# Poetic Traditions II: the Sonnet and the Golden Age

Literature I · Great Works of World Literature · https://tryals.app/learn/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age

## Fourteen Lines and a Hinge

The sonnet is the most successful fixed form in European poetry, and its success rests on a single structural feature: it is long enough to state a position and short enough that the reader is still holding the beginning when the end arrives. **Fourteen lines**, and a **turn**.

Two arrangements dominate:

| | Italian (Petrarchan) | English (Shakespearean) |
|---|---|---|
| Division | Octave 8 + sestet 6 | 3 quatrains + couplet |
| Turn (*volta*) | At line 9 | At line 13 |
| Rhyme scheme | ABBAABBA CDECDE | ABAB CDCD EFEF GG |
| Distinct rhyme sounds | 4 or 5 | **7** |

That last row is the important one, and it is a fact about **languages** rather than about poets. Italian is rhyme-rich: its verbs and adjectives share endings, so four rhyme sounds across fourteen lines is comfortable. English is rhyme-poor, and asking a poet for four A-rhymes in an octave is asking for strain. The English sonnet's answer is to use **seven** rhyme sounds and never require more than two lines on any of them, a redesign forced by the language, which then changes the argument the form can make.

Because the Italian sonnet turns at line **9**, it argues in two blocks: a problem, then a resolution. Because the English turns at line **13**, it argues in three parallel movements and then a sharp reversal, the couplet can undercut everything above it, which is what Shakespeare's most famous sonnets do.

The Spanish Golden Age took the Italian form and split over how to write it. **Luis de Góngora** (1561–1627) practised *culteranismo*: Latinate vocabulary, violently displaced word order, dense mythological allusion, difficulty as an aesthetic. **Francisco de Quevedo** (1580–1645) practised *conceptismo*: compressed conceits, wordplay, meanings folded into each other, difficulty of *thought* rather than of surface. They loathed each other and satirised each other savagely, and both were right that the other had located something real in the form.

Quevedo's *Amor constante más allá de la muerte* ends with a line that is a whole poetics in itself: *polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado*, they will be dust, but dust in love. Six words, one reversal, the conceit turning on a single conjunction.

**Shakespeare's** 154 sonnets (1609) exploit the English structure relentlessly. Sonnet 130, *My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun*, spends twelve lines demolishing Petrarchan compliment and two lines converting the demolition into a better compliment. The couplet does the work the octave-sestet split cannot.

> **Common pitfall:** treating the volta as a change of subject. It is a change of *relation to the subject* — a reversal, a qualification, a widening — and a sonnet that simply changes topic at line nine has not turned, it has stopped.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 11 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Shakespeare’s 1609 quarto collects the sonnets in one sequence. Estimate how many it contains.

**Answer:** 154 (within ±8)

**Why:** **154.** The sequence is usually divided into the first 126, addressed to a young man, and the remainder concerning the "dark lady", a division the quarto itself does not mark, and which four centuries of readers have argued about.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/shakespeares-1609-quarto-collects-the-sonnets-in-one-sequence

### 2. The English sonnet uses more distinct rhyme sounds than the Italian because English has fewer rhyming words available.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True.** Fewer rhyme sounds means more lines sharing each one. Italian verbs and adjectives share endings, so four sounds over fourteen lines is easy; English has no such supply, so the form spread the load over seven sounds with at most two lines each.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/the-english-sonnet-uses-more-distinct-rhyme-sounds-than-the-italian

### 3. The Golden Age split between culteranismo and conceptismo divided poets over difficulty. If both styles deliberately resist immediate understanding, where does their actual divergence lie?

A. In whether difficulty resides in poetic surface or in mental wit
B. In whether poems employ traditional mythology or modern conceits
C. In whether the sonnet preserves an octave or condenses to couplets
D. In whether syntax is kept transparent while vocabulary is elevated

**Answer:** A. In whether difficulty resides in poetic surface or in mental wit

**Why:** Góngora complicates the linguistic surface through Latinate syntax and myth, whereas Quevedo compresses wit and argument into dense concepts; neither abandons the Italian fourteen-line structure nor seeks plain vocabulary.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/the-golden-age-split-between-culteranismo-and-conceptismo-divided

### 4. Complete the account of the Golden Age quarrel.

**Answer:** Góngora practised **culteranismo**, with Latinate vocabulary and displaced word order, difficulty of **surface**. Quevedo practised **conceptismo**, folding meanings into each other, difficulty of **thought**.

**Why:** The distinction survives because it names two real options in any difficult poetry: a surface that resists reading, or a thought that resists paraphrase. The two poets loathed each other, and each had correctly identified something the sonnet could be made to do.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/complete-the-account-of-the-golden-age-quarrel

### 5. Quevedo ends a sonnet with "polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado", they will be dust, but dust in love. What makes the line a conceit rather than an image?

A. It relies on dense mythological allusion rather than visual description
B. It pairs sensory descriptions together to evoke a vivid physical picture
C. It contrasts two literal outcomes using an explicit comparative simile
D. Two incompatible ideas are forced into a single term that holds both

**Answer:** D. Two incompatible ideas are forced into a single term that holds both

**Why:** Because "dust in love" **forces two incompatible ideas into one term**. Dust is what is left when the person is gone; love requires the person. The line does not compare, it fuses, and the whole argument about love surviving death is carried by a conjunction and an adjective.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/quevedo-ends-a-sonnet-with-polvo-seran-mas-polvo-enamorado-they

### 6. Arrange the movements of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 in the order they occur.

**Answer:**

1. Her eyes are nothing like the sun
2. Her lips are less red than coral, her breasts dun
3. Her breath reeks, her voice is less pleasing than music
4. She treads on the ground, not like a goddess
5. And yet my love is as rare as any she belied with false compare

**Why:** Twelve lines demolish Petrarchan compliment item by item, and the couplet converts the demolition into a better compliment, the love is real precisely because it needs no false comparison. Only the English form allows this shape, because only it has a couplet capable of overturning what precedes it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/arrange-the-movements-of-shakespeares-sonnet-130-in-the-order-they

### 7. Which are true of the volta?

A. It is a change of subject matter
B. It may be a reversal, a qualification or a widening
C. It falls at line 9 in the Italian sonnet
D. It marks a change in relation to the subject

**Answer:** B. It may be a reversal, a qualification or a widening; C. It falls at line 9 in the Italian sonnet; D. It marks a change in relation to the subject

**Why:** The volta changes the **relation** to the subject, not the subject. A poem that abandons its topic at line nine has stopped rather than turned, which is the commonest way an apprentice sonnet fails while appearing to have the right shape.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/which-are-true-of-the-volta

### 8. The Italian sonnet’s turn at line 9 and the English sonnet’s turn at line 13 make available the same kinds of argument.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Six lines after the turn allow a genuine resolution to be worked out; two lines can only reverse, seal or undercut. The forms therefore suit different arguments, and Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets are built specifically around what a couplet can do to twelve lines.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/poetic-traditions-ii-the-sonnet-and-the-golden-age/the-italian-sonnets-turn-at-line-9-and-the-english-sonnets-turn-at