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The Sonnet Forms in Poets Biography & Poetry Resource Directory

A lyric poem of fourteen lines, following one or another of several set rhymeschemes. Critics of the sonnet have recognized varying classifications, but to all essential purposes two types only need be discussed ff the student will understand that each of these two, in turn, has undergone various modifications by experimenters. The two characteristic sonnet types are the Italian Petrarchan and the English Shakespearean. The first, the Italian form, is distinguished by its bipartite division into the octave and the sestet: the octave consisting of a first division of eight lines rhyming abbaabba and the sestet, or second division, consisting of six lines rhyming cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.

Website: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html