Consciousness and the Sonnet

In The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet, Paul Oppenheimer argues that … the invention of the sonnet must itself be considered symptomatic of the slowly developing state of mind that we designate by the term “Renaissance.” The sonnet is so much more than a form. It marked a shift in Western thought, and what it left out is as important as what it ushered in. That’s what makes it alive and allows us to push up against its constraints. We can both live freely inside its walls and break its walls down to live free. It ain’t no pantoum, baby. That’s for sure. The sonnet exists on a whole other level.