Introduction to the Sonnet I: Definition

Before diving into either the details of the sonnet as a form or the production of new sonnets, it is probably a good idea to have some handle on what a sonnet is.

At the most basic level, a sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines.

Some critics would prefer to leave it at that: a sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, and any fourteen-line poem can be called a sonnet. But any historical examination from the 14th century on would reveal that sonnets share more than this single characteristic. The most obvious addition characteristics are rhyme and meter. A sonnet has some sort of rhyme scheme in which every line of the sonnet rhymes with at least one other line (see below), and all the lines are of the same length, in the same meter (see below). So we can add to our definition.

A sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen rhymed lines in a consistent meter.

To a large extent, that completes our definition of the sonnet; if you have a poem that is fourteen lines long, with a recognizable rhyme scheme and a single consistent meter, you have a sonnet. Most sonnets have more in common than that, especially in English, but those are issues for another post.