Let's quickly go over what we've learned about the Petrarchan sonnet. The Petrarchan sonnet is a received form that has 14 lines and a slightly flexible rhyme scheme. The first eight lines, or octave, almost always follow an 'abbaabba' rhyme scheme, but the rhyme scheme of last six line...
Yes, this example is kind of cheating because it’s actually an excerpt from one of the world’s most famous Petrarchan sonnets rather than a dedicated Italian octave. However, I want to really drill into you that those first eight lines of the Petrarchan sonnet literallyarean Italian octave....