Sonnet Basics
A sonnet has this many lines.
What is fourteen?
The Italian sonnet is named for this poet.
Who is Petrarch (the Petrarchan sonnet)?
The word “Renaissance” means this in French.
What is rebirth?
Shakespeare’s famous theater in London.
What is the Globe?
He wrote the novel 1984.
Who is George Orwell?
Most English sonnets are written in this meter.
What is iambic pentameter?
The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
What is the octave?
The Renaissance began in this country in the 1300s and 1400s.
What is Italy?
She was the queen of England during much of Shakespeare’s career.
Who is Elizabeth I?
She wrote Frankenstein.
Who is Mary Shelley?
The pair of rhyming lines at the end of a Shakespearean sonnet.
What is the couplet?
The last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
What is the sestet?
This “Renaissance man” painted both the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
Who is Leonardo da Vinci?
In Sonnet 18, the speaker claims this will keep the beloved alive forever.
What is the poem (his verse) itself?
Sophocles wrote this Greek tragedy about a king who unknowingly kills his father.
What is Oedipus?
The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet.
What is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG?
He wrote The Faerie Queen.
Who is Edmund Spenser?
This mid-1400s invention by Johannes Gutenberg helped spread ideas quickly across Europe.
What is the printing press?
Shakespeare was born in this English town.
What is Stratford-upon-Avon?
He wrote the poem “The Raven.”
Who is Edgar Allan Poe?
A shift in thought, argument, or tone in a sonnet.
What is the volta (the turn)?
Spenser’s sonnets link their quatrains with this rhyme scheme.
What is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE?
In 1610, this Italian astronomer used a telescope to discover four moons orbiting Jupiter, evidence that not everything in the heavens circled the Earth.
Who is Galileo Galilei?
This king succeeded Elizabeth I and became the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company.
Who is James I?
She wrote Pride and Prejudice.
Who is Jane Austen?