Lecture 20: The Sonnet,
Again
PATRICK MOONEY, M.A.
ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A
23 JULY 2015

But first: pararhyme
● Rhyme form in which consonant sounds are
repeated with variation in vowels.
● A specific type of consonance, in which consonants
in the two words match (rabies, robbers).
● In pararhyme, all consonants are identical.
● Brought into contemporary English usageby Wilfred
Owen.
● Previously used extensively in Welsh poetry.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites where titanic wars had groined
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
(Owen, “Strange Meeting” lines 1–10)

What other rhyme types have
we already seen?
● “Perfect”
● Basically means: the final stressed vowel sound is the same.
So are all other sounds that follow the final stressed vowel.
● Where’s the stressed syllable?—“Single,” “double,”
“dactyllic”
● “Slant”: matching final syllables (or assonance/consonance)
● “Broken”: Keats, “I Am As Brisk”; cummings, “‘next to of course
god america i”
● “Masculine” / “Feminine” …

The Onegin stanza
There are occasions when morality
And civil law are in dispute.
Granted its sole officiality,
Civil law is not absolute.
If we accept our obligation
Not to accept annihilation
Or that, in our name, bombs are hurled
At others elsewhere in the world,
The quote above needs its addenda
Students who gloss a narrow text
Should read the passage that comes next;
It is suggested that we render
Things that are God’s to God, as well
As stocking Caesar’s citadel.
(Seth 7.25)
●
Iambic tetrameter, but …
●
Structured not just in terms of
rhyme, but also has structured
occurrences of masculine/
feminine rhymes:
aBaBccDDeFFeGG
– Uppercase: masculine
(final syllable stressed)
– Lowercase: feminine
(extra final syllable,
unstressed)
●
What happens in the lines with
feminine rhymes?

Modern Love, §15 (a sonnet)
a I think she sleeps: it must be sleep, when low
b Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor;
b The face turned with it. Now make fast the door,
a Sleep on: it is your husband, not your foe.
c The Poet’s black stage-lion of wronged love
d Frights not our modern dames—well if he did!
d Now will I pour new light upon that lid,
c Full-sloping like the breasts beneath. “Sweet dove,
e Your sleep is pure. Nay, pardon: I disturb.
f I do not? Good!” Her waking infant-tare
f Grows woman to the burden my hands bear:
e Her own handwriting to me, when no curb
g Was left on Passion’s tongue. She trembles through;
h A woman’s tremble—the whole instrument—
h I show another letter lately send.
g The words are very like: the name is new.

Dialectic, a method of reasoning, seeking to resolve
disagreements through rational discussion, and
thereby to determine the truth of a matter.
●
The Socratic method pushes a hypothesis to its
limits, revealing a logical contradiction, and thereby
showing that the hypothesis is not a viable
candidate for truth.
●
Hegelian (Fichtean) dialectics:
– Abstract—Negative—Concrete
– (Thesis—Antithesis—Synthesis)
●
The Marxist notion of history

Let’s take a look at …
● Shakespeare’s sonnet 138 (reader p. 155)
● cummings, “it may not always be so;and i
say” (reader p. 230)
● Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (347)
● Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.