Sonnet, also translated as "Shang Lai style", is the transliteration of Italian sonetto, English Sonnet and French sonnet. A European lyric style with strict rhythm. Initially popular in Italy, Petrarch's creation made it perfect, also known as "Petrarchan style", and later spread to various European countries. It consists of two quatrains and two three-line stanzas, each line has 11 syllables, and the rhyme pattern is ABBA, ABBA, CDE, CDE or ABBA, ABBA, CDC, CDC. The other type is called "Shakespearean" or "Elizabethan", which consists of three quatrains and two lines of couplets, each line has 10 syllables, and the rhyme pattern is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG.
Since Europe entered the Renaissance era, this poetic style has been widely used Petrarch
. The Italian poet Petrarch became the most important representative of the sonnet style. He wrote 375 sonnets in his life, which were collected into "Lyric Poems" and dedicated to his lover Laura. Each of his sonnets is divided into two parts: the former part consists of two four-line verses, and the latter part consists of two three-line verses, arranged in the order of four, four, three, and three. Its rhyme pattern is ABBA, ABBA, CDE, CDE or ABBA, ABBA, CDC, CDC. There are eleven verses per line, usually in iambic. Petrarch's sonnets are neat in form and beautiful in rhyme, and their main content is to praise love and express the thoughts of humanistic masters. His poems paved a new way for the development of European bourgeois lyric poetry in terms of content and form. Italian poets of the same period and later poets from other countries regarded Petrarch's poems as a model of sonnets and imitated them. Therefore, people also call it Petrarchan poetry. At the beginning of the 16th century, the sonnet style was introduced to England and became very popular. By the end of the 16th century, the sonnet had become the most popular poetry style in England. Produced famous sonnet poets such as Sidney and Spencer. Shakespeare further developed and enriched this poetic style, writing one hundred and fifty-four sonnets in his lifetime. Shakespeare's poem changed the format of Petrarch, consisting of three four-line paragraphs and a couplet, that is, arranged in four, four, four, two, and its rhyme pattern is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. Each line of verse has ten iambic syllables. Shakespeare's sonnets are a step forward than Petrarch's. The themes are more vivid and rich, the ideas are twists and turns, and they can be used freely in succession and transition. They often point out the meaning of the topic in the last couplet. Later, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and others also wrote some excellent sonnets.
After the Italian sonnet was introduced to England, its structure changed. The British category is divided into 3 paragraphs and four sentences plus the last two sentences. The last two sentences are usually very different from the previous ones, more so than the ninth sentence of the Italian type. Common English sonnet rhyme cards are a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g, or a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e.
After the vernacular became fashionable, sonnets became rare, but some people still wrote them in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé in France. There are now websites dedicated to publishing sonnets.