ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -A six-line stanza, or the final six lines of a 14-line Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. A sestet refers only to the final portion of a sonnet, otherwise the six-line stanza is known as a sexain. The second stanza of Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul has Bandaged Moments” is a sexain.

Detailed explanation-2: -Named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarch, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines).

Detailed explanation-3: -A sestet is six lines of poetry forming a stanza or complete poem. A sestet is also the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet (as opposed to an English or Spenserian Sonnet), which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines.

Detailed explanation-4: -There are many examples of sestets, both in the Petrarchan form and, more generally, as any six-line stanza of poetry. The last six lines of Emma Lazarus’s poem, The New Colossus from 1883, are one example of a sestet.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Sestets as Part of a Sonnet The two sections might provide you with two separate, but connected thoughts. They usually rhyme ABBAABBA if the example is Petrarchan or ABABCDCD if it is Shakespearean. In the next six lines, the sestet, there comes a new thought, separated by the turn.