Grammar

On only one practice test of mine was I asked to identify an intransitive verb, but I had no idea how to do so. You will occasionally get grammar questions (i.e. What is the direct object in this involute sentence from Paradise Lost?), so if you don't feel comfortable with those kinds of questions, you may want to do a short refresher.

transitive verb is incomplete without a direct object, as in the following examples: INCOMPLETE The shelf holds.

COMPLETE The shelf holds three books and a vase of flowers.

An intransitive verb, on the other hand, cannot take a direct object: Ex. This plant has thrived on the south windowsill. The compound verb "has thrived" is intransitive and takes no direct object in this sentence.

The Sonnet

More than any other form, the sonnet is the most important in the eyes of ETS. Take pains to memorize the differences between the Italian, English, and Spensarian sonnet. This will help you not only on questions that directly address form and authorship, but it will help you contextualize questions generally. I have included in this section the curtal sonnet, which was invented by Gereard Manley Hopkins; however, ETS may not acknowledge the curtal sonnet as equal to other sonnet forms.

Italian Sonnet (Petrarchan)

There are two really important things to know about the Italian sonnet:

rhyme scheme: a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, c-d-e, c-d-e. Broken up into an octet and a sestet.

The chance of seeing an Italian sonnet on the exam is not great.

The major Italian sonneteers included Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–1300), but the most famous early sonneteer was Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374).

In its original form, the Italian sonnet was divided into an octave followed by a sestet in the topic or tone of the sonnet. The octave stated a proposition and the sestet stated its solution with a clear break between the two. Typically, the ninth line created a "turn" or volta, which signaled the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that don't strictly follow the problem/resolution structure, the ninth line still often marks a "turn" by signalling a change in the tone, mood, or stance of the poem.

Giacomo da Lentini octave rhymed a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b it became later a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. For the sestet there were two different possibilities, c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced.

The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, used this Italian scheme, as did sonnets by later English poets including John Milton, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, these poets tended to ignore the strict logical structure of proposition and solution. (ETS may refer to sonnets with an Italian form but not break between the octet and sestet as a "Miltonic sonnet").

This example, On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-three by Milton, gives a sense of the Italian Form:

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, (a) Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! (b) My hasting days fly on with full career, (b) But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. (a) Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, (a) That I to manhood am arrived so near, (b) And inward ripeness doth much less appear, (b) That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. (a) Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, (c) It shall be still in strictest measure even (d) To that same lot, however mean or high, (e) Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. (d) All is, if I have grace to use it so, (c) As ever in my great Task-master's eye. (e)