02 - In an Artist's Studio Poem and Questions

Petrarchan Sonnet: In the 14th century the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch wrote a series of Love Sonnets to Laura. The Petrarchan Sonnet, also called the Italian Sonnet is one of the two dominant sonnet forms. Characteristics of the Petrarchan Sonnet A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. These types of sonnets are usually in a single stanza but the rhyme scheme divides it into an octave and a sestet. The octave is a stanza of eight lines; a sestet is a stanza of six lines. The first quatrain introduces the subject, the second complicates the subject, and the sestet resolves or alters the subject in some way. There is a Volta or change of tone that occurs between the octave and the sestet. A rhyme scheme of abba abba in the octave. The remaining 6 lines called the sestet can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways: cdcdcd cddcdc cdecde cdeced cdcedc The poet seeks to make the rhymes in the sestet as different as possible from the two quatrains. In an Artist’s Studio – Christina Rossetti One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel — every canvas means The same one meaning, neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. Questions: 1. Identify two types of women found on the painter’s canvases. (2) 2. Refer to line 9. Discuss how the metaphor shapes your understanding of the relationship between the artist and the subject. (3) 3. Comment on the effectiveness of the speaker’s use of repetition in the final three lines of the poem. (2) 4. By referring to the overall message of the poem, critically discuss the speaker’s change of tone between the octave and the sestet. (3)