Shakespearean and Petrarchan Sonnets

Elizabeth Stevens
English Renaissance
Professor McKeown
11 May 2004
Shakespearean and Petrarchan Sonnets
<Tab/>A sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. Iambic pentameter consists of ten
syllables per line of poetry with stress on every other syllable. The two main sonnet types are the Italian, or Petrarchan and the Elizabethan, or Shakespearean.
<Tab/>There are several facts that separate a Shakespearean sonnet from a Petrarchan sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an eight…