Writing Assignment:

Original Sonnet

For several weeks now, we have been reading sixteenth-century English sonnets.

For class on Thursday, October 21, you will compose a sonnet of your own.

The topic of your sonnet is completely up to you.

In form, your sonnet should be traditional.

It should be fourteen lines long.

Its rhyme scheme shoul be either in the "Italian" model or in the "English" model.

The "Italian" sonnet has two rhymes in the first eight lines in the pattern:

abba abba

and two or three rhymes in the last six lines, in a variety of possible patterns:

Most of you, however, will probably choose the "English" rhyme scheme:

abab cdcd efef gg

The meter of the poem should be iambic pentameter. As you know, some lines of verse in iambic pentameter are very metrically regular:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea... (Shakespeare 65, line 1)

while other lines are relatively irregular:

But sad mortality o'ersways their power... (Shakespeare 65, line 2).

The poem as a whole, though, should convey the general iambic rhythm of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. And a Renaissance English poet would not have written any line of iambic pentameter with more than ten syllables (or eleven, if the last syllable were unstressed).