Blank Verse Sonnet

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The Blank Verse Sonnet is simply a sonnet written in Blank Verse. It has all of the features of the sonnet without rhyme. Although Blank Verse is often used in narratives, it can also adapt to the lyrical sonnet. Blank verse is a strophic sonnet in iambic pentameter. Sonnets without rhyme can be traced back to Edmund Spenser.

The elements of the Blank Verse Sonnet are:

1. metric, written iambic pentameter. In English most sonnets are written in iambic pentameter but there are some that occasionally stray from the norm. To metrically stray is not an option with the Blank Verse Sonnet.
2. unrhymed.
3. a quatorzain with no stanza breaks.
4. composed with a pivot or turn which logically arrives in the 2nd half of the sonnet.

note: The Blank Verse Sonnet is not to be confused with a "blank sonnet" as referred to in 1648 by the minor French poet Dulot who complained one day that he had been robbed of valuable papers. In particular, robbed of three hundred sonnets. When others showed surprise that he had written so many sonnets, Dulot explained that they were all "blank sonnets", (by this he meant that he had written down the rhymes but there was no body to the sonnets). This was ridiculed and subsequently jokingly led to the creation of the 17th century parlor game Bouts- Rimes