~LOTR Sonnet Contest~


As I'm in some kind of Shakespearean mood right now, I've decided to start a LOTR Sonnet Contest.

Requirements for the entries:
Form: The sonnet should have the structure of a Shakespearean Sonnet
-> three quatrains (3 stanzas with 4 lines each) and a final couplet (consisting of 2 lines) [=> total: 14 lines]
-> rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g
-> you do not have to write in iambic pentameter
Theme: The sonnet should have something to do with LOTR !

Deadline: 3rd December 2006
Judging information: As I myself will enter this contest, I'm going to need at least 3 judges in the near future (-> please PM me if you want to be a judge)
Entries: Please post your entries here in this thread.


Entrants:
(The contest will be limited to 10 entrants first of all, but if more people are interested, I will add them to the list, of course!)

1. Rose of Rivendell --- ENTRY IN
2. Altariel Frodo --- ENTRY IN
3. Lady Erana --- ENTRY IN
4. Fencing Maiden --- ENTRY IN
5. Peredhil Lover --- withdrawn
6. Meldawen --- ENTRY IN
7. The Nightingale (Lalaithnindil) --- withdrawn
8. eowyn of ithilien --- ENTRY IN
9.
10.


Judges:
1. Antigone
2. Turwaithiel Shadeslayer
3. Riniel Anariel


Feel free to PM me if you have further questions.

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~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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I'll join! I can't promise anything astounding, but I can try!

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<center>-In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song-

^JF is awesome

There will come a time with no more tears
and love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears</center>

Wow, my first entrant! *goes to add you to the list*
Don't worry, Altariel Frodo! Each sonnet is unique and wonderful in my opinion!

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~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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I want to join! This sounds really interesting!

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Wonderful! The more entrants, the more exciting it will be!

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~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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~thanks to: Johnny's Fan (animated banner)~
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My site: ~Evenstar Dreams~<center>

I shall join this noble cause, if you will allow.

Great idea.

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"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

wow this looks tough I'll join though I probably won't come up with anything good.

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-raises hand- I'd like to be a judge, if I may

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<center>[font=Times New Roman]<img src="http://tinyurl.com/63ongu"><br><br>From sorrow & pain I find my strength ... the more pain I feel, the more I see /// July the 4th 2008, first day of my life...<br><br>I met Eru on September 5th 2006 ♥ (and April 15th 2008!)<br><br>Censorship Causes Blindness</center>[/font]

This looks fun - but I have a question, and don't laugh at me for being utterly ignorant, I don't write a lot of poetry. Can the lines be any length at all? Like, there isn't some sort of specific number of syllables or anything? (Though I guess that might be what iambic pentameter is...) And quatrains just mean an a-b-a-b pattern, right?

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Welcome to the contest, Fencing Maiden!



Don't worry, Peredhil-Lover! As I already told Altariel Frodo: Each sonnet is unique and wonderful!



Thanks for your help, Antigone!



Don't worry, Meldawen! I didn't know that much about sonnets before we analysed them at school as well.

Yes, the lines can be any length here.
Shakespeare always wrote his sonnets in iambic pentameter (5 iambs [= 10 syllables] per line). However, that's quite difficult, so I decided against making it a specific requirement for the entries [But you can try, of course, if you want ].
Concerning your other question: A quatrain is a stanza consisting of four lines that form a cross rhyme in this case. You should choose different cross rhymes for each stanza and the final couplet should consist of a pair rhyme.

I hope my explanation didn't confuse you...

_________________
~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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~thanks to: Johnny's Fan (animated banner)~
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My site: ~Evenstar Dreams~<center>

[Sorry for the double post! ]

For all those who need some further information about sonnets, I've copied the article from Wikipedia:

The English sonnet

History
The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet. Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) started a tremendous vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others.These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; the exception is Shakespeare's sequence. In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants.

The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote several sonnets, of which the best-known are "The world is too much with us" and the sonnet to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modelled on Milton's. Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet "Ozymandias". Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, of which the greatest is "The Windhover," and also several sonnet variants such as the 10-1/2 line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

This flexibility was extended even further in the 20th century. Among the major poets of the early Modernist period, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and E. E. Cummings all used the sonnet regularly. William Butler Yeats wrote the major sonnet Leda and the Swan, which used half rhymes. Wilfred Owen's sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth was another sonnet of the early 20th century. W.H. Auden wrote two sonnet sequences and several other sonnets throughout his career, and widened the range of rhyme-schemes used considerably. Auden also wrote one of the first unrhymed sonnets in English, "The Secret Agent" (1928). Half-rhymed, unrhymed, and even unmetrical sonnets have been very popular since 1950; perhaps the best works in the genre are Seamus Heaney's Glanmore Sonnets and Clearances, both of which use half rhymes. The 1990s saw something of a formalist revival, however, and several traditional sonnets have been written in the past decade.


Form
Soon after the introduction of the Italian sonnet, English poets began to develop a fully native form. These poets included Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, The Earl of Surrey's nephew Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and William Shakespeare. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn". The usual rhyme scheme was a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

_________________
~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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~thanks to: Johnny's Fan (animated banner)~
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My site: ~Evenstar Dreams~<center>

Actually Shakespearian sonnets are way different than 'modern' ones as the latter have 14 verses (I think =P) and the ryme is different... thankfully the metric scheme is the same. o.o
Can't wait to start judging! *g*

_________________
<center>[font=Times New Roman]<img src="http://tinyurl.com/63ongu"><br><br>From sorrow & pain I find my strength ... the more pain I feel, the more I see /// July the 4th 2008, first day of my life...<br><br>I met Eru on September 5th 2006 ♥ (and April 15th 2008!)<br><br>Censorship Causes Blindness</center>[/font]

Well, I think a sonnet always consists of 14 lines.
However, there are different structures. Shakespeare divided his sonnets into three stanzas with four lines each and a final couplet, whereas Italian sonnets were usually divided into an eight line stanza and a six line stanza.
But I'm not sure about the structure of "modern sonnets" as well...

_________________
~The Dreamy A-U Gentlewoman~


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~thanks to: Johnny's Fan (animated banner)~
~icons made by me~

My site: ~Evenstar Dreams~<center>

I shall try... Never written a sonnet before, but we shall see what I can do. Is it *legal* to turn a poem already written into a sonnet? (If at all possible).

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I'm done mine, it just needs some tweaking. I'll have it up in the next 24 hours sometime.

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Are we allowed to enter more than one?

_________________
<center>-In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song-

^JF is awesome

There will come a time with no more tears
and love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears</center>