Sonnet Step #1: read and summarize general message Step #2: translate lines into your own words Step #3: learn about sonnets Step #4: analyze each quatrain Step #5: analyze the ending couplet Step #6: final, refined analysis

Love Life Death Immortality Youth Beauty Common Themes Love Life Death Immortality Youth Beauty

Sonnet 14 lines Three quatrains (4 lines + 4 lines + 4 lines) A rhyming couplet (2 lines) The three quatrains present a topic of argument Couplet represents a solution

Sonnet First quatrain: An explanation of a complex theme or conflict Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or complicated further Third quatrain: Volta (a turn), often introduced by a "but" The rhyming couplet: summarizes and leaves the reader with an epiphany

Epiphany A sudden leap in understanding They are usually unpredictable or sudden The arrival at some truth that makes everything else clear Light bulb analogy

Volta Author and historian Paul Fussell calls the volta "indispensable”. He states further that "the turn is the dramatic and climactic center of the poem, the place where the intellectual or emotional method of release first becomes clear and possible. Surely no sonnet succeeds as a sonnet that does not execute at the turn something analogous to the general kinds of 'release' with which the reader’s muscles and nervous system are familiar”