Editing Sonnet (section)

====18th–19th centuries====
{{See also|Romantic sonnets}}
The fashion for the sonnet went out with the [[English Restoration|Restoration]], and hardly any were written between 1670 and the second half of the 18th century. Amongst the first to revive the form was [[Thomas Warton]], who took Milton for his model. Around him at Oxford were grouped those associated with him in this revival, including [[John Codrington Bampfylde]], [[Thomas Russell (poet)|Thomas Russell]], [[Thomas Warwick]] and [[Henry Headley]], some of whom published small collections of sonnets alone.<ref>Bethan Roberts, ''Charlotte Smith and the Sonnet'', OUP 2019, [https://books.google.com/books?id=AC27DwAAQBAJ&q=poem+%22Thomas+Warwick%22 p.19]</ref>  Many women, too, now took up the sonnet form, in particular [[Charlotte Smith (writer)|Charlotte Smith]], whose lachrymose ''Elegiac Sonnets'' (1784 onwards) are credited with helping create the 'school of sensibility' characteristic of the time.<ref>''Cambridge History of English Literature'' (2005), [https://books.google.com/books?id=UtmE5JzCOFAC&dq=sensibility+%22Elegaic+sonnets%22&pg=PA231 p.231]</ref> [[William Lisle Bowles]] was also a close follower, but the success of both stirred up resistance in the poetic politics of the time.

[[William Beckford (novelist)|William Beckford]] parodied Smith's melancholy manner and archaic diction in an "Elegiac sonnet to a mopstick".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10037421|title=Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ELEGIAC SONNET TO A MOPSTICK, by WILLIAM BECKFORD|website=www.poetryexplorer.net}}</ref> In the preface to his 1796 collection ''Poems on Various Subjects'', [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] commented of his series of "Effusions" that "I was fearful that the title "Sonnet" might have reminded my reader of the Poems of the Rev. W. L. Bowles – a comparison with whom would have sunk me below that mediocrity, on the surface of which I am at present enabled to float".<ref>S. T. Coleridge, ''Poems'', London 1796, [https://books.google.com/books?id=n61aAAAAcAAJ&q=Coleridge+%22Poems+on+Various+Subjects%22 p.x]</ref> There were formal objections too. Where most of the early revivalists had used Milton's sonnets as the model for theirs, Smith and Bowles had preferred the Shakespearean form.  This led to [[Mary Robinson (poet)|Mary Robinson]]'s fighting preface to her sequence ''Sappho and Phaon'', in which she asserted the legitimacy of the Petrarchan form as used by Milton over "the non-descript ephemera from the heated brains of self-important poetasters" that pass as sonnets in the literary reviews of her day.<ref>Mary Robinson, ''Sappho and Phaon: in a series of legitimate sonnets, with thoughts on poetical subjects'', London 1796, [https://books.google.com/books?id=7K5YAAAAcAAJ&dq=poetasters+%22Sappho+and+Phaon%22&pg=PA10 p.10]</ref>

At the start of the 19th century, [[Capel Lofft]] expressed his sense of the importance of the sonnet's history to the new generation of English poets. In the long preface to his idiosyncratic ''Laura, or an anthology of sonnets (on the Petrarchan model) and elegiac quatorzains'' (London 1814), the thesis is developed that beyond the sonnet's Sicilian origin lies the system of musical notation developed by the mediaeval [[Guido of Arezzo]], and before that the musical arrangement of the [[Pindar#Structure|Greek ode]].<ref>Lofft 1814, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hhouAQAAIAAJ pp.iii-ix]</ref> The young Milton, he noted, had learned the mature Italian style while travelling in Italy and conversing on equal terms with its writers (as well as writing five sonnets in Italian as well).<ref>Lofft 1814, pp. cxli-clv</ref> In form, his are modelled on Petrarch's and, dealing as they do with both personal and contemporary issues, are reminiscent in their organisation of the [[Odes (Horace)|Horatian ode]].<ref>John H. Finley, Jr., "Milton and Horace: A Study of Milton's Sonnets", ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'' Vol. 48 (1937), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/310690?refreqid=excelsior%3A55b1e11b22c4e368c0ac5f49332ef7c3&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contentsnow=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A18772fefad4336e1c8f88b1f635de51a&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents pp. 29-73]</ref> 

Impressed too by Milton's sonnets, Wordsworth described the form as having "an energetic and varied flow of sound, crowding into narrow room more of the combined effect of rhyme and blank verse, than can be done by any other kind of verse I know of".<ref>Jay Curlin, "Chaos in the Convent's Narrow Room: Milton and the Sonnet", [https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=articles Scholarly Commons, 1993]</ref> In that its compression could be adapted to a great variety of themes, he eventually wrote some 523 sonnets which were to exert a powerful stylistic influence throughout the first half of the 19th century.<ref>George Sanderlin, "The Influence of Milton and Wordsworth on the Early Victorians", ELH 5.3 (1938), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2871590.pdf pp.225–251]</ref> Part of his appeal to others was the way in which he used the sonnet as a focus for new subject matter, frequently in sequences. From his series on the River Duddon<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/riverduddonserie00word|title=The River Duddon : a series of sonnets : Vaudracour and Julia: and other poems. To which is annexed, a topographical description of the country of the lakes, in the north of England|first=William|last=Wordsworth|date=17 April 1820|publisher=London : Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> sprang reflections on any number of regional natural features; his travel tour effusions, though not always confined to sonnet form,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wordsworthcentre.co.uk/Cornell/pages/cup_ssip.htm|title=Sonnet Series and Itinerary Poems, 1820-1845, by William Wordsworth, ed. Geoffrey Jackson|website=www.wordsworthcentre.co.uk}}</ref> found many imitators. What eventually became three series of ''Ecclesiastical Sonnets''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47143/47143-h/47143-h.htm|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poetical Works Of William Wordsworth (7 of 8), by William Wordsworth.|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref> started a vogue for sonnets on religious and devotional themes.<ref>Sanderlin 1938, pp.229–35</ref> Milton's predilection for political themes, continuing through Wordsworth's "Sonnets dedicated to liberty and order", now became an example for contemporaries too. Barely had the process begun, however, before a sceptical alarmist in ''[[The New Monthly Magazine]]'' for 1821 was diagnosing "sonnettomania" as a new sickness akin to "the bite of a rabid animal".<ref>Jennifer Ann Wagner, ''A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-century English Sonnet'', Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1996, [https://books.google.com/books?id=PZYkimc1bZUC   p.116]</ref>

Another arm of the propaganda on behalf of the sonnet in [[English Romantic sonnets|Romantic times]] was the reflexive strategy of recommending it in sonnet form as a demonstration of its possibility of variation. In Wordsworth's "Nuns fret not at their narrow room" (1807),<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sonnets.org/wordsworth.htm#100|title=William Wordsworth|website=www.sonnets.org}}</ref> the volta comes after the seventh line, dividing the poem into two equal parts. Keats makes use of frequent enjambment in "If by dull rhymes our English must be chained" (1816)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sonnets.org/keats.htm#010|title=John Keats|website=www.sonnets.org}}</ref> and divides its sense units into four tercets and a couplet. What Keats is recommending there is the more intricate rhyming system A B C |A B D |C A B |C D E| D E that he demonstrates in its course as a means of giving the form greater breathing room. Wordsworth later accomplishes this in "Scorn not the Sonnet" (1827),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45547/scorn-not-the-sonnet|title=Poetry Foundation|date=26 April 2024 }}</ref> which is without midway division, and where enjambment is so managed that the sense overrides from line to line in an ode-like movement. With the similar aim of freeing the form from its fetters, [[Matthew Arnold]] turns his "Austerity of poetry" (1867)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/matthew-arnold/austerity-of-poetry/|title=Austerity of Poetry|date=16 June 2022|website=Collection at Bartleby.com}}</ref> into a narrative carried forward over an enjambed eighth line to a conclusion that is limited to the final three lines.

[[File: Rossetti_on_sonnet,_1880.jpg|thumb|upright=1.05|D. G. Rossetti's illuminated description of the sonnet, 1880]]
By the time the second half of the 19th century was reached, sonnets become chiefly interesting for their publication in long sequences. It was during this period that attempts to renew the form were continually being made. [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]]'s autobiographical ''[[Sonnets from the Portuguese]]'' (1845–50),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2002/2002-h/2002-h.htm|title=Sonnets from the Portuguese, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref> for example, is described as the first depiction of a successful courtship since Elizabethan times.<ref>''The art of the sonnet'', Harvard University Press, 2010, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WduHxc6iYp4C&dq=nineteenth+century+sonnets&pg=PA1 p.18]</ref> It comprises 44 sonnets of dramatised first person narrative, the enjambed lines in which frequently avoid resting at the volta.  Through this means the work is distinguished by "the flexibility and control with which the verse bends to the argument and to the rhythms of thought and speech".<ref>Dorothy Mermin, "The Female Poet and the Embarrassed Reader: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From the Portuguese", ELH 48.2 (Johns Hopkins University, 1981), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2872976 p.356]</ref>

That sequence was followed in 1862 by [[George Meredith]]'s [[Modern Love (poetry collection)|''Modern Love'']],<ref>Google Books, [https://books.google.com/books?id=MwFdAAAAcAAJ&q=Meredith+%22Modern+Love%22 pp.31–82]</ref> based in part on the breakdown of his first marriage. It employs a 16-line form, described as (and working like) a sonnet, linking together the work's fifty narrative episodes. Essentially the stanza is made up of four quatrains of [[enclosed rhyme]], rhythmically driven forward over these divisions so as to allow a greater syntactical complexity "more readily associated with the realist novel than with lyric poetry".<ref>Stephen Regan, "The Victorian Sonnet, from George Meredith to Gerard Manley Hopkins", ''The Yearbook of English Studies'' 36.2 (2006), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20479240?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A9e88d78a21e98fd8aacfa2cde4abcca1&seq=7#page_scan_tab_contents p.23]</ref> As other work by both the writers above demonstrates, they were capable of more straightforward fictions. In adapting the sonnet to the narrative mode, the main interest for them is in overcoming the technical challenge that they set themselves and proving the new possibilities of the form in which they are working.

Where the first quatrain in ''Sonnets from the Portuguese'' began with a reminiscence of lines from a pastoral of [[Theocritus]], Edward Cracroft Lefroy (1855–1891) responded by reaching beyond the narrative mode towards the dramatic in the thirty adaptations from the Greek of his ''Echoes from Theocritus'' (1885, reprint 1922).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/EchoesFromTheocritvsEdwardCracroftLefroy|title=Echoes From Theocritus by Edward Cracroft Lefroy and John Austen|first=Edward Cracroft|last=Lefroy|date=17 April 1922|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Beyond this, though the idea of arranging such material in a sequence was original to Lefroy, [[Thomas Warwick]] had anticipated the approach a century before in his sonnet "From [[Bacchylides]]", equally based on a fragment of an ancient Greek author. On the other hand, [[Eugene Lee-Hamilton]]'s exploration of the sonnet's dramatic possibilities was through creating historical monologues in his hundred ''Imaginary Sonnets'' (1888),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J7QwAQAAMAAJ|title=Imaginary Sonnets|first=Eugene|last=Lee-Hamilton|date=17 April 1888|publisher=E. Stock|via=Google Books}}</ref> based on episodes chosen from the seven centuries between 1120 – 1820. Neither sequence was anywhere the equal of those of Barrett Browning or Meredith,<ref>''The Art of the Sonnet'', Harvard University 2016, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WduHxc6iYp4C Introduction, p.20]</ref> but they illustrate a contemporary urge to make new a form that was fast running out of steam.