The Sonnet by Fuller, John - 1972: The Critical Idiom

The sonnet is one of the most complex yet accessible of verse forms. This study traces its history in English from Surrey to Robert Lowell, concentrating primarily on its technical development. Thus, while suggesting the varieties of use to which the sonnet can be put, the author is concerned to show how niceties of structure and varieties of rhyme contribute to the sonnet's versatility and popularity. His study fully explains the differences between the Italian and the English sonnet, and discusses in detail examples from over a dozen of the principle sonneteers. There is a chapter on condensed and expanded sonnets, inverted and tailed sonnets, and irregularities of metre and rhyme; and the book concludes with a survey of the sonnet sequence. It will prove useful not only to students of prosody and of the history of English poetry, but also to those more directly concerned with the practice of verse.