Student Question
Discuss the prosody of Longfellow's "The Sound of the Sea".
Quick answer:
"The Sound of the Sea" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is structured as an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, featuring iambic pentameter with minimal variations. The poem follows the traditional rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet, with an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet following a cdecde pattern. The sonnet includes a "volta" or thematic shift between the octave and sestet, a hallmark of the form.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Sound of the Sea" is in the form of an Italian or Petrachan sonnet.
The meter of the poem is regular iambic pentameter, with very few variations.
The rhyme scheme of the poem is a Petrachan or Italian sonnet, a form first imported from Italy to Britain in the Renaissance and know after the poet Petrarch, its most important Italian practitioner.
The form consists of 14 lines, divided into an octave followed by a sestet with a "volta" or turn between the two, meaning some sort of change of tone or subject matter.
The octave consists of two open quatrains (abba, abba). The sestet consists of six lines using two or three rhyme sounds arranged in any order. Longfellow's sonnet uses cdecde for its sestet.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.