COURSE :Introduction To Literature

DEPARTMENT : ENGLISH

PROFESSOR : OLMSTED

Lecture9 : Rhyme_Schemes_Sonnets

View the Power Point Presentation of the Lecture

Hi today’s presentation is on sonnets and rhyme schemes. Let’s start with a sonnet by Emma Lazarus written in 1883 which includes some you are probably familiar with. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. This now famous poem did not achieve immortality over night. In fact, Lazarus’ sonnet to the Statue of Liberty was hardly noticed until after her death when a patron of the New York arts found it tucked away in a small portfolio of poems written to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. The patron Georgina Schuler was struck by the poem and arranged to have its last five lines become part of the permanent part of the statue itself. More than 20 years later, children’s textbooks began to include the sonnet and Irving Berlin wrote it into a Broadway musical. By 1945 the engraved poem was relocated all 14 lines to be placed over the Statue of Liberty’s main entrance. In “The New Colossus” Lazarus contrasts the soon-to-be installed symbol of the United States with what many considered the perfect symbol of the Greek and Roman era the Colossus of roads. Her comparison proved appropriate for the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi created the Statue of Liberty with the well-known Colossus in mind. What Bartholdi did not intend however was for the Statue of Liberty to become a symbol of welcome for thousands of European immigrants. That’s political propaganda for France. The Statue of Liberty was first intended to be a path of enlightenment for the countries still battling tyranny and oppression. Lazarus’ words however turn the idea on its head. The Statue of Liberty has since been recognized and considered a beacon of welcome for immigrants leaving their countries of origin. Let’s take a look at it. Where are you? Shouldn’t that appear here? There we are. First you’ll see that Lazarus employs exact rhyme. Let’s briefly look at here. You’ve got fame, land, stand, and flame so fame and flame rhyme land and stand rhyme. This goes throughout fame and flame and then you’ve got name and frame and then you’ve got a different rhyme land, stand, hand, command and then you’ve got yet again another rhyme with she, free, me and I don’t know if I have colors here enough colors here let’s try. We got one more poor and shore and door so that marks the rhyme scheme. Second you will find that the sonnet follows the Italian model. “The New Colossus” is divided into two parts an octave 8 lines which ends right here and a sestet 6 lines. The rhyme scheme signifies this we’ve got here’s how you mark it ABBA and then you repeat A A and B and B and A you’ve got C a new rhyme so every new rhyme you mark it with a new letter D is a new rhyme so you do that she rhymes with free so this becomes C shore rhymes with poor that stays D and then goes back to C make that a D not a C. A third point has to do with another characteristic of sonnets a special Italian form that is the turn or volta. In the octave that’s the first eight lines the poem states a problem or describes something one way and in the sestet offers a solution or to the problem or shifts the topic of the poem to go in another direction. It’s this turn or volta that helps to give sonnets their intellectual appeal. In “The New Colossus” the first 8 lines offer an initial description of the statue while the last 6 lines give a voice to the statue who speaks directly to us. So I’ll read this and you can think about that contrast. Think about two things the rhyme scheme how that’s working and also this separation in the sonnet between the two parts of the octave and the sestet. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame with conquering limbs astride from land to land here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightening, and her name mother of exiles. From her beacon hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands your storied pomp cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-toss to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! I think it’s a terrific poem. Before we look further into the sonnet I want to show you briefly another kind of rhyme since we’ve been talking about the rhyme scheme here. So let me show you another one briefly. This poem is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Counting-Out Rhyme” and it’s in your book as well. Silver bark of beech, and sallow bark of yellow birch and yellow twig of willow. Stripe of green in moosewood maple, colour seen in leaf of apple, bark of popple. Wood of popple pale as moonbeam, wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam, wood of hornbeam. Silver bark of beech, and hollow stem of elder, tall and yellow twig of willow. Kind of a fun poem but what I wanted to show you she’s obviously playing slant rhyme. You’ve got sallow and yellow they’re not exact rhymes if they were exact you’d have sallow and yallow and you’d have instead of willow you’d have wallow, maple aple paple instead you have maple, apple, popple. So each of these lines ends with a slant rhyme or off rhyme sometimes it’s called off rhyme but it’s still a kind of rhyme. Alright okay hold on I’m coming alright. Another example of an Italian sonnet which are more common in English excuse me which are more common than the English or Shakespearean sonnet is a famous one by John Milton. Throughout his life, Milton struggled with worsening eyesight and by the winter of 1651 had completely lost all vision in both eyes. Although suffering total blindness is a life-changing experience for any person, it was devastating for Milton because he relied on his eyes so much he spent the majority of his day reading and researching and when he was not studying he was constantly composing sonnets, pamphlets and the initial parts of what would become his great epic “Paradise Lost.” In English there are probably three of the most famous poets and you’ve heard of all of them Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton so Milton’s a very important poet in the English language. Critics have talked about four stages that Milton went through regarding his blindness. First, shock and depression second a defensive stage and then a third stage which has been called the true way-faring Christian in which Milton began to accept and even use his blindness to his benefit especially as a symbol for poetic inspiration so the idea of seeing and celestial light and understanding became key themes for him. The fourth phase was one of satisfaction and accomplishment where his blindness actually meant very little to him as a man and a poet. Ultimately Milton felt that as blindness gave him strength and insight that he would not have had otherwise. Think about that biographical information and how that comes to play when we look at his sonnet “How My Light Is Spent” let’s see we go here okay when I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days in this world and wide, and that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent to serve therewith my baker excuse me to serve therewith my maker and present my true account lest he returning child doth God exact day-labor, light denied? I fondly ask but patience to prevent that murmur soon replies God doth not need either man’s work or his gifts. Who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state is kingly thousands at his bidding speed and post o’er land and ocean without rest they also serve who only stand and wait. There’s a great deal to unpack in this poem but I’m going to mention just four things. Before I do that I just want to mention that like “The New Colossus” you’ll see that the poem is divided into two parts in this case it splits in the middle of the eighth line and you’ll see that the rhyme scheme is also shifts with the stanzas. You’ve got ABBAABBACDECDE. It’s a slightly different ending of then the Colossus sonnet but that’s okay these last six lines often change shift in the Italian sonnet. Okay so first we see that Milton is probably in the first stage of emotional reaction to blindness shock and depression. He feels that he’s got half his life yet to live in the lines ere half my days in this dark world and wide and he thinks that those words will be filled with darkness and that the world will become so wide as if he will not be able to find his way in it as if he will be lost in it. In the fourth line he describes his talent right here which is his talent is being a writer, being a poet has lodged useless with me so this talent that he has now what can he do he’s it’s useless. It’s something that he’s lost and you can imagine the sense of grief that he feels. The sonnet is in two parts this is my second point. Unlike most Italian sonnets the volta occurs in the middle of the eighth line. You’re clued into it by the word but, but is always a clue for some kind of shift in a poem. This tells that there’s going to be a contradiction or a shift here. Do you think that this suggests that the depression that marks the first eight lines is will become another emotion? Another way to think of the two parts is that the first sets of mood the ambience of anxiety even despair certainly sadness while the ambience shifts in the sestet down here to one of calm, control, and certainly a less depressed kind of feeling perhaps acceptance. Third in the sestet we find an apostrophe remember we’ve talked about that here’s the apostrophe let’s see patience replies and this patience speaking patience replies to the poet saying that God is not going to blame him for being blind, those who can bear his mild yoke paraphrased might mean those who can stand the challenges of life that those who can bear up are actually the best ones to serve. The key is finding a new way one that you would never have thought that you could find or that you would never have imagined or been required to by disaster. The fourth thing I want to say about this poem is that the figures of speech include metaphor. Milton sees God as a banker or as a kind of an accountant. God gave in line four lodged a writing talent into him so it’s as if he is lodged into an account and Milton’s is the account book and what’s lodged in there is this talent. God will check his final statement the true account where is that down here in line six he compares Milton that is compares his blindness to a yoke where’s that down here which is a heavy thing to carry so actually his blindness is not a yoke but he refers to it as a yoke which makes it a metaphor. He also compares himself to a servant waiting for God at the end of the poem last few lines he uses alliteration for instance in the line this dark world and wide with the repeated w sound and assonance in the ninth and tenth line doth not need either man’s work with the long repetition excuse me the repetition of the long e and soft o okay I’m having trouble seeing those right in front of me but you can look at them yourself. It’s the ninth and tenth line as an example of assonance and alliteration for instance in the line dark world and wide. Let’s see finally there’s a great deal of consonance note that the sound l appears at least eight times in the poem. Here’s light for instance where the l and that the l is a kind of a musical sound much different from some of the other harder consonants that have a harsher sound. Alright what’d we do? Hit this? Okay okay sorry for the delay back to me in contrast to the Italian sonnet which as you know has an octet and a sestet as well as the volta or turn. A second type of sonnet is the English or Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet has three quatrains followed by a couplet notice that it’s not a sonnet if it doesn’t have 14 lines and it’s just a matter of how they’re divided so the English has three quatrains that’s 12 lines plus a closing couplet of two more lines. That means in English sonnet that there are possibly 3 places where there can be a turn or a shift at the end of each quatrain. Sometimes the poet uses all three quatrains to make a point sometimes there’s a shift of kind of a stage the first quatrain, the next, and the third. Whatever happens in the first 12 lines it’s common that the closing two lines will offer a surprise or a resolution maybe a moral or a conclusion to what’s been set up. In activity 8 there’s an opportunity for you to reflect on this for one of the Shakespeare sonnets that’s in your book. That’s it for today. Have a good time with what you’ve got ahead.