Scorn Not the Sonnet Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room

Some have argued that the sonnet is a too constrictive form, that it does not grant the poet space enough to express his vision. But Wordsworth said that in other forms, he had at times "felt the weight of too much liberty." In the sonnet, however, he found "brief solace." His poem compares the sonnet to a convent's room or a hermit's cell; it is a chosen confine, and therefore pleasing.

Answer: "The world is too much with us; late and soon"

These come from sonnets 18, 29, and 71. "The world is too much with us" is a sonnet by Wordsworth.

Answer: Scorn Not the Sonnet

In the sonnet, Wordsworth explains how the sonnet served the literary geniuses of the past, and insists that the "Critic" cease to scorn the form. He also laments Milton's small body of sonnets, saying that that the "soul-animating strains" of the blind poet were "alas, too few!"

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

These are the opening lines from Sonnets 1, 14, and 28 in her "Sonnets from the Portuguese." The most famous of these sonnets begins, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

Answer: Ozymandias

In his sonnet "Ozymandias," Shelley tells of "[t]wo vast and trunkless legs of stone" that are found in the sand, the only remains of a once powerful king. The inscription reads, "'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair."

Answer: Homer

In the poem he makes a famous gaffe: he credits Cortez, and not Balboa, as being the European discoverer of the Pacific.

Answer: False

Coleridge wrote sonnets, including, "On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country" and "To a friend who asked, how I felt when the nurse first presented my infant to me."

Answer: Edmund Spenser

The Shakespearean sonnet rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchian sonnet rhymes abbaabba in the first eight lines, with a variable rhyme scheme for the last six.

Answer: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

The English sonnet is synonymously referred to as the Shakespearian sonnet. Though Surrey preceded Shakespeare, the form became associated with the latter, since Shakespeare was a more prolific and masterful writer of sonnets.

Answer: Astrophil and Stella

"Amoretti" is Spenser's sonnet cycle, "Sonnets from the Portuguese" is Browning's. "The Defence of Poesy" is a prose work by Sidney that was intended to establish poetry as a great, moral form.

Answer: "Most glorious Lord of lyfe, that on this day"

The odd line out comes from Edmund Spenser's Sonnet 68. The quoted Donne sonnets are numbers 5, 10, and 14.

Answer: False

The poem has 18 lines and three stanzas. A sonnet has 14 lines and, usually, one stanza.

Answer: "What if this present were the world's last night?"

The odd line out is number 13 in Donne's "Holy Sonnets." Milton's sonnets are not numbered.

Answer: tempests

In the movie "Sense and Sensibility," starring Emma Thompson and based on the novel by Jane Austen, Willoughby recites this poem in Marriane's presence. He forgets the word is "tempests," and thinks it is "storms."

Answer: "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:"

"When Nature" is Sidney's, number 7. "When to the session" is Shakespeare's, number 30. "Thou hast made me" is Donne's, number 1. The odd-line out belongs to William Wordsworth, and the sonnet, "London, 1802" was written in--you guessed it--1802. The fact that Milton is dead in the poem may have been a giveaway as to the date, even if you did not know the author. Milton died in 1674.