDECDE or CDCDCD (the last six lines).
For example, the poem “The Negro’s Tragedy” has the following rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFEF GG which makes it a Shakespearean sonnet. On the other hand, the poem “In Some Ways” has the following rhyme scheme: ABBAABBACDECDE which makes it a Petrarchan sonnet.
a. Shakespearean sonnet
The Negro’s Tragedy by Claude Mckay
It is the Negro’s tragedy I feel A
Which binds me like a heavy iron chain B
It is the Negro’s wounds I want to heal A
Because I know the keenness of his pain B
Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no white C
Can penetrate into the Negro’s ken D
Or feel the thickness of the shroud of night C
Which hides and buries him from other men D
So what I write is urged out of my blood E
There is no white who could write my book F
Though many think their story should be told E
Of what the Negro people ought to brook. F
Our statesmen roam the world to set things right. G
This Negro laughs and praise to God for light! G
b. Petrarchan sonnet
In Some Ways by Gert Strydom
In some ways the world we live in A
is no different from the world in Christ’s day. B
Today just like in the time of Rome people dance and play B
and chase after pleasure and sin, A
try at almost any cost to win, A
do each other mock and betray, B
are set on monetary value come what may B
and without thought with the next evil we do begin” A
while some people live by human laws, C
believe that the word of God is an outmoded tale D
and do make own specific rules E
as if an omnipotent God is full of flaws C
and yet in life they do not prevail D
while they act like renegades and self-centred fools. E
Petrarchan sonnet or The Italian Sonnet
According to Christopher Blum, during the Renaissance, the sonnet was the “choice mode of expressing romantic love.” As the sonnet form has spread to languages other than Italian, however, conventions have changed considerably and any subject is now considered acceptable for writers of sonnets.
A sonnet is a poetic form which originated in the Italian poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Palermo, Sicily. In 13th century, Giacomo da Lentini, the poet, notary, and head of the Sicilian School, is credited with the invention of sonnets for expressing courtly love. The Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him at the Emperor’s Court are credited with its spread.
Although the form of poetry is said to have been invented by Giacomo da Lentini, it was popularized by a poet from Tuscany named Francesco Petrarch, who used this form to write poems expressing his unrequited (not reciprocated) love for a woman named Laura. The original form of the Italian sonnet is therefore known as the Petrarchan sonnet. Consisting of fourteen lines total, the poem begins with two quatrains (stanzas of four lines) that make up a unit called an octave, and the poem ends with two tercets (stanzas of three lines) that make up a single six-line stanza called a sestet.
Example:
Ye who in rhymes dispersed the echoes hear A
Of those sad sighs with which my heart I fed B
When early youth my mazy wanderings led, B
Fondly different from what I now appear, A
Fluttering ‘twixt frantic hope and frantic fear, A
from those by whom my various style is read, B
I hope, if e’er their hearts for love have bled, B
Not only pardon, but perhaps a tear. A
But now I clearly see that of mankind C
Long time I was the tale: whence bitter thought D
And self-reproach with frequent blushes teem; E
While of my frenzy, shame the fruit I find, C
And sad repentance, and the proof, dear- bought, D
That the world’s joy is but a flitting dream. E
Shakespearean or The English Sonnet
The English poet Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet to the English language in the 16th century by translating the works of Petrarch from Italian. Wyatt’s contemporary, The Earl of Surrey, then made innovations to the form by introducing a new structure and rhyme scheme, which became the defining characteristics of the English sonnet: the fourteen lines are all written in iambic pentameter and are taken up by three quatrains of four lines followed by a two-line couplet. The lines follow the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
In the English sonnet, the turn typically occurs in the third quatrain, but William Shakespeare broke from this rule by frequently situating the turn in the final couplet of his sonnets. In fact, Shakespeare quickly became the English sonnet’s most venerated practitioner, and the English sonnet is often referred to as the Shakespearean sonnet as a result. The English sonnet is sometimes also referred to as the Elizabethan sonnet. This famous example by Shakespeare follows the typical rhyme scheme of the English sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. In this case, Shakespeare places the turn in the usual location, in the sonnet’s ninth line: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”
Example: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
VI.2. RHYME
When we read a poem, we sometimes notice that the last word in a line has the same vowel sound as the word in the following line. It could even be more than one other line. When this happens, we say the words rhyme. Thus we can say a rhyme is the matching of sounds in words at the end of lines of a poem.
Example: Teenage Love by Mohammed Adel
Why should we be in love though it’ll end?
And we both know so, so why should we start?
Knowing that our feelings and time in vain spent?
And we gain nothing but the aching of the heart
It is a matter of time till our parting
I think we should better not commence
A journey that has a joyful starting
But shortly in sadness and tears ends
Stop using your heart and use your mind
For the heart sometimes be so reckless
Think of our alleged love and you shall find
That our exertions will be worthless
Teenage love shall give us nothing but pain
And we may love each other, but in vain.
Types of rhymes
Rhyme can be masculine or feminine. It is masculine when the rhyming words are monosyllabic. Monosyllabic means they have one syllable. If for example the words are ‘ate’ and ‘bate’, ‘old’ and ‘fold’, we say these are masculine rhymes. On the other hand, feminine rhyme occurs when the rhyming words are polysyllabic. Polysyllabic means they have more than one syllable.
Example1: Africa by R.E.G Armattoe
I once saw a maiden dark and comely, a
sitting by the wayside, sad and lonely. a
Oh! Pretty maiden, so dark and comely, a
Why sit by the wayside, sad and lonely? a
“I am neither sad nor lonely,” she said, b
“But living, sir, among the deaf and the dumb; c
Relentlessly watching these shameless dead, b
Makes my warm heart grow very cold and numb.” c
The letters of the alphabet have been used to show which words rhyme. ‘Comely’ rhymes with ‘lonely’. ‘Said’ rhymes with ‘dead’, and ‘dumb’ with ‘numb’. When we do this we say we are describing the rhyme scheme of the poem. We use the letters of the alphabet to show the sounds that rhyme. Therefore, the rhyme scheme of this poem is aaaabcbc.
‘Comely’ and ‘lonely’ are feminine rhymes, while ‘numb’ and ‘dumb’ are masculine rhymes.
Example2:
The Imprisonment of Obatala by J. P Clark
Those stick-insect fingers! They rock the dance
Of snakes, dart after His daddy-long arms,
Tangle their loping strides to mangrove stance
And He, roped in the tightening pit alarms
Dangles in his front, full length,
Invincible limbs cramped by love of their strength.
The above poem has a rhyme scheme of – ABABCC. It includes masculine rhymes (dance, stance, length, strength, arms) and a feminine rhyme (alarms). Though, ‘arms’ and ‘alarms’ rhyme, ‘arms’ is a masculine rhyme and ‘alarms’ is a feminine rhyme.
Masculine rhyme
Masculine rhyme, also known as single rhyme, refers to a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of a poem. It is the most commonly used. In the below, the rhyme scheme is as follows: aa bb cd dc. Similar rhyme is assigned the same letter. For example, the first and second lines have a similar rhyme, hence they are assigned aa.
Example: Lecture upon the Shadow by John Donne
Stand still and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in love’s philosophy
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went,
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But now the sun is just above our head
We do those shadows tread
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
Feminine rhyme
Feminine rhyme is also commonly known as double rhyme. It is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed. This kind of rhyme is relatively rare.
Example: Sonnet Number 20 by William Shakespeare
A woman’s face with nature’s
Own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master
Mistress of my passion
A woman’s gentle heart,
But not acquainted with shifting change,
As is false women’s fashion
But since she prick’d thee
Out for women’s pleasure
Mine be thy love
And thy love’s use their treasure
Rhyme in the above poem occurs in the following sounds: pain-ted/quain-ted, pass-ion/fash-ion, plea-sure/trea-sure. Feminine rhymes often occur internally. This means they don’t always appear as endings of a line in each stanza but in random words within a given line.
Importance of rhyme
Rhyme has several uses in a poem.
→When words rhyme, they create beauty and a sense of completeness. In the poem, “Africa” by R.E.G Armattoe, ‘numb’ and ‘dumb’ rhyme, the idea of the lady becoming totally unfeeling becomes complete. She keeps the company of people who can’t hear or talk. It looks as if this is something they have chosen for themselves and that is why she says they are shameless. This makes her lose all warmth and life. It is not a wonder that though she is ‘comely’ she is ‘lonely’.
→Rhyme also makes the words that rhyme stand out. For instance, ‘comely’ and ‘lonely’ stand out. They emphasize the contrast in the poem. You would certainly expect a beautiful lady to have beautiful company, but we are told she is all alone.
→Rhyme can help focus on the meaning of the poem. For example, the words ‘numb’, ‘lonely’ and ‘dumb’ are important in expressing the meaning of the poem. The maiden’s sadness and loneliness comes from the fact that she is in the midst of people who seem incapable of speaking for themselves. Figuratively, Africa is a continent of a people who are voiceless, perhaps out of choice.
→Rhyme may also be used as a way of making fun or making light of a situation. For instance:
It’s clear she ate not, they said
For many years none she fed
So here she lay sadly so dead
In this extract from a poem, the poet makes light of a very sad situation where someone has starved to death, almost making it look funny.
It is important to note that rhyme is one way in which a poet can create atmosphere in a poem. Atmosphere refers to emotions and feelings in a poem. The poet also uses setting, meaning the time and place of the poem, to create the atmosphere. The atmosphere can also be created using any imagery. Imagery are words that create mental pictures in the mind of the reader. Atmosphere can be tense, calm, chaotic, uncertain, unfriendly and so on.
TYPES OF SONNETS AND THEIR RHYME SCHEMES
There are two types of sonnets. These are:
a. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet;
b. The Shakespearean or English sonnet.
Sonnets are usually characterized by their country of origin or the poet and the rhyme scheme they use.
Poets create sonnets in two ways:
a. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet
The first way of creating a sonnet is when they start with an eight-line section followed by a six-line section. The first part is called an octave. The second part is called a sestet. This type of a sonnet is referred to as a Petrarchan. In this poem, a poet can develop an argument easily. The first part of the poem will develop the argument and the sestet will give the conclusion. Usually the sestet could start with words such as ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘thus’, ‘so’, ‘but’, ‘for’ or ‘then’.
Example: Italian Sonnet by James Deford
Turn back the heart you’ve turned away (Octave)
Leave not my love as you have left
The broken hearts of yesterday
But wait, be still, don’t lose this way
Give back your kissing breath
Affection now, for what you guess
May be something more, could be less
Accept my love, live for today
Your roses wilted, as love spurned (Sestet)
Yet trust in me, my love and truth
Dwell in my heart, from which you’ve turned
My strength as great as yours aloof
It is in fear you turn away
And miss the chance of love today!
The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet was introduced by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. Hence similar sonnets by Petrarch and other poets were then called Petrarchan or Italian sonnets. Italian sonnets consist of an octave (the first eight lines) rhyming abbaabba and a sestet (the last six lines) rhyming in either cdecde or cdcdcd.
The beginning of the sestet marks the volta, or turn, in the sonnet. Often, the octave presents an argument or a problem. In the poem above, the poet is trying to convince someone beloved to him or her not to abandon their relationship but instead give it a chance. The poet warns the beloved that he or she should appreciate the love present instead of anticipating something better that may never happen.
It is the sestet that answers the question on whether the beloved stayed or left. From line nine, it is clear the beloved left and suffered the consequences: ‘Your roses wilted’. Yet, the persona is steadfast in his or her love for the beloved. In line 11, the persona says: ‘dwell in my heart from which you’ve turned.’ The sestet, therefore, presents an answer or a counter-argument to a problem presented in the octave.
b. The English sonnet or Shakespearean
The second way of creating a sonnet is to create a poem with three stanzas, each made up of four lines, and a final stanza made up of two lines. The first type of stanza is called a quatrain. The second type is called a couplet. A quatrain is a four-line stanza, while a couplet is a two-line stanza.
A sonnet with three quatrains and a couplet is called a Shakespearean sonnet. In this type of a sonnet, the poet can develop an argument in the quatrains and then use the couplet to conclude it. The poet may also present an argument in the first quatrain, give variations in this argument in the following two quatrains and then use the couplet to give the conclusion.
A poet can also build a picture in the first twelve lines and then use the couplet to agree or disagree, or to change the picture in a certain way.
Example: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often in his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The Shakespearean or English sonnet was popularized by famous poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. This poem consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a couplet (two-line stanza) with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.
In a Shakespearean sonnet, the volta (the turn) usually begins at line nine. This is when the mood of the poem changes and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.
In the poem above, the poet talks of time and seasons. The persona agrees that everything in this life blooms and withers at specific times, ‘summer comes and goes’, ‘the sun shines bright and at other times it is dimmed’. However, there is a change in line nine ‘…but thy eternal summer shall not fade’.
The poem is a typical Shakespearean poem where the persona declares his eternal love to his beloved. The poem then takes a shift from line nine where the poet contradicts his earlier belief that nothing is permanent. This is what is referred to as the volta or the turn.
POETIC DEVICES IN POETRY
Different poetic devices are used to make a poem more interesting and therefore musical and memorable. Poets create rhythm in their poems. This enhances meaning and intensifies mood. Below is a list of the most commonly used poetic devices in a sonnet:
→Simile is an indirect comparison used to describe things, situations or persons. A simile will make use of the words ‘as’ or ‘like’. Example: ‘… they inhabit the room like inert gas’
→Metaphor is a direct comparison. Unlike a simile, it does not use the words ‘as’ or ‘like’.
→Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. Example: ‘…. a lecture, love, in love’s philosophy’
→Assonance refers to the repetition of vowel sounds usually in the middle of a word. Example: ‘batter that mattered’
→Consonance is similar to alliteration but the consonants are at the end of the words, while alliteration is at the beginning of words. Example: “try at almost any cost to win”
→Onomatopoeia describes the use of words that sound like their meanings or imitation of sounds. Example: “the bees were buzzing”
→Repetition − this is the repeating of words, phrases, or lines. Repetition is used to enhance rhythm and create emphasis.
Example: … so long as men can breathe
… so long lives this
→Idiophone: This is a word which may not suggest any specific meaning, but is suggestive of a sound or a feeling given by something. Example: ‘kru, kru, kru!’ the farmer called his chickens, ‘ouch’, ‘yummy’, yuck’.
→Symbolism: This is something that is used to stand in for something else. It points out to a reality beyond itself. ‘Dawn’ may signify the beginning of life. We said the seasons of the year can signify stages in human life. The national flag is a symbol of national unity and nationhood, and its parts signify the different aspects of this nationhood. A ‘river’ can also signify life.
→Hyperbole: This is a deliberate exaggeration.
Example
I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
→Metre: This is a regular rhythm of poetic lines that is created by a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllable. A recurring unit of stressed and unstressed syllable is called a foot. A line can have:
- Monometer − one foot
- Dimeter − two feet
- Trimester− three feet
- Tetrameter − five feet
- Pentameter− five feet
- Hexameter− six feet
- Heptameter− seven feet
- Octameter− eight feet
→Personification: This is when a non-human object or quality is given human qualities. We can for example say, “The trees were dancing in the wind” or “Courage slapped him on his face, forcing him to confront the monster that stood in front of him”.
→Allusion: This is a reference to another book, an event, a person or a place. The reference is indirect, or only implied.
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