A common indication of progression is “the movement from indirect description of the beloved to direct address to her”. While the soulful poetry is intended to woo the beloved, it is also written for an audience to whom a clear succession should be important. The beloved is a major interest of sonnet sequences, but the poetry itself is also an important focus. Many English sonnet sequences start with addresses to the reader, and “many of specifically raise questions about the relationship between being in love and writing and reading love sonnets”. The ultimate goal of the poet in both English and Italian sequences is to win the beloved, which he can only do if he “declares and analyzes his passion, celebrates and courts the beloved, and writes poetry to please her/him”. In turn, the idea that the poet is in the middle of the experience, and knows its ending at the same time gives the sequence a “structural and narrative control”. However, there is often also a sense of knowing the actual outcome of the sequence. The commencing sonnets suggest an account of the birth of a love “experience” and hopefully foresee a happy ending. The beginnings of the sequences usually contain sonnets that “introduce characters, plot, and themes”. Sonnet sequences do not follow a spelled-out narrative progression, nor are they simply compilations of random poems with similar themes, “they are something in between." The structure lies in the beginnings and endings of the sequences, and in their overall thematic advancements. Thus, the most unusual aspect of such a sequence is the sense of a “unity within a larger unity." Sonnets become more significant when they are read in the order that the poet places them, as opposed to reading them at random. The term sonnet sequence might be rephrased as series or cycle of sonnets. The independently rhymed couplet introduces yet another shift in the poem the speaker reiterates how his beautiful beloved will be eternally preserved as long as men can breathe and see, and as long as the poem exists the beloved does, too. The changing rhymes emphasize the dualist nature of beauty (how those things which are beautiful in their prime inevitably grow old, fade, and die), while the alternating pattern provides continuity. In the third quatrain the poet presents his beloved with the gift of immortality in his lines of verse. The beloved, whose beauty Shakespeare idolizes here, is given the gift of immortality by the poet the first two quatrains primarily address different ways in which the physical beauty of the material world inherently dims, fades, and/or falls short of ideal beauty at some point. Like Petrarch, Shakespeare used structure to explore the multiple facets of a theme in a short piece. The effect is “like going for a short drive with a very fast driver: the first lines, even the first quatrain, are in low gear then the second and third accelerate sharply, and ideas and metaphors flash past and then there is a sudden throttling-back, and one glides to a stop in the couplet”. The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB CDCD EFEF GG format. This structure, known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet, consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. William Shakespeare utilized the sonnet in love poetry of his own, employing the sonnet structure conventionalized by English poets Wyatt and Surrey. The sestet, with either two or three different rhymes, uses its first tercet to reflect on the theme and the last to conclude. The repeated rhyme scheme within the octave strengthens the idea. CDC) of these rhyme schemes have also been rendered in musical structure in the late 20th century composition Scrivo in Vento inspired by Petrarch's Sonnet 212, Beato in Sogno.) The rhyme scheme and structure of Petrarch's sonnets work together to emphasize the idea of the poem: the first quatrain presents the theme and the second expands on it. Petrarch typically used an ABBA ABBA pattern for the octave, followed by either CDE CDE or CDC DCD rhymes in the sestet. The particular quatrains and tercets are divided by change in rhyme. The octave presents an idea to be contrasted by the ending sestet. The octave can be broken down into two quatrains likewise, the sestet is made up of two tercets. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet consists of two parts an octave and a sestet. While the early sonneteers experimented with patterns, Francesco Petrarca (anglicised as Petrarch) was one of the first to significantly solidify sonnet structure. The sonnet is a type of poem finding its origins in Italy around 1235 AD.
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