Talk:Sonnet

message: "The form consists of three quatrains of four lines and a couplet of two lines."
A quatrain is a four-line stanza; similarly, a couplet is two lines. I've changed this line. 128.2.169.22 04:10, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundancy 

message: Since Giacomo da Lentini from the Sicilian School is widely credited for inventing the sonnet [Segre: 1999; Migliorini: 1984; Bruni: 1983 etc], I added that to the article. His octave rhymes abab, abab (cf. Petrarch's: abba,abba). It seems certain, however, that Giacomo preceded Guittone d'Arezzo, who was inspired by the Sicilians. --Wikipedius 23:21, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who invented the sonnet? 

message: So I deleted a bunch of links and they were put back. I certainly didn't mean to offend or start an edit war, but it seems to me like the links section has been growing out of control. Here is the current list with my commentary and suggested cut/no-cut status. Perhaps others could comment and then we can cut as appropriate.
* Sonnets.org
: A rather amateurish looking site, but it appears to be quite thorough.
*Selective Historical Bibliography on the Sonnet = Bibliographie sélective de l'histoire du sonnet 
: Seems okay, but not great. Keeper, I guess
*From The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti Translated by Ezra Pound
: Seems awfully specific -- if we link to every web archive of sonnets by a famous poet, this list will rapidly grow far larger than the article. Definitely cut.
*Some English Translations of Petrarch
: More justifiable than the Pound poets, since Petrarch is so critical to the history of the sonnet. However, this page is a subpage of sonnets.org, which is already linked. Definitely cut.
*Wyatt's Sonnets
: Belongs on the page for Thomas Wyatt, not here. Cut.
*The Legacy of Francesco Petrarch and Sir Thomas Wyatt: an Historical Perspective
: Seems awfully specific. Probably cut.
*Shakespeares Sonnets
: A page of Shakespare sonnets makes some sense given the fame of the sonnets, though I say this reservedly. Nonetheless, the elook page looks easier to navigate -- in any case, we certainly don't need to link to two different Shakespeare sonnet pages. Definitely cut.
*William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 53, “Describe Adonis”
: An individual Shakespeare sonnet certainly shouldn't be linked (or else we'll have 144 links here eventually). Definitely cut.
*William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, "bare ruin'd choirs" 
: An individual Shakespeare sonnet certainly shouldn't be linked (or else we'll have 144 links here eventually). Definitely cut.
*Spenser's Sonnets
: See above (if we keep Shakespare's general sonnets link, I could see keeping this) Probably cut
*"Fatal Interview" with Edna Saint Vincent Millay (March 2005)
: Belongs on Edna St. Vincent Millay page, not here. Definitely cut.
*A Comparison of Samuel Daniel's, "Care-Charmer Sleep" and Pontus de Tyard's, "Père du doux repos, Sommeil, père du Songe"
: Far too specific and involves non-English works Definitely cut
*Sonnet 73: Memorials to Friends
: Specific and appears to be utter quackers Definitely cut
*Shakespeare Sonnets – searchable database
: Seems easier to navigate than the other Shakespeare site Keeper, I guess
*SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4524, From E-zine to Print Journal: Pros and Cons
: Seems a bit like an ad for a particular magazine, I'd say we should cut this and remove mentions from article Probably cut.
*Cumulative Index to The Vallance Review, Poetry Life & Times (UK), 2001-2006
: Again, vallance review seems to be getting a lot of attention here. Cut
*Sonnet 107: Sonnet of Thanksgiving
: Far too specific -- if we include not only links to individual Shakespeare sonnets but individual bits of criticism by no-one-in-particular, this will definitely grow to absurd lengths. Definitely cut.
*Sonnets of Michael J. Farrand.
: Possible self promotion. Michael J. Farrand certainly isn't important enough to the history of the sonnet to warrant a special link here. Definitely cut.
Note that many of these pages might be better served with a list of notable sonnetteers with wikipedia pages. Such a list might include poets particularly known for their sonnets -- Wyatt, Shakespeare, Keats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pablo Neruda, etc. Of course, given the difficulty of establishing criteria for importance, I'm hesitant to start such a list as I fear it would grow out of control and take over the article.
I'm going to go ahead and delete those that I marked Definitely cut, preserving them here for further discussion. I'll hold off the others until this has been on the talk page for a bit.
:Tom
I very much appreciate the format and tone of this structured, civil commentary on links.
-69.87.203.231 (talk) 17:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia is not a web directory 

message: The following text was added, the reverted (by me), then added again: "In Melbourne, Australia Justin Clemens has published a book of sonnets (including some double sonnets) titled Ten Thousand Fcuking Monkeys." ... this seems like an advertisement.  I don't believe that notability is justified, after all we don't even mention people like Denby or Berrigan or Berryman in the article.  Wyatt, Frost, Auden, Heaney, and ... Clemens???  books.google gives '"Justin Clemens" poetry' only 4 hits, and none of these are connected with his activity as a poet: one is as co-author of an essay with David McCooey, one is a 'thank you' in the acknowledgement's section of a book by McCooey, one are reference in a footnote citing something called Reading Seminar XVII of which he was a co-editor, and one as co-author of a paper on the internet and terrorism.  Any objections to reverting the Clemens sentence again? — Stumps 09:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, can you provide one reference in a book to Clemens' sonnets and their significance? I still don't understand why his work is worth noting in the article on the sonnet. — Stumps 11:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Sorry, but no.  These are books BY Clemens.  No one doubts that he is an academic and a poet, the issue here is how notable are his sonnets?  The article does not mention many poets; the following rate a mention: Milton, Gray, Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In an article that doesn't mention Denby or Berryman or Berrigan, we are going to have to work harder to justify the significance of Clemens' contribution.  Is there a reference to ANY of Clemens' poetry in ANY book about poetry? — Stumps 14:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS ... I see an anon user (with an IP in Virginia USA) removed the Justin Clemens sentence from the article (it was strangely the user's only edit!?)  Feel free to put it back while we discuss it here. — Stumps 14:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Justin Clemens]] ... an advertisement? 

message: The second part of the Modern Sonnet section appears to be nothing but ads for websites/particular publications to me. Do others feel that these sites/publications are of enough importance to warrant the prominent mention here, or should we cut? Here's the section in question:
:The 21st century has seen a strong resurgence of the sonnet form, as there are many sonnets now appearing in print and on the Internet. Sara Russell is the editor of the UK e-zine Poetry Life and Times, in which she publishes hundreds of sonnets; Richard Vallance, the editor for rhymed verse in Poetry Life and Times, also publishes the Canadian Quarterly journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4524, dedicated to the sonnet, villanelle, and quatrain forms, as well as the monthly Vallance Review on historical and contemporary sonneteers. Michael R. Burch publishes The HyperTexts and there are sonnets from well-known poets on his site. William Baer has also recently published 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press 2005). ]] Even Rapper K-Os is talking about sonnet in his "Lovesong".
Thoughts would be appreciated. Tom 22:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  21st Century Sonnet section - encyclopedic? 

message: The name Giacomo da Lentini on Wikipedia is different than in The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction by Michael R. G. Spiller (Routledge, 1992) (). There it is spelled Giacomo da Lentino which seems to be the more common spelling of his name.  Perhaps whoever copied the information from Encyclopædia Britannica is correct, but this is the only time I've seen his name spelled like it is on the Wikipedia site.  Please correct me if I am mistaken.  Galo1969X 14:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I don't know, but "Giacomo da Lentini" gets 16,300 google-hits, whereas "Giacomo da Lentino" only gets 271.  I know wikpedia is mirrored a lot, but 16,300 seems pretty convincing. Stumps 14:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lentini, Giacomo da  

message: I developed a form of sonnet that takes the number of rhymes in a Shakespearean sonnet and adapted it to fit the form of a Petrarchan sonnet.  I have read that the English sonnet is not balanced with the turn (generally) after the third quatrain, thus leaving a witty couplet.  That the Petrarchan sonnet nearly conforms to the golden ratio clearly advances the idea of balance and proportion.  I created this form by an algorithm which with a little alteration allowed for an interesting but convoluted form: ABCA DBCE DFG EFG, or ABCA DBCE DFG FGE.
~ ~ ~
Some may argue that this form does not constitute a sonnet (but more a quatorzain) since the rhymes in the octave flow into the rhymes in the sestet.  In that respect it would be more like the Onegin Stanza, though not as flexible as Pushkin's form allowed.  I find it an enjoyable and challenging form that does not force me to adopt a form that is hundreds of years old, and thus overused.  I also created this form since the Petrarchan sonnet does not in its limited rhyme scheme work well in the English language, but obviously well in Italian, which has a superfluity of rhyming words.  If anyone wants to discuss this matter I'm open to further comment, especially if someone has actually seen this form created before.  Thanks. Galo1969X 08:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Convolution for the Masses: The Sonnet alambiqué 

message: NOTE: eventually create article for "Sonneteer" (a person who composes sonnets), create ":Category:Sonneteers" and add many names, and build a manual list of prominent sonneteers @ List of sonneteers (sub-category of ":Category:Lists of poets"). --WassermannNYC 13:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, create :Category:Sonnets.  --WassermannNYC 13:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Sonnetology]]: Article, Category, & List to create 

message: Illustrating the English sonnet, is Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, including the following lines:
:Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
:Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f)
:Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
:But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f)
The words "come" and "doom" don't seem to rhyme. Do they rhyme under some pronunciations, or is this a violation of the rhyme scheme? In either case, shouldn't there be an explanatory note? Aknyra 09:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know if they ever rhymed, but keep in mind this was from a time during the Great Vowel Shift, and vowels sounded different from how they sound today, so it is quite possible the words rhymed at the time. 74.104.224.144 00:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

text: It could also simply be an example of a slant rhyme.  Pnkrockr 02:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  English Rhyme Scheme Example 

message: Most sonnets are by Shakespeare??? Are they founded by him??? Or did he just bring them to life??
Please refer to the section on Sicilian School for more information on the genesis of the sonnet form. Galo1969X 16:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are sonnets founded by William Shakespeare???? 

message: The start of this section has an incomplete sentence.--207.6.168.116 20:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Italian sonnet 

message: 152.160.39.70 (talk) 18:08, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I confirm: this article is too nationalistic: Britons were not the only sonnet-writers. You also missed the Italian sonnets of XVI century. Lele giannoni (talk) 17:30, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page needs sections on French and Spanish golden-age sonnets. 

message: To better allow readers to verify the information provided on a sonnet, this article should include more sources from a ride range of respected literary critics to back up the claims it makes about the poetic form and references. Mrathel (talk) 18:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  sources 

message: I have reverted a recent undocumented change from "little song" to "little sound" ... because that would shift to the literal Italian and ignore the Occitan reference in the sentence. Note that this "minor" issue is fairly complicated: See . Perhaps a longer sentence would get this "exactly" right, but the introduction may not be the place for such detailed etymology. Comments? Proofreader77 (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "little song"  

message: Per MoS, if the article subject is specifically British or American, that spelling is used, otherwise the first spelling used in writing the article is adhered to, as a precedent. This article was originally spelled with American spelling (pentameter, not pentametre) but a case could plausibly be made that the subject, where it is not Italian, is British. I leave this to the usual editors of this article to discuss. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 17:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling 

message: "... (with some typical variances one may expect when reading an Elizabethan-age sonnet with modern eyes):" appears to be un-encyclopaedic and informal. If it is not fixed by someone soon, I will remove it. Zen Clark (talk) 02:54, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please explain why you do not feel it is correct. There is an issue here of students reading and being confused by the fact some of the lines do not rhyme according to the specification: abab cdcd efef gg. And some words had more syllables then, than now. Feel free to suggest how this might be phrased more suitably. Proofreader77 (talk) 03:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not Encyclopaedic 

message: Is it necessary to have a link to the Verve song at the the beginning of the article? The subject of this article is likely what the majority of users will be searching for when they come here, and I don't feel it is necessary to have this link at the top simply because there happens to be a song with the same title as one of the most common poem forms in the history of English literature. If it were a wildly notable song, it might be different, but as far as I know, it is hardly on the same level. I am unsure of precedence on the matter, so I do defer to the judgment of others. Mrathel (talk) 17:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The "hatnote" link is "standard procedure" .... If there were many articles with the name "Sonnet (x)" there would be a disambiguation page "Sonnet (disambiguation)" and the link at the top of this page would point there. But disambiguation pages aren't created unless there are more than two articles to link to. When there are two (as we have here), the "hatnote" link to the other is standard Wikipedia process. (I think I'm repeating now. :) Cheers. Proofreader77 (talk) 17:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. It just appears strange to me is all. Its like having a hatnote for the Qu'ran that says "the article on the Qu'ran, click here for the 1975 hit song by Paul Simon's brother." or something of the like. But, I guess I can just wait and pray that more notable subjects get an article with the title "Sonnet" :) Mrathel (talk) 17:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You're very welcome. Will be scanning the zeitgeist for potential articles. ^^ Happy holidays. Proofreader77 (talk) 18:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Verve 

message: The description says the sestet is c-d-c-c-d-c, but it looks to me a lot more like c-d-c, d-c-d:
Nostre Senhier faccia a vus compagna
per qe en ren no vus qal[la] duptar;
tals quida hom qe perda qe gazaingna.
Seigner es de la terra e de la mar,
per qe lo Rei Engles e sel d'Espangna
ne varran mais, si.ls vorres aiudar.
Can anyone explain how this is c-d-c, c-d-c please?
Corgi (talk) 17:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Occitan sonnet's sestet 

message: Petrarch's and Shakespeare's Sonnets contains a lot of unsourced material/original research and is written like a personal essay, but does contain some content which could be merged here. Rather than listing it for deletion I thought I'd suggest merging it here first. NotFromUtrecht (talk) 09:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, I've just reviewed the Petrarch's and Shakespeare's Sonnets article, and it contains so little useful content that I'm simply going to list it for deletion instead. NotFromUtrecht (talk) 18:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: The article, as it is now, is far too focussed on English sonnets, and Shakespeare's for that matter. There's nothing wrong with covering those in detail, but outside of the section on sonnets' Italian origins and the strangely tacked-on bit about Urdu sonnets, a reader must get the (entirely false) impression that sonnets did not exist in other languages and in other nations' poetry. -- Schneelocke (talk) 23:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The introduction jumps straight to Shakespeare, as if his predecessors were unimportant. I see no reason why the introduction shouldn't stop at, "...although the term can be used derisively." The English sonnet is covered adequately in the body of the article. I intend to truncate the introduction, unless someone offers an argument for leaving it as it is. Dayvey (talk) 10:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Globalize/UK 

message: I just read about a form of sonnet collection :da:Sonetring consisting of 15 14 line sonnets, where each sonnet begins with the last line of the precding one and the fifteenth sonnet (called a master sonnet) is composed of the 14 first lines. This seems different from both Crown of Sonnets and Sonnet cycle. Does this format exist in English poetry and if so what is it called?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Chain of Sonnets

message: The article's first line states that the sonnet's creation is credited to Petrarch, but in the first section it states (correctly, I believe), that its inventor is Giacomo da Lentini. Could somebody correct this? I know in English the typical Italian sonnet is often called "Petrarchan", but Petrarch hardly invented the sonnet, considering that there are sonnets composed long before he was even born. 2.38.247.136 (talk) 11:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sonnet's Inventor? 

message: I just want to reply to the person who was talking about cutting the links. I disagree. Links means that the audience will have sites to go to if they need info. I don't see the good thing in cutting them out. It will, in fact, make the article more informative as the audience will have more ideas and resources to go to.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwertypranav123 (talk • contribs) 01:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: External links

message: Is it notable enough to include in this article (under a "21st Century" heading, perhaps) that Lin Manuel Miranda accepted his 2016 Tony Award in sonnet form?  Here's one news reference: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/06/lin-manuel-miranda-tony-speech  --Theodore Kloba (☎) 15:41, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  2016 [[Tony Award]] Acceptance Speech by [[Lin-Manuel Miranda]] 

message: In my opinion, the hyperlink to the 'Canadian poetry' article on a tab in this article should be removed and the link to the 'Canadian poetry' article should instead be placed in the 'See also' section as in my opinion having a hyperlink on one tab and none on the others makes the article inconsistent. Xboxsponge15 (talk) 21:12, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Canadian poetry' hyperlink on a tab in the article 

message: if by some later discussion the community would come to the conclusion that the article needs to be shortened, i suggest it could end here: "The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the time included two parts that together formed a compact form of "argument". First, the octave forms the "proposition", which describes a "problem" or "question", followed by a sestet (two tercets) which proposes a "resolution". Typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the "turn", or "volta", which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that do not strictly follow the problem/resolution structure, the ninth line still often marks a "turn" by signaling a change in the tone, mood, or stance of the poem. "
the rest of the article with dante and from there on seems to be a less than necessary and also somewhat arbitrary collection of languages thet were used at some point to write sonnets. 
also missing the hungarian poet Faludy Gyorgy from the (superfluous) listing of nationalities/languages having a noticeable endeavour with the sonnet form.
though the last sentence of the citation (by me, above) might be considered a tautology: of course "the ninth line ((of the sonnet)) often marks a turn by signalling a change of tone" since the minimal definition of what is viewed as a sonnet requires it to do so.
195.139.18.246 (talk) 16:06, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  too long 

message: ====The poem in question====
Undoubtedly, this is 7 heroic couplets. The question is: is it also a sonnet?
TL:DR: It aint.
(NB: Both I and Hollis Robbins assume that this is in fact a 14-line poem with a sort of extrametrical introduction at the beginning… we both take "The crown…" to be the first line of the actual poem.)
====Consensus before Robbins====
First I will note that I searched JSTOR for "Wheatley" & "sonnet". I reviewed the first few dozen hits, and without exception every instance of these words in proximity was in reference to June Jordan's (for us, unhelpfully entitled article) "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America; Or, Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley" -- which for the record does not mention the poem in question. Further hits seemed to yield these words in less proximity and less relevance.
Next, note that any reference to the earliest American sonnet being by David Humphreys is necessarily a denial that Wheatley's poem is a sonnet at all. There is no doubt that her poem was written before Humphreys's sonnets. And Wheatley was a cause célèbre in her time, so anyone who knows Humphreys would surely know Wheatley.
To begin, then: books about sonnets: The earliest reference I've found is in an 1867 anthology by Leigh Hunt and S. Adams Lee: "The first American sonnet was written... by David Humphreys" Wheatley is not included either under the rubric "American Sonnets", nor the unfortunate separate category "Female Sonneteers". This is echoed in 1887 (though seemingly with Hunt & Lee as a source) in The Berkeleyan. Representative Sonnets by American Poets (about a quarter of whose sonnets are listed as "irregular", eliminating a strict formal bias) includes Humphreys, not Wheatley.
More recently, the Twayne publication A Book of the Sonnet states: "Humphreys wrote a sequence of twelve sonnets during the years 1776-99, of which the present poem ["Addressed to His Royal Highness, The Prince of Brazil..."] is reputed to be the first genuine sonnet written by an American poet." Wheatley is not mentioned in this book. The  supports Humphreys's priority with a citation of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). It should be noted that the passage in question originated in the 1st edition of 1965, and has been retained through all editions, under 3 different editorial teams and through 2 updates of the article by a total of 4 authors. This article alone constitutes a half century of scholarly consensus.
Continuing with books about Wheatley/African-American verse: Directly after a discussion of Wheatley's conformity, we read that "Paul Laurence Dunbar is normally credited with being the first innovator and first truly gifted formal poet among blacks." [emphasis mine] I don't believe this could be said of a poet who wrote a sonnet in couplets. The compilation Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley, which traces her critical reception from 1767 to 1982 in 65 essays contains the word "sonnet" only once: describing a poem by another author who wrote about Wheatley.  has already performed a similar automated search, and come up dry, but I wanted to highlight some specific instances.
Even scholars evidently in Robbins's orbit do not support Wheatley's authorship of a sonnet. The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Robbins's own sometime co-editor, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., contains only 1 instance of the word "sonnet" -- referring to June Jordan's article. In another article he states that "all of her extant poems, except five, utilize the heroic couplet", and these exceptions he conveniently names; "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty" is not listed as an exception to her prevalent mode.
The African American Sonnet: A Literary History (blurbed by Robbins as "impressive") begins: "When Albery Allson Whitman, a minister and former slave, published his first collection of poetry in 1877, he inaugurated an unlikely genre: the African American sonnet." As if to forestall a suspicion of too-strict formal criteria, the sonnet in question, "Sonnet: The Montenegrin", has 15 lines! Indeed Müller explicitly states in an endnote: "Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets, including Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton, occasionally published fourteen-line poems in heroic couplets. These poems were not regarded as sonnets at the time and are therefore not treated as such in this study."
On what, even, is a sonnet, really?: One does not have to be an irredeemably exclusionary formalist to doubt whether 7 heroic couplets really constitute a sonnet. L. T. Weeks tabulates 1015 possible rime schemes that he judges to be reasonably regular (he finds only 262 of these schemes occurring in actual sonnets). He also notes blank verse and some other rime schemes outside of his already quite broad norm, but appears not even to consider 7 couplets as a candidate. (Incidentally, this proliferation of rime schemes (published before 1910) should give pause to anyone seeking to argue that sonnet experimentation is an unusually American or African-American or 20th-/21st-century phenomenon -- all of these categories surely representing minorities in Weeks's survey.) E.H.C. Oliphant, setting out a quasi-generative list of rules for the possible structures of sonnets (not to limit, but to encourage innovation) generates hundreds of candidates, but programmatically dismisses a series of 7 couplets in rules 7 and 8 of his foundational set of 10 rules.
====Robbins====
In light of the long-held consensus that Humphreys wrote the earliest American sonnet, that Wheatley did not write a sonnet, and that 7 heroic couplets do not constitute a sonnet, it would be incumbent upon anyone making the claim that "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty" is a sonnet to provide a salient argument. But Robbins merely makes the assertion and moves on. She further asserts that there is a volta at line nine, a very sonnet-like feature. However, this ignores the much more obvious change in perspective at line 5 which is emphasized in the first edition by verse paragraphing; Wheatley's original un-sonnet-like reading is suppressed in Robbins's reprinting of the poem.
So if she won't explain why "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty" is a sonnet, does she propose an overall definition? She states that "[t]he sonnet, or "little song," is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with an organized rhyme scheme." Although she cites The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet as her source for this statement, it is corroborated neither on the page, nor even anywhere in the chapter she cites. But she is not constrained even by this broad and dubious definition, as she accepts poems in blank verse and rimed free verse.
Her nadir of selection would seem to be a run of 7 couplets which she first calls a "sonnet excerpt", but in her very next sentence confidently styles a "sonnet". The lines in question are extracted from The Pleasures of Hope, a long poem in heroic couplets, divided throughout into rather short verse paragraphs, the so-called "sonnet excerpt" occurring in a run numbering 4-8-10-6-14-8-8-4-18. This is just silly.
But Robbins is not punctilious when analyzing verseforms. She describes "A Sonnet" by John Willis Menard as "[w]ritten in iambic tetrameter rather than pentameter, in rhymed couplets rather than a Shakespearean or Petrarchan rhyme scheme… Menard's poem is a sonnet in name only." So perhaps at last we've found Robbins's formal limit. In fact the poem is not in couplets, but boasts a precisely Shakespearean rime scheme, so is formally identical to Shakespeare's Sonnet 145, which she holds up as an example of the sonnet tradition adapting itself. She describes the line "We sliced the watermelon into smiles" as possessing "brazen non-iambic ten syllables." This is an unambiguous and regular iambic pentameter that Alexander Pope would happily accept -- but hey, she counted the syllables correctly. In discussing Petrarch's "Amor con sue promesse lusingando" she writes: "The rhyme scheme is easily perceived: ABBAABBA CDCDEE." But this is the rime scheme of the English translation she prints, not of Petrarch's original, which goes ABBAABBA CDCDCD.Petrarch: The Canzoniere Who cares, right? But famously a strict Petrarchan sonnet never ends with a couplet, nor does this sonnet in Petrarch's Italian.
====And another thing====
In the final analysis, the claim that Wheatley's poem is America's earliest sonnet is self-defeating. It is easy to find other even earlier examples of (colonial) American poems comprising 7 heroic couplets. In 10 minutes of skimming I found 2 in one frequently-reprinted anthology, without even bothering to get to the end: "March 4th Anno 1698[/9]: A Charracteristicall Satyre on a proud upstart" by John Saffin, and "To the Rev'd Mr. Jno. Sparhawk on the Birth of His Son, Aust. Or Sept. 1713" by Samuel Sewall. If Wheatley's is a sonnet, theirs are too. In fact, both of these poems are slightly more convincing "sonnets", as they do not feature the very un-sonnet-like 4-10 line structure of Wheatley's poem. But no one has claimed these as earlier sonnets than that of Humphreys, showing that it is neither racial nor sexual animus against Wheatley that has prevented her recognition as a sonneteer. Rather, it is the fact that heroic couplets -- at the very least, heroic couplets in a heroic couplet context -- are not sonnets. Phil wink (talk) 01:13, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the most comprehensive demolition of poor scholarship that I've ever seen. Many thanks for your thoroughness, . Can I take it we now have concensus to revert the false claims and special pleading at the head of the American subsection? Sweetpool50 (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Robbins, at least on this topic is WP:FRINGE. And I don't see how the Kenyon Review citation supports the statements made. Phil wink (talk) 22:58, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Wheatley's alleged sonnet

message: In the final analysis, the claim that Wheatley's poem is America's earliest sonnet is self-defeating. It is easy to find other even earlier examples of (colonial) American poems comprising 7 heroic couplets. In 10 minutes of skimming I found 2 in one frequently-reprinted anthology, without even bothering to get to the end: "March 4th Anno 1698[/9]: A Charracteristicall Satyre on a proud upstart" by John Saffin, and "To the Rev'd Mr. Jno. Sparhawk on the Birth of His Son, Aust. Or Sept. 1713" by Samuel Sewall. If Wheatley's is a sonnet, theirs are too. In fact, both of these poems are slightly more convincing "sonnets", as they do not feature the very un-sonnet-like 4-10 line structure of Wheatley's poem. But no one has claimed these as earlier sonnets than that of Humphreys, showing that it is neither racial nor sexual animus against Wheatley that has prevented her recognition as a sonneteer. Rather, it is the fact that heroic couplets -- at the very least, heroic couplets in a heroic couplet context -- are not sonnets. Phil wink (talk) 01:13, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: And another thing

message: *  (The previous, and functionally identical, version of this entry from PEPP3 is available .)
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::That's the most comprehensive demolition of poor scholarship that I've ever seen. Many thanks for your thoroughness, . Can I take it we now have concensus to revert the false claims and special pleading at the head of the American subsection? Sweetpool50 (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Robbins, at least on this topic is WP:FRINGE. And I don't see how the Kenyon Review citation supports the statements made. Phil wink (talk) 22:58, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: The layout of the English section suggested a separate article that had been badly integrated into the general article. Its first two paragraphs appeared to function as a lead. And since there are no images of authors in other sections, those of the Earl of Surrey and Shakespeare seemed without precedent. Most of the text that followed was unsourced and contained  the nonsensical claim that Wyatt had translated Dante and Ronsard. Quotation of entire sonnets in later paragraphs was quite unjustified without discussion of them, which in any case would have been best left to the articles on the individual authors. Revision therefore concentrates on the development of the sonnet as a form over the Tudor and Stuart period rather than cramming in as many names of poets as possible, some of them not notable from that point of view. Sweetpool50 (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  English section