<main>
<head>The Sonneteer</head>
<headline>A demonstration of structured form</headline>
<line>
<stress>View the repository through any of the indexes</stress>
</line>
<para class="test"><worktitle>The Sonneteer</worktitle> is two things at
once. It is a library of sonnets, and it is a demonstration of open
standards-based e-text technologies (in this case, XML) in support of a
focused, but generalized, application: presenting a loose collection of
poems with some attention to their formal aspects.</para>
<para>Thanks are owed to supporters including old friends and associates
of every description, and especially to early XML developers who designed and built the
tools that made these experiments possible - and laying the ground for
what we see today.</para>
<part>
<head>A library of sonnets</head>
<list>
<head>Indexes to the sonnets</head>
<point>
<plug href="index/authors.html" window="replace">by
author</plug>
</point>
<point>
<plug href="index/titles.html" window="replace">by title</plug>
</point>
<point>
<plug href="index/firstlines.html" window="replace">by first
line</plug>
</point>
<point>
<plug href="index/rhymes.html" window="replace">by rhyme
scheme</plug>
</point>
</list>
<para>The sonnet makes a fascinating study because it encapsulates in
miniature the entire development of English-language prosody from the
Early Modern Period (as early as the court of Henry VIII), when English
poetry became newly exposed to Italian courtly forms, through to the
present.</para>
<para>More could be said — but here, will not be —
about the intrinsic interest of the sonnet as a poetic form, about its
singular and revealing history, and about how its formal qualities may
be echoed, albeit framed and even <called>confined</called> or teased,
in the automated modes of text processing that drive this experiment.
<worktitle>The Sonneteer</worktitle> springs, in fact, from a set of
technologies designed for all kinds of writing, yet
<called>tuned</called> here for the sonnet.</para>
<para>Any poem here may be viewed in a visual layout framed to the
expectations of either a strict Petrarchan sonnet (octaves and sestets),
or the looser Elizabethan (quatrains with a couplet): in this way some
kind of contrast between the two extremes may be more evident, and how
each single poem fits one or the other, or neither or both. The fact
that a given instance does not <called>fit</called> a particular view of
the sonnet form is part of what these presentations are meant to
dramatize. The rhyme scheme of a sonnet is often the surest guide to how
strictly it adheres to the unwritten rules; but attention also has to be
paid to the rhetorical flow of argument from one quatrain to another, to
where the bridge or <called>turn</called> is (sometimes it strays from
the normative position after line 8), to whether a couplet is pronounced
in the final two lines, to metrical phenomena such as enjambment, and so
forth.</para>
<para>The <label>reference view</label> of poems in this collection is
designed to look reasonably good when printed. For that matter, if you
find yourself interested in these, you probably know that any number of
excellent collections of English poetry are available in more portable
or more amenable forms. Patronize your local book store!</para>
<para>Occasionally, the Sonneteer has allowed the indulgence of a few
notes on one or another particular poem: these also appear in the
reference view. For the most part, this collection will have to speak
for itself.</para>
</part>
<part>
<head>An XML demonstration</head>
<para>See the <term>XML source</term> of any poem in this library by
selecting <label>source code</label>. (Or link to
<uri>source.html</uri> to see what the source of this page looks
like.)</para>
<para>The materials on this site are delivered to your web browser in a
language it can understand (HTML): but the source text files are created
and maintained in a format designed just for that purpose, and therefore
superior for the tasks. The site shows, in a simple way, how even a
small XML tag set can be put to work to support fairly complex and
scalable operations, much more simply and effectively than is now
possible using other formats. Many claims can be and have been made for
XML and for certain design principles that may be applied to XML
systems. This site exercises such principles in an effort both to test
and define them.</para>
</part>
<part>
<head>Sonnets! Sonnets! Sonnets!</head>
<list>
<point>Eric Blomquist's <plug href="http://www.sonnets.org">Sonnet
Central</plug> has the most thoughtful, painstaking and amazingly
large collection of sonnets on the net.</point>
<point>The sonnet form is not only an English one! check out <plug href="http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/">Sonetos del Siglo de Oro:
Golden Age Spanish Sonnets</plug>.</point>
<point><plug href="http://www.google.com/search?q=sonnet+history">A
Google search</plug> for <quote>sonnet history</quote> picks up some
good stuff. Or <plug href="http://www.google.com/search?q=sonnet+form">search</plug> for <quote>sonnet form</quote>.</point>
</list>
</part>
<para class="dedication">Dedicated to sonnet-writers everywhere.</para>
<para><worktitle>The Sonneteer</worktitle> was developed by <plug href="http://wendellpiez.com">Wendell Piez</plug>,
July-August 2003, and minimally modified when migrated to new platforms,
March 2006, February 2016.</para>
</main>