Sonnet: Origins and Structure

Sonnet: Origins and Structure

• Rooted in the Italian word "sonetto," meaning "little song," the sonnet emerged in 13th-century Italian courts.
• Giacomo de Lentini is credited with inventing the sonnet.
• Francesco Petrarch, also known as Petrarch, was a prominent early figure in sonnet writing.
• Shakespeare popularized the 14-line structure in English Elizabethan poetry, using iambic pentameter and a specific rhyme scheme.
• Characterized by rigid rhyme and metrical regularity, sonnets emphasize musicality and are designed for silent reading, expressing self-consciousness or inner conflict.
• Traditional sonnets contain 14 lines in iambic pentameter with a specific rhyme scheme.
• A Petrarchan sonnet includes an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) with rhyme schemes like ABBA ABBA ABBA CDECDE.
• A Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme like ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
• Both forms use a volta or "turn," signaling a resolution or new perspective on the initially presented problem.
• Sonnets are likened to boxes due to their strict format, top sonnets are seen as transcending the 'box'.

Rhymed Iambic Pentameter Defined

• Combines pentameter, iambic structure, and rhyme.
• Pentameter means with each line contains five metrical units or "feet," each foot is an iamb.
• Iambic refers to a metrical foot that has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM).
• Iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet, producing a rhythm of da-DUM repeated five times.
• Rhyme often follows a specific pattern, as seen in Shakespeare's sonnets, where the first and third lines rhyme, and the second and fourth lines rhyme.

Romanticism: Historical Context

• Romanticism in Britain spanned from the 1780s to the Reform Act of 1832.
• The era saw political and social upheavals, including the American and French Revolutions.
• Marked by Industrial Revolution with urbanization and rise of a consumer culture.
• Liberal movements grew, countered by state measures.
• Radical ideas spread through pamphlets and demonstrations advocating parliamentary reform, suffrage, abolitionism, and atheism.
• Britain avoided revolution, tensions led to violent events like the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 inspiring protest poetry, for example, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet "England in 1819".
• Romantic poets embraced the "revolutionary spirit" and created innovative literary forms, using poetry to address radical ideas explicitly or allegorically
• A "flourishing literary market" helped disseminate new ideas including revival of ballads and rise of the novel.
• Romantic poets competed in expanding market

Romanticism: Innovations and Principles

• Featured belief in spontaneity of artistic expression, akin to the natural growth of nature.
• Nature was seen as having sympathetic connections to human creativity, offering inspiration for introspective exploration.
• Passion for the individual imagination was fundamental, reliance on unrestricted imagination.
• New literary forms emerged and poets chose to describe common life in everyday language,
• Romanticism gave voice to marginalized groups, in contrast to the polished style of the 18th century.
• Romantic poetry emphasized subjectivity and individuality, using the first-person lyric poem ("the lyric I").
• Aesthetic theories opposed neoclassicism, rejecting the rigid decorum of previous poetry.
• Artistic works turned from mirroring nature, rather poems became lamps to illuminate truths through self-expression.
• Philosophers' distinction between the beautiful (smallness, clarity) and the sublime (limitlessness, obscurity) was used.
• The concept of "organic form" emphasized unity and interdependence in art, growing like a natural organism.
• British poets showed self-consciousness and self-criticism, justifying poetic experimentation in prose and verse.
• The romantics benefited from a booming literary market, revival of ballads, medieval romances, and prose fiction.
• Greek mythology and British medieval tales were looked to for inspiration
• Poems ranged widely in style and theme and the "poetic I" became a key legacy.

Modernism: Origins and Influences

• Emerged in the late 19th century, peaking before World War I, out of philosophical and political changes post-Industrial Revolution
• Advanced industrialization shaped the West, the Bolshevik Revolution impacted Russia, thinkers like Darwin and Einstein shifted understandings
• Automobile, light bulb, and radio transformed people's lives
• English-speaking artists felt need to create their own form, this resulted in modernism

Modernism: Core Principles

• Re-evaluation of aesthetic principles broke from romanticism and sought skeptical language and coherence
• Modernist poetry broke free from traditional forms to innovate, experiment and complexify.

Modernist Poetry: Key Features

• Poets tried to "make it new" and artistic novelty was emphasized
• Unconventional syntax was adopted and traditional schemes were broken and reality was fragmented.
• Stein & Cummings challenged convention with prose and typography.
• Juxtaposition of cultural fragments in collage poetry mirrored the fractured modern experience.
• T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" used collage to reflect societal disarray.
• Rhythms were shaped by speech over meter in free verse, for flexible expression.
• There was and emphasis on rhythm while freedom was maintained.
• T.S. Elliot preferred emotional detachment, emphasizing universal themes over personal emotions.
• Artistic strength was placed above self-expression
• Enjambment was used to create jarring effects and disrupt poetic flow and Carlos Williams emphasized vernacular to mirror life's fragmented nature
• Modernists used ordinary speech to make poetry grounded, blending daily speech and quotations
• Elevated diction was rejected
• They chose to emphasise precision and create unconventional rhythms with syllabic meter
• Modernist poetry is rich with allusions, requiring reader engagement because meaning is weaved with symbols and metaphors
• Alienation and decay are emphasized
• Modernism provided an innovative response, with experimentation and rigor

Postmodernism: Context and Characteristics

• It gained prominence post WWII
• Catastrophic war events led to questioning of narratives.
• It coincided with Cold War, computing, decolonization, and civil rights
• Challenges to ideologies and norms emerged because or technology, embracing pluralism
• "Truth" was regarded as culturally specific which was criticized but opened up marginalized voices
• Metafiction was used to challenge traditional storytelling
• Intertextuality was used to interconnected literature
• Unreliable narration emphasized storytelling subjectivity
• Self-reflexivity engaged with structures; playfulness manifested as parody.

The Identity of the Text: Easthope's Conceptualization

• Defined by multidimensionality from meaning and context levels, theory says texts dynamically exist
• Four layers: material, linguistic, discursive, readerly.
• This is shaped text's form, language, and readers
• This theory goes beyond isolated artifacts, rather texts signifying larger practices
• This aligns with post-structural and cultural studies methodologies in recognition
• Text's identity depends not only through features and structuring but cultural discourses and interpretations.
• Framework has inclusivity

The Physical Level of Textual Identity

• Refers to mode of transmission, such as writing on paper or recording
• "Spirit" is burdened with matter, language is agitated or sounded.
• Persists transhistorically, outside of discourse (Rosetta Stone)
• Identity subjects to mutability (Aeneid, The Bacchae)
• This is a condition for this level

The Level of the Signifier

• Material identity shows letters and phonemes.
• "Silent" at this level.
• Even without understanding language the earth is knowable similarly to the Rosetta stone
• Level isn't autonomous signals show somebody made the text
• It orients to a reader

The Linguistic Meaning Level

• Syntax & semantics create languages, meanings are appropriate because
• Texts are incorporated into language
• Translation occurs at this level because equivalency is saught

The Discursive Meaning Level

• Even with order and linguistic context texts remain opaque
• Meaning's context depends through connotations
• Polysemy is showable, with text acquire additional meanings

Interrelation of Levels Summary

• Levels can only be separated abstractly but are interconnected
• Relationship exists through physicality
• These shows identity that is relatively autonomous
• Relative identity is crucial for discursion

Analyzing the Interrelation Between the Four Ontological Levels of Text Identity by Easthope

• The level that are connected influence each other's material
• Physical level builds signified
• The physical level records chain in linear order
• medium allows text identifiers, Rosetta Stone
• Signifier and linguistic are determined through system of language
• Grammars connect system that differ

Summarizing Levels

• Physical provides element sequence
• Signifies identifies as linguistic
• Linguistic suggests potential meaning

Romanticism: Relation to Textual Identity

• There was influence through revolution ideas
• Period involved unrest, emotions
• Discursive shows emphasis, creativity and emotions shape interpretation
• Linguistic shows emphasis, creativity, and emotions shape interpretation
• Meaning saw use if wordsworth
• Physical shows modes of publication

Modernism: Relation to Textual Identity

• Period shows revolution theories
• Artists emphasized to break from old models
• The world fragmented and complex
• Signified shows influence of stream of consciousness and techniques
• Readers could construct meanings, text had the power to show meaning that was physical.

Postmodernism: Textual Identity

• Postmodernism shows influences to assumptions
• Skepticism influenced that promoted historical events
• The language embraced the idea
• The language embraced the idea