Petrarchan Sonnet

Petrarchan Sonnet

Petrarch developed the Italian sonnet pattern, which is known to this day as the Petrarchan sonnet or the Italian sonnet. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, an octave (first eight lines) and a sestet (last six lines).