h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi GTB,

>>>That sentence has to be missing a couple of words, or something. "...reason, conclusion or counter-argument to what was set out...," or, "...to the idea that was set out...," maybe?

Indeed!

>>Is it conventional that sonnets be printed without line breaks? It might be nice to have spaces between the octave and the sestet, or between the quatrains in the English one, y'know?

Yes, it is conventional that sonnets are printed without line breaks. However, they are usually indented to show where the voltas are, and I don't know if you can do that in GuideML - I looked for a or tag and couldn't find one.

I would rather not use spaces because that makes it look like they have different verses or stanzas, which is not the case. If you know a way to do indentation, let me know.

Hi Mackay,

>>Is the English sonnet as tightly defined as you describe ?

Yes. But you won't get arrested if you work outside the definition so long as you have applied for a poetic license.

>only people likely to care are you
Not even me. Perish the thought! It was just to make the point that you can't really apply the classical Greek and Latin metre to English for very long without coming adrift. I knew you'd agree.

Have you heard this one?

There was a young man called MacNammiter
With an organ of prodigious diameter.
But it was not the size
That gave girls the surprise,
But his rhythm - Iambic Pentameter.

------------------------------------------

So having by now had a little more time for pedantry, and just to pad out this thread some more, and bore the pants off people while we're all waiting for the statutory seven days to elapse and free us from this lunacy...

>Rime in vita e morta di Madonna Laura (sometimes known simply as the Canzoniere)
-- provide a translation?

>introduced the sonnets of Petrarch to this island
-- which island? England is not an island

>We often refer to the Elizabethan period as a 'flowering' or a 'golden age' of poetry. That's all very poetic - but let's cut to the chase: most of the greatest lyric poems in the entire canon of English literature were written within a period of about two decades. A white-hot supernova of poetry exploded in the 1580s and burnt fiercely to the end of the century!
-- worth mentioning that intricately interwoven with poetry at the time was a blazing comet of English music: Merbecke, Byrd and Tallis, Wilbye, Weelkes, Gibbons, the madrigals of Morley, the ayres of Dowland and Campion. From your list, Sidney and Greville at least were accomplished lutenists, I think. [ Can a comet be interwoven with a supernova?]

>This structure of ideas and images is known as the 'conceit' of the poem
-- perhaps add a note here to explain that 'conceit' in this sense is akin to 'concept' and has nothing to do with any excess of self-pride

>In this sonnet, Stella is more Lara than Laura
-- Possibly unclear - which Lara do you mean?

>the Spenserian sonnet (named after Edmund Spenser)
-- I agree with Azara this needs a note, esp since the Spenserian stanza was used by Thomson, Byron, Shelley and Keats

>In the 19th century it recovered once again under the pens of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
-- would you like to mention here those great 19th Century sonneteers, Yeats and Hopkins, rather than (or at least in addition to) these lesser luminaries?

>The English language is a gloriously unstable, organic thing but, like a rare allotrope, it can sometimes be formed as a perfect, crystalline gem.
-- Just to compound the metaphor by mentioning that Pope did say of Dryden that he found the English language brick, and left it marble. He was quoting Suetonius, who said that about what the Emperor Augustus did for Rome.

Hello again!

>>Not even me. Perish the thought!

Ah! So its only Clive Wilmer then, who spent many a long minute correcting my sorry scansions of Pound's Shorter Poems.

>>Have you heard this one?

No! V good!

>>which island?

The sceptred one. I can change to 'these isles' if you like.

>>blazing comet of English music

Not convinced - I think it's a bit off-topic, as I would be compelled to go on about how many of these lyric poems were set to music by the composers you mention, and I think that's worthy of an entry on its own (one that I don't intend to write, however).

>>which Lara do you mean?

Lara Croft!

>>Yeats and Hopkins

Yes, I'd forgotten about Yeats. I considered mentioning Hopkins but he uses a radically different form of the sonnet (e.g Pied Beauty only has 11 lines). And then there's the whole sprung rhytmn thing.... I could also have mentioned Browning and Arnold.

Right, off to make some changes.

Well I wouldn't dream of asking for an entry on late 16th C music - honest, gub - what I had in mind was just adding 'and music' to 'A white-hot supernova of poetry'.

Thank you all very much for your comments.

I have now made some changes based on your feedback and feel that the entry is much improved!

I have also merged the Sex and Guns paragraphs and linked their ramblings to the notion of the poetic 'conceit', in the hope that this follows a more logical path of idea development.

Still outstanding, because I haven't quite decided what to do about them yet, are the title of the entry and the spacing/indentation thing with the quotations.

Oh yes, and that last line. No-one gave me a third opinion so I am inclined to leave it in!

To indent, try using  

Ta-da!

re the title: i think the suggestions about the title were initially intended to make this entry attract a little attention on the PR list. We all know what sells, especially with 'guns'!

At this stage though, having had such a response in PR, it is an interesting question, given the relatively precise categories of 'sonnet' that have been described and discussed. I think 'The Sonnet' can no longer be precise enough. Have a fresh look at the content and think about what title would best describe it...

just a thought
spiff

Well it looks like you've covered all the angles, Gubernatrix, and I think this Entry is ripe for picking.

Mind you, there's one small thing which you could do yourself or leave for the sub: you need 'fewer' instead of 'less' in this sentence -

>Thus new rhymes are introduced with each section, making it better-suited to the English language, which, being uninflected, has less rhyming words than Italian.

- though, come to think of it, if it was up to me I wouldn't join 'better suited' either.



Bels

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