What Is a Petrarchan Sonnet? Structure, Definition & Examples

What is Petrarchan Sonnet? Formal poetry relies on certain structures to create meaning , and two key elements in this regard are meter and rhyme scheme (order in which rhymes occur). When these elements come together in a unique way, they form what are known as received forms , because we have recieved these styles from poets who first used it. One such form is the Petrarchan sonnet, also called the Italian sonnet, which is named after the fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. The Petrarchan sonnet is a 14-line poem that typically uses iambic pentameter , that is, a rhythmic pattern of weak and strong syllables in each line. The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat flexible, with the first eight lines, known as octave, usually following the rhyming scheme, abbaabba. The last six lines, known as sestet, can vary from poem to poem, with some common patterns of rhyme scheme being cdecde, cdcdcd, cddcdd, and cddece. This flexibility in the rhyme scheme of the s…