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The Curtal Sonnet

Sonnet Forms

A compressed sonnet form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, reducing the traditional fourteen lines to ten and a half by shrinking the octave to six lines and the sestet to four and a half, while keeping the sonnet's characteristic turn and adding a closing half-line as a kind of tail.

Facts
Place of Origin
England, 1877, invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1
Structure
Ten and a half lines: a six-line stanza rhymed ABCABC followed by a four-and-a-half-line stanza rhymed DBCDC, proportioned at roughly the same 8:6 ratio as a full sonnet's octave to sestet. 1
Notable Example
Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" and "Peace." 1
Connections

Form Of Genre

Lyric Poetry, Genres
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

Influenced By

The Sonnet, Forms
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press

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