REN - Major Sonnet Forms: The Spenserian Sonnet Lesson

Edmund Spenser was a 16^th-century English poet known for his epic allegory, The Faerie Queen. The Faerie Queen praises Queen Elizabeth I but also reveals the stories of several knights and teaches various virtues all should live by.

Spenser is also considered one of the greatest poets in the English language who crafted his own version of the English sonnet called the Spenserian Sonnet.

Characteristics of the Spenserian Sonnet 

The Spenserian Sonnet, created by Edmund Spenser, is very similar to the Shakespearean Sonnet and includes the following characteristics:

• Three four-line stanzas, or groups of lines, called
  quatrains followed by a concluding two-line stanza
  called a couplet
• A rhyme scheme of abab bcbc cdcd ee
• Three quatrains that develop three distinct but
  closely related ideas with a commentary in the couplet

Edmund Spenser wrote a sonnet sequence called Amoretti that describes his courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. View the sonnets below, from Amoretti, and identify the characteristics that categorize the poem as a Spenserian Sonnet:

"Sonnet XXX"

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal'd with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

"Sonnet LIV"

Of this World's theatre in which we stay,

My love like the Spectator idly sits,

Beholding me, that all the pageants play,

Disguising diversely my troubled wits.

Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,

And mask in mirth like to a Comedy;

Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits,

I wail and make my woes a Tragedy.

Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,

Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart;

But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry

She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.

What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan,

She is no woman, but a senseless stone.

Practice the TPCASTT process in order for the poems to fully understand the Spenserian sonnets in the lesson.

Sonnet Comprehension Self-Assessment

Now that you have read and understand sonnets and sonnet forms, practice your comprehension in the activity below.