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The sonnet concludes with a couplet—another key feature of the English sonnet. The couplet here makes a shift from the first twelve lines by speaking directly to the play’s audience, encouraging them to listen patiently and pay attention to the story that the Prologue introduced. In other words, it answers the implied question about what ...
- The 12 Hardest Sat Writing Questions Ever
First things first: let’s define the difference between...
- The 12 Hardest Sat Writing Questions Ever
- Couplet Definition
- Couplet Examples
- Why Do Writers Use couplets?
- Other Helpful Couplet Resources
What is a couplet? Here’s a quick and simple definition: Some additional key details about couplets: 1. Couplets do not have to be stand-alone stanzas. Instead, a couplet may be differentiated from neighboring lines by its rhyme, or because it forms a complete sentence, or simply because someone talking about the poem wants to specify which two lin...
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer popularized the heroic couplet (rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter) with his The Canterbury Tales, a long narrative poem for which this metrical pattern is well-suited.
Alexander Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"
Alexander Pope was an 18th century English poet, also known for writing in heroic couplets—as in the elegybelow.
Couplets in Ben Jonson's "The Gut"
This short poem by Jonson is an epigram consisting of two unrhymed couplets in an ABAB rhyme scheme and one rhymed couplet. However, because there are not double line breaks in this single-stanza poem, it would also be accurate to describe the poem not as a set of three couplets, but as a single sestet, or stanza of six lines.
Generally speaking, stanzas are used, much like paragraphs in prose, to group related ideas inside a poem into units of the right size. It follows, then, that couplets (being a shorter type of stanza) are generally used to create images or express ideas that are not exceedingly long or complex. The nature of rhymed couplets, in particular, makes th...
A sonnet is a type of fourteen-line poem. Traditionally, the fourteen lines of a sonnet consist of an octave (or two quatrains making up a stanza of 8 lines) and a sestet (a stanza of six lines). Sonnets generally use a meter of iambic pentameter, and follow a set rhyme scheme. Within these general guidelines for what makes a sonnet, there are ...
Aug 16, 2021 · The word “sonnet” stems from the Italian word “sonetto,” which itself derives from “suono” (meaning “a sound”). There are 4 primary types of sonnets: Petrarchan; Shakespearean; Spenserian; Miltonic; Learn about each and the differences between them below.
Aug 29, 2013 · In the Shakespearean sonnet, there are three quatrains (four-line stanzas or sections) and then a couplet. In both types, a volta marks the transition to the final section. With such strict requirements, and such a small amount of space within which to work, the sonnet often gets compared to a box; fourteen lines of iambic pentameter end up looking rather dense and square on the page as well.
KUH-puh-let. A couplet is a literary device that is made up of two rhyming lines of verse. These fall in succession, or one after another. E.g. In Shakespeare's sonnets, the closing couplet often serves as a powerful conclusion, encapsulating the theme of the poem. Related terms: Heroic couplet, closed couplet, volta, sonnet, terza rima.
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The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of “couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. The Spenserian sonnet, through the interweaving of the quatrains, implicitly reorganized the Shakespearean sonnet into ...
