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The Spenserian Sonnet

Sonnet Forms

A fourteen-line English sonnet form devised by Edmund Spenser for his 1595 sequence Amoretti, interlocking three quatrains and a closing couplet with the rhyme scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, so that each quatrain shares a rhyme with the one before it, producing a more continuous chain of sound than the Shakespearean sonnet's four independent quatrains while keeping its closing couplet.

Facts
Place of Origin
England, late 16th century, devised by Edmund Spenser. 1
Structure
Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhymed ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, each quatrain linked to the next by a shared rhyme sound. 1
Notable Example
Edmund Spenser's Amoretti sonnet sequence (1595). 1
Connections

Form Of Genre

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

Influenced By

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

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