title: Rakim

text: Artists and critics often credit Rakim with creating the overall shift from the more simplistic old school flows to more complex flows. Kool Moe Dee says, "any emcee that came after 1986 had to study Rakim just to know what to be able to do. [...] Rakim, in 1986, gave us flow and that was the rhyme style from 1986 to 1994. [...] From that point on, anybody emceeing was forced to focus on their flow." Kool Moe Dee explains that before Rakim, the term 'flow' wasn't widely used – "Rakim is basically the inventor of flow. We were not even using the word flow until Rakim came along. It was called rhyming, it was called cadence, but it wasn't called flow. Rakim created flow!" He adds that while Rakim upgraded and popularized the focus on flow, "he didn't invent the word".


title: Rakim

text: Rakim's subject matter often covered his own rapping skills and lyrical superiority over other rappers. AllMusic editor Steve Huey comments that "the majority of his lyrics concern his own skills and his Islamic faith." He also notes Rakim for his "complex internal rhymes, compounding, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms." "Pitchfork" writer Jess Harvell described his rapping as "authoritative, burnished, [and] possessing an unflappable sense of rhythm".


title: Rakim

text: "Paid in Full" was released during the period that became known as golden age hip hop. Alex Ogg considered it the duo's magnum opus in his book "The Men Behind Def Jam". Rakim's rapping set a blueprint for future rappers and helped secure East Coast hip hop's reputation for innovative lyrical technique. William Jelani Cobb stated in his book "To the Break of Dawn" that his rapping had "stepped outside" of the preceding era of old school hip hop and that while the vocabulary and lyrical dexterity of newer rappers had improved, it was "nowhere near what Rakim introduced to the genre". "The New York Times" Dimitri Ehrlich, who described the album as "an artistic and commercial benchmark", credited Rakim for helping "give birth to a musical genre" and leading "a quiet musical revolution, introducing a soft-spoken rapping style". Allmusic's Steve Huey declared "Paid in Full" one of hip hop's most influential albums and "essential listening" for those interested in the genre's "basic musical foundations". MTV ranked it at number one in "The Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time", stating it raised the standards of hip hop "both sonically and poetically" and described it as "captivating, profound, innovative and instantly influential". The album is broken down track-by-track by Rakim in Brian Coleman's book "Check the Technique".


title: Rakim

text: "Rolling Stone" magazine listed it at number 227 on "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", calling it "Ice-grilled, laid-back, diamond-sharp: Rakim is a front-runner in the race for Best Rapper Ever, and this album is a big reason why." Similarly, "Blender" magazine included the album in its "500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die". "Time" magazine listed it as one of the eighteen albums of the 1980s in its "All-TIME 100" albums; editor Alan Light acknowledged the record for changing the "sound, flow, and potential" of hip hop and that if Rakim is "the greatest MC of all time, as many argue, this album is the evidence".


title: Rakim

text: Jess Harvell of "Pitchfork" complimented Rakim for an "endless display of pure skill" and described the album as "laidback and funky", but believed it contained "too much filler to get a free 'classic' pass". "Pitchfork" placed "Paid in Full" at number fifty-two in its "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"; editor Sam Chennault wrote that Rakim inspired a generation of MCs and "defined what it meant to be a hip-hop lyricist". The rappers who have used the unique rapping style employed by Rakim and attribute it as inspiration include GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Raekwon (from the Wu-Tang Clan), Tupac, Nas, Kool G. Rap, Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, 50 Cent, and many more. On July 11, 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album platinum. As of December 1997, it has sold over a million copies.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Jonathan Peter Taffer (born November 7, 1954) is an American entrepreneur and television personality. He is best known for hosting the reality series "Bar Rescue" on Paramount Network and "Face the Truth" on CBS with Vivica A. Fox. He is also largely credited with conceptualizing NFL Sunday Ticket.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer was born in Great Neck, New York on November 7, 1954, to Russian-Jewish parents. He graduated from William A. Shine Great Neck South High School in Great Neck in 1972 and, after a short time at the University of Denver studying political science and minoring in cultural anthropology, he relocated to Los Angeles.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer was born into a family of entrepreneurs. He first worked as a bartender in 1973 for Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood while performing as a drummer in a band.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer's first bar management job was at The Troubadour night club in West Hollywood in 1978. He was given full control of the bar in 1981 where staff theft was rife. He opened his first bar as owner in 1989.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer is credited with creating the NFL Sunday Ticket pay programming package, which was launched in 1994, and was instrumental in the marketing, distribution and sales programs of that endeavor, for which he served on the board of NFL Enterprises for three years.


title: Jon Taffer

text: In 2010, he was appointed as president of the Nightclub and Bar Media Group, a division of Questex Media Group, which is responsible for "Nightclub & Bar Magazine" as well as the annual Nightclub & Bar Convention and Trade Show.


title: Jon Taffer

text: He was one of the first six inductees in the Nightclub Hall of Fame. On July 17, 2011, a reality television series, "Bar Rescue", premiered on Spike TV (now the Paramount Network), that follows Taffer as he revitalizes failing bars and nightclubs across the United States. His wife Nicole occasionally appears on the show as a mystery shopper who assesses the quality of the bar before Taffer does the makeover.


title: Jon Taffer

text: In October 2013 New Harvest published "", a book by Taffer and co-writer Karen Kelly, detailing the knowledge that Taffer acquired over the course of 40 years in the bar and nightlife business.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer has a podcast called "No Excuses", in which he interviews celebrity guests and discusses current events. New episodes premiere on Tuesdays on the PodcastOne network.


title: Jon Taffer

text: In May 2019, it was announced that Taffer would host a spinoff Paramount Network show called "Marriage Rescue", where he would work to save couples' failing relationships. The spinoff series premiered on June 2, 2019. The series follows 12 couples as Taffer uses the Gestalt therapy to help them work through their issues.


title: Jon Taffer

text: Taffer lives in Las Vegas. He has been married to his wife Nicole, since 2000. Taffer also has a daughter named Samantha, from a previous marriage.


title: Jon Taffer

text: In 2021, he agreed with Fox News host Laura Ingraham's comparison of Americans receiving temporary unemployment benefits due to the COVID-19 pandemic to dogs that must be kept hungry in order to elicit obedience. He later apologized, and it was revealed that his LLC accepted nearly $61,000 of government PPP loans during the pandemic.


title: Jon Taffer

text: When Donald Trump was elected as president in 2016, Jon Taffer praised Trump's economic policy, believing his tax cuts and deregulation would increase profits, benefit small businesses, and support restaurant industry employers and their employees. He is a critic of the rising minimum wage, believing it leads to increased automation and less hours worked, leading to less pay for American workers; he finds this to be especially true with the increasing amount of popular New York's restaurants. In 2019, he predicted technology could possibly replace restaurant workers in seven years due to the rising minimum wage.


title: Rooney family

text: The Rooney family is an Irish-American family known for its connections to the sports, acting, and political fields. After emigrating from Ireland in the 1840s, it established its American roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1880s.


title: Rooney family

text: The Rooneys are primarily known for having been the majority owners and operators of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) since the formation of the franchise in 1933. Art Rooney was the founder and owner of the team until his death in 1988. Following his death, ownership of the franchise transferred to his oldest son, Dan Rooney, a former United States Ambassador to Ireland. Front office operations have passed from Dan Rooney to his son and current team president, Art Rooney II, in 2017 upon the death of Dan Rooney.


title: Rooney family

text: The Rooneys have been credited for much of the team's success. The fundamental approach of the Rooneys to managing the franchise has largely been through patience and consistency, both of which the ownership is renowned for. An example of the team's stability is that there have been only three head coaches employed since 1969, the fewest for any team in American professional sports during that time frame. This approach has proven to be rewarding, given that the Steelers have won six Super Bowls in the post AFL–NFL merger era – with all three coaches (Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin) having won at least one Super Bowl and two AFC championships apiece – and the team being a playoff contender in most years.


title: Rooney family

text: Dan Rooney's influence as chairman of the league's diversity committee made it a requirement for any team seeking a new head coach to include an interview with at least one ethnic minority candidate during that process. For this reason, the practice has become known as the "Rooney Rule".


title: Rooney family

text: The Rooneys are also related to the Mara family, part-owners of the New York Giants. The Mara family name used to be O'Mara and their Rooney family ancestors originate in Newry, County Down.


title: Rooney family

text: Actresses Kate Mara and Rooney Mara are the daughters of Timothy Christopher Mara, the vice president of player evaluation for the New York Giants, and Kathleen McNulty (née Rooney). Their paternal grandfather, Wellington Mara, was the long-time co-owner of the Giants, succeeded by their uncle, John Mara. Their maternal grandfather, Timothy James "Tim" Rooney, has run Yonkers Raceway in Yonkers, New York since 1972. The Mara sisters are the great-granddaughters of both New York Giants founder Tim Mara and Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney.


title: Rooney family

text: In July 2008 the Rooney family went public with the plan to reorganize the ownership structure of the franchise. Each of the five Rooney brothers owns 16% of the team, combining for 80%, while another related family, the McGinleys, own 20%. Dan Rooney, chairman, stated that his four brothers are moving towards other non-football-related business ventures and he is in talks with them to buy out their shares. However, the other four brothers believe Dan undervalued their shares, and hired Goldman Sachs to give them an estimate on the team. The estimate by Goldman Sachs valued the team between $800 million and $1.2 billion. One potential buyer has been identified, Stanley Druckenmiller, the Pittsburgh billionaire who is the chairman of Duquesne Capital Management and a former money manager for George Soros. Talks to restructure the ownership continued for two years to comply with NFL ownership policies and ensure ownership and operation under the Rooney family. The four brothers' ventures with family race tracks that allow slot machines violate NFL rules of ownership with revenue from gambling enterprises. The ownership structure also violated the NFL rule stating that at least one individual must own 30% of the team to be principal owner, and no individual owns at least 30% of the team. The team did not expect the negotiations to have any effect on the players or fans.


title: Rooney family

text: NFL owners unanimously approved the restructuring of ownership on December 17, 2008 after Dan & Art II obtained the mandated 30% stake via negotiations. Timothy and Patrick Rooney sold their shares outright. Art Jr. John Rooney reduced their shares from 16% to 6%, and the McGinley family reduced their shares from 20% to 10%. Also coming on as partners were Pilot Corporation & Pilot Travel Centers president Jim Haslam III (who would later relinquish his stake upon purchasing the rival Cleveland Browns), Legendary Pictures president & CEO Thomas Tull, and the Paul Family of Pittsburgh, an influential Pittsburgh family (Ampco-Pittsburgh Corp., serves on numerous boards, including University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and University of Pittsburgh), each getting a 16% stake in the team. Dan Rooney mentioned he has no ill will towards Druckenmiller, mentioning he's a great Steelers fan and wishes he remains one.


title: Rooney family

text: The Steelers later announced on March 23, 2009, that they added three more investors to the team, the most notable of which is Hall of Fame wide receiver John Stallworth. The other two investors added were GTCR chairman Bruce V. Rauner and the Varischetti Family of Brockway, Pennsylvania, which owns several nursing homes and a commercial real estate business. The deal to add all six new investors was finalized in May 2009.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: Karen Friedman Hill (born January 16, 1946) is an American woman known for her involvement in the American Mafia through her husband Henry Hill, who was an associate of the Lucchese crime family. The events of their lives were chronicled in the 1990 film "Goodfellas" and several books.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: She was born in New York City and raised on Long Island around the Five Towns, the daughter of Jewish parents. She has two sisters, Sandy and Adrienne.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: In 1965, Karen Friedman met Henry Hill, her future husband, through Paul Vario, who insisted that Hill accompany his son on a double date at Frank "Frankie the Wop" Manzo's restaurant, Villa Capra. According to Friedman, the date was disastrous, and Hill stood her up at the next dinner date. Afterwards, the two began going on dates at the Copacabana and other nightclubs, where Friedman was introduced to Hill's outwardly impressive lifestyle. The two later got married in a large North Carolina wedding, attended by most of Henry Hill's gangster friends. Henry Hill stated in his 1994 book "Gangsters and Goodfellas" that Tommy DeSimone tried to rape Karen.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: Henry Hill was arrested in 1980 on a narcotics-trafficking charge, and with a long sentence hanging over him, he agreed to become an informant. As a result, Karen and their two children (Gregg and Gina) entered the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program with Henry in 1980, changed their names, and moved around several undisclosed locations including Seattle, Washington; Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Butte, Montana; and Independence, Kentucky.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: In 1987, Henry Hill was convicted of cocaine trafficking in a federal court in Seattle and expelled from the witness protection program. In 1990, Karen had filed for divorce after 23 years of marriage. The divorce was finalized in 2002. After their divorce, Henry remarried and fathered another child.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: Karen Hill continues to use an alias to protect her identity, as do her two children, Gregg and Gina. Her children released a book in 2004, titled "On the Run: A Mafia Childhood", that tells their own version of their experience with the Mafia. In the book, Gregg and Gina discuss how their maternal grandparents and Karen's two younger sisters, Sandy and Adrianne, helped take care of them, when Karen and Henry were out dealing in crime.


title: Karen Friedman Hill

text: Karen Friedman Hill was portrayed by Lorraine Bracco in the 1990 film "Goodfellas", directed by Martin Scorsese, with a script based on Nicholas Pileggi's 1985 book "Wiseguy". Bracco did not meet with Karen Hill prior to filming. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Hill, but lost to Whoopi Goldberg for "Ghost".


title: Vadivelu

text: Kumaravadivel Natarajan (born 12 September 1960), known professionally as Vadivelu, is an Indian actor, comedian and playback singer, having acted in supporting and lead roles in Tamil cinema. He gained widespread acclaim in Kollywood in the 2000s. His first film as a lead actor, "Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikesi" (2006), achieved commercial and critical success. His career declined in the 2010s due to various controversies, and culminated in him receiving a ban from performing in future films at the time.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu has also received awards in the Best Comedian category for his performances in "Kaalam Maari Pochu" (1996), "Vetri Kodi Kattu" (2000), "Thavasi" (2001), "Chandramukhi" (2005), "Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikesi" (2006), "Pokkiri" (2007), "Marudhamalai" (2007) and "Kathavarayan" (2008). His popularity led to his media-coined nickname, "Vaigai Puyal", meaning "Vaigai storm", referring to the river that flows through his hometown Madurai. Vadivelu's comedic dialogue in films served as an inspiration for memes in social media. In 2019, Vadivelu was featured in the sudden viral memes related to the hashtag "Pray for Nesamani" which was the most trending hashtag in India in 2019.


title: Vadivelu

text: In 2021, Vadivelu confirmed the lifting of the ban, and made his return to acting to play the lead in "Naai Sekar Returns" (2022), a spin-off of his character from "Thalai Nagaram" and also signed on more projects to be released in the future, both as lead and comedian.


title: Vadivelu

text: He worked in his father's glass cutting business and continued it with his brothers after his father died. In his free time, he participated in local stage plays, usually in a comedic role.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu is married to Sarojini and has 4 children: daughters Kannigaparameswari, Karthiga, Kalaivani, and a son, Subramaniyan.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu met Rajkiran on a train while on his way to Chennai to visit his bride-to-be. Rajkiran later recalled that he was so amused by their conversation during the train ride that he agreed to give Vadivelu a role in his upcoming film, "En Rasavin Manasile" (1991), directed by Kasthuri Raja. It was also the beginning of the Goundamani-Senthil-Vadivelu combination that produced a few skits in the early 90s.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vijayakanth supported Vadivelu during his early career. He stated that he was substantial in casting him in 1992’s "Chinna Gounder".


title: Vadivelu

text: In 1992, he played contrasting characters in both Kamal Haasan films. Vadivelu joined Goundamani and Charle in the comedy film "Singaravelan". Then in the movie "Thevar Magan", Vadivelu played a worker in patriarch Sivaji Ganesan’s household.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu’s first solo came in director Shankar’s "Kadhalan" (1994), in which he played the friend of Prabhu Deva’s university student character.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu is known to assist directors, with his own input being used during sets. The hallmark of his comedy was self-deprecation. Vadivelu’s characters thought very highly of themselves – they were clownish versions of the gang leader.


title: Vadivelu

text: After a certain stage of success, he started to act as a solo comedian, supported by other minor comedians.


title: Vadivelu

text: By this phase, he was considered as a colossus in Kollywood, which came with the freedom to meddle with scripts and override even established directors. He has acted with almost all the top heroes in Tamil cinema.


title: Vadivelu

text: His part in movies like "Vetri Kodi Kattu" (2000), "Friends" (2001), "Thavasi" (2001), "Winner" (2003), "Chandramukhi" (2005), "Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikecei" (2006), "Pokkiri" (2007), "Marudhamalai" (2007) and "Kathavarayan" (2008) are typical of his performances that have brought him laurels and accolades from the Tamil movie-goers.


title: Vadivelu

text: Cashing in on his popularity, he starred in the lead role of the historical comedy in the film "Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikecei". The movie was declared a blockbuster and was widely acclaimed for its 'clean' comedy. Vadivelu played in a dual role, playing twin brothers of a heartless but comical dictator king and a revolutionary. His next venture as the lead star was in the movie "Indiralogathil Na Azhagappan" (2008).


title: Vadivelu

text: On 21 September 2008, Vadivelu's residence in the Saligramam neighbourhood in Chennai was pelted with stones by a gang, leaving several windows broken and furniture damaged. The actor had taken refuge in a room in his home and was safe. Vadivelu is said to have suspected Vijayakanth because of a recent case that he had filed against the latter for assault and because the final court hearing was to take place the following day. He suspected that the attack may have been carried out to prevent Vadivelu from attending the hearing. As a result, Vadivelu filed another case against Vijayakanth for attempted murder. He later mentioned his interest in contesting against Vijayakanth in the upcoming assembly elections and in his words, "teaching him a lesson." In response, actor Vijayakanth, in a press meet on 22 September, claimed that Vadivelu's allegations were based on hearsay.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu appeared in notables roles with "Villu" (2009), "Kanthaswamy" (2009), "Peranmai" (2009), "Aadhavan" (2009), "Kacheri Arambam" (2010), "Sura" (2010), "Thillalangadi" (2010), "Nagaram Marupakkam" (2010) and "Kaavalan" (2011).


title: Vadivelu

text: In 2010, Vadivelu held a press conference, accusing fellow comedian and actor Singamuthu for forgery and financial cheating. Vadivelu, who was previously friends with Singamuthu, purchased land from him but later came to learn that the documents were void. This resulted in the former taking legal action against the latter.


title: Vadivelu

text: During the legislative assembly elections that place in Tamil Nadu during April 2011, Vadivelu vehemently campaigned for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its alliance. During his public speeches, he predominantly condemned politician and actor Vijayakanth, whose party, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), allied with the opposition party All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), headed by Jayalalithaa. His allegations of Vijayakanth included him being a "drunkard". In a campaign speech in Tiruvarur, Vadivelu stated that "(his) only aim is to sweep out Vijayakanth's whole team and to campaign vigorously for DMK's victory". Vadivelu was criticised as being biased, only supporting a DMK-led victory for personal gains and not once mentioning anything against the official opposition, the AIADMK, or its leader. In a turn of events, the election was eventually successful for the AIADMK alliance, and Vijaykanth won his constituency by a considerable margin.


title: Vadivelu

text: As his career as a lead actor was waning such as "Tenaliraman" (2014), "Eli" (2015), Vadivelu chose to return to portraying supporting and comedy roles in films headlined by other actors. He portrayed a role alongside Vishal in Suraj's "Kaththi Sandai" (2016), before collaborating again with P. Vasu in the horror comedy "Shivalinga" (2017). Vadivelu then portrayed a supporting role alongside Vijay in "Mersal" (2017), with the film becoming a blockbuster at the box office. A critic from The New Indian Express noted that it was a "brilliant comeback for Vadivelu" and that "his comedy is subtle, yet sufficient".


title: Vadivelu

text: After agreeing to work with Chimbu Deven on "Imsai Arasan 23th Pulikesi", a sequel to their successful film, he fell out with the director over an issue regarding his costume designer and subsequently refused to cooperate. The film's producers, S. Shankar and Subaskaran Allirajah, later filed a legal case over his unexplained absence. Likewise, R. K. and Stephen, the producers of "Neeyum Naanum Naduvula Peyum" and another untitled film, also opted to file complaints to the Nadigar Sangam against Vadivelu's lack of cooperation. The Tamil Film Producers Council issued a ban against casting Vadivelu in future films.


title: Vadivelu

text: In his crisp video footage sent to Sun TV, Vadivelu said that a few vested interests are trying to stop his growth in the film industry.


title: Vadivelu

text: In 2019, Vadivelu was interviewed by "Behindwoods", in which he criticized Chimbu Deven and Shankar for their creative differences. Producer T. Siva and director Naveen (who worked as an assistant to Chimbu Deven in "Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikesi") spoke out against Vadivelu's comments.


title: Vadivelu

text: In 2020, Vadivelu, who had recently joined Twitter, has not been taking up as many roles as he did earlier. Adding that he would soon take up a project, the comedian said, “You’ve also been asking why I’m not acting yet. Soon, I will make my entry in a grand manner”.


title: Vadivelu

text: In 2021, in a significant hint about his return to the Tamil cinema, Vadivelu said that a good thing will happen definitely.


title: Vadivelu

text: On 28 August 2021, joining an over the phone interview with Puthiya Thalaimurai TV, Vadivelu confirmed that his ban was lifted and he has agreed for 5 films with Lyca Productions. First of which will commence shooting in September 2021, named "Nai Shekar". He also mentioned that it feels like it is his first film and this is his rebirth in Cinema.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu confirmed the lifting of the ban, after 4 years, and returned to play the lead in "Naai Sekar Returns".


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu's roles involve heavy use of slapstick and puns, which has led him to be typecast. His comedy sequences typically end with him getting soundly thrashed and a closing one-liner from him bemoaning his situation or antagonists. His popularity could be ascribed to the general audience being able to identify with him thanks to his rustic looks, accent and body language.


title: Vadivelu

text: Vadivelu's dialogues served as an inspiration for memes in social media. Many meme creators use Vadivelu's dialogues for all ongoing situations in the world to express irony. His dialogues have been part of daily conversation and also inspired the titles for various Tamil films. In 2019, Vadivelu was featured in the sudden viral memes related to the hashtag "Pray for Nesamani".


title: Sonnet

text: A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.


title: Sonnet

text: The term "sonnet" is derived from the Italian word "sonetto" (lit. "little song", derived from the Latin word "sonus", meaning a sound). By the 13th century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that followed a strict rhyme scheme and structure.


title: Sonnet

text: According to Christopher Blum, during the Renaissance, the sonnet became the "choice mode of expressing romantic love". During that period, too, the form was taken up in many other European language areas and eventually any subject was considered acceptable for writers of sonnets. Impatience with the set form resulted in many variations over the centuries, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.


title: Sonnet

text: The sonnet is believed to have been created by Giacomo da Lentini, leader of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II. Peter Dronke has commented that there was something intrinsic to its flexible form that contributed to its survival far beyond its region of origin. The form consisted of a pair of quatrains followed by a pair of tercets with the symmetrical rhyme scheme ABABABAB CDCDCD, where the sense is carried forward in a new direction after the midway break. William Baer suggests that the first eight lines of the earliest Sicilian sonnets are identical to the eight-line Sicilian folksong stanza known as the "Strambotto". To this, da Lentini (or whoever else invented the form) added two tercets to the "Strambotto" in order to create the new 14-line sonnet form.


title: Sonnet

text: In contrast, Hassanally Ladha has argued that the Sicilian sonnet's structure and content drew upon Arabic poetry and cannot be explained as an "invention" by Giacomo da Lentini or any other member of the Sicilian School. Ladha notes that "in its Sicilian beginnings, the sonnet evinces literary and epistemological contact with the "qasida"", and emphasizes that the sonnet did not emerge simultaneously with its supposedly defining 14-line structure. "Tellingly, attempts to close off the sonnet from its Arabic predecessors depend upon a definition of the new lyric to which Giacomo's poetry does not conform: surviving in thirteenth-century recensions, his poems appear not in fourteen, but rather six lines, including four rows, each with two hemistiches and two "tercets" each in a line extending over two rows." In Ladha's view, the sonnet emerges as the continuation of a broader tradition of love poetry throughout the Mediterranean world and relates to such other forms as the Sicilian "strambotto", the Provençal "canso", the Andalusi Arabic "muwashshah" and "zajal", as well as the "qasida".


title: Sonnet

text: Guittone d'Arezzo rediscovered the sonnet form and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to Tuscan dialect when he founded the Siculo-Tuscan, or Guittonian school of poetry (1235–1294). He wrote almost 250 sonnets. Among the host of other Italian poets that followed, the sonnets of Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti stand out, but later the most famous and widely influential was Petrarch.


title: Sonnet

text: The structure of a typical Italian sonnet as it developed 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.


title: Sonnet

text: Later, the ABBA ABBA pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets. For the sestet there were two different possibilities: CDE CDE and CDC CDC. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced, such as CDCDCD. Petrarch typically used an ABBA ABBA pattern for the octave, followed by either CDE CDE or CDC CDC rhymes in the sestet.


title: Sonnet

text: At the turn of the 14th century there arrive early examples of the sonnet sequence unified about a single theme. This is represented by Folgore da San Geminiano's series on the months of the year, followed by his sequence on the days of the week. At a slightly earlier date, Dante had published his "La Vita Nuova", a narrative commentary in which appear sonnets and other lyrical forms centred on the poet's love for Beatrice. Most of the sonnets there are Petrarchan (here used as a purely stylistic term since Dante predated Petrarch). Chapter VII gives the sonnet "O voi che per la via", with two sestets (AABAAB AABAAB) and two quatrains (CDDC CDDC), and Ch. VIII, "Morte villana", with two sestets (AABBBA AABBBA) and two quatrains (CDDC CDDC). Petrarch followed in his footsteps later in the next century with the 366 sonnets of the "Canzionere", which chronicle his life-long love for Laura.


title: Sonnet

text: Widespread as sonnet writing became in Italian society, among practitioners were to be found some better known for other things: the painters Giotto and Michelangelo, for example, and the astronomer Galileo. The academician Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni lists 661 poets just in the 16th century. So common were they that eventually, in the words of a literary historian, "No event was so trivial, none so commonplace, a tradesman could not open a larger shop, a government clerk could not obtain a few additional "scudi" of salary, but all his friends and acquaintance must celebrate the event, and clothe their congratulations in a copy of verses, which almost invariably assumed this shape."


title: Sonnet

text: The sole confirmed surviving sonnet in the Occitan language is by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and confidently dated to 1284. This employs the rhyme scheme ABAB ABAB CDCDCD and has a political theme, as do some others of dubious authenticity or merit ascribed to "William of Almarichi" and Dante de Maiano.


title: Sonnet

text: One of the earliest sonnets in Catalan language was written by Pere Torroella (1436-1486). In the 16th century, the most prolific and subtle Catalan writer of sonnets was Pere Serafí, author of over 60 published between 1560 and 1565.


title: Sonnet

text: The poet Íñigo López de Mendoza, 1st Marquis of Santillana is credited as among the foremost to attempt "sonnets written in the Italian manner" ("sonetos fechos al itálico modo") towards the middle of the 15th century. Since the Castilian language and prosody were in a transitional state at the time, the experiment was unsuccessful. It was therefore not until after 1526 that the form was reintroduced by Juan Boscán. According to his account, he met Andrea Navagero, the Venetian Ambassador to the Spanish Court, in that year while the latter was accompanying King Carlos V on a visit to the Alhambra. In the course of their literary discussion, Navagero then suggested that the poet might attempt the sonnet and other Italian forms in his own language.


title: Sonnet

text: Boscán not only took up the Venetian's advice but did so in association with the more talented Garcilaso de la Vega, a friend to whom some of his sonnets are addressed and whose early death is mourned in another. The poems of both followed the Petrarchan model, employed the hitherto unfamiliar hendecasyllable, and when writing of love were based on the neoplatonic ideal championed in The Book of the Courtier ("Il Cortegiano") that Boscán had also translated. Their reputation was consolidated by the later 1580 edition of Fernando de Herrera, who was himself accounted "the first major Spanish sonneteer after Garcilaso". During the Baroque period that followed, two notable writers of sonnets headed rival stylistic schools. The culteranismo of Luis de Góngora, later known as 'Gongorismo' after him, was distinguished by an artificial style and the use of elaborate vocabulary, complex syntactical order and involved metaphors. The verbal usage of his opponent, Francisco de Quevedo, was equally self-consciousness, deploying wordplay and metaphysical conceits, after which the style was known as conceptismo.


title: Sonnet

text: Another key figure at this period was Lope de Vega, who was responsible for writing some 3,000 sonnets, a large proportion of them incorporated into his dramas. One of the best known and most imitated was "Un soneto me manda hacer Violante" (Violante orders me to write a sonnet), which occupies a pivotal position in literary history. At its first appearance in his 1617 comedy "La niña de Plata" (Act 3), the character there pretends to be a novice whose text is a running commentary on the poem's creation. Although the poet himself is portrayed as composing it as a light-hearted impromptu in the biographical film "Lope" (2010), there had in fact been precedents. In Spanish some fifty years before, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza had written the pretended impromptu, "Pedís, Reina, un soneto"; and even earlier in Italian there had been the similarly themed "Qualunque vuol saper fare un sonetto" (Whoever to make a sonnet aspires) by the Florentine poet Pieraccio Tedaldi (b. ca. 1285–1290; d. ca. 1350). Later imitations in other languages include one in Italian by Giambattista Marino and another in French by François-Séraphin Régnier-Desmarais, as well as an adaptation of the idea applied to the rondeau by Vincent Voiture. The poem's fascination for U.S. writers is evidenced by no less than five translations in the second half of the 20th century alone.


title: Sonnet

text: The sonnet form crossed the Atlantic quite early in the Spanish colonial enterprise when Francisco de Terrazas, the son of a 16th-century conquistador, was among its Mexican pioneers. Later came two sonnet writers in holy orders, Bishop Miguel de Guevara (1585-1646) and, especially, Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz. But though sonnets continued to be written in both the old world and the new, innovation was mainly limited to the Americas, where the sonnet was used to express a different and post-colonial reality. In the 19th century, for example, there were two poets who wrote memorable sonnets dedicated to Mexican landscapes, Joaquín Acadio Pagaza y Ordóñez in the torrid zone to the south and Manuel José Othón in the desolate north. In South America, too, the sonnet was used to invoke landscape, particularly in the major collections of the Uruguayan Julio Herrera y Reissig, such as "Los Parques Abandonados" (Deserted Parks, 1902–08) and "Los éxtasis de la montaña" (Mountain Ecstasies, 1904–07), whose recognisably authentic pastoral scenes went on to serve as example for Cesar Vallejo in his evocations of Andean Peru.


title: Sonnet

text: Soon afterwards the sonnet form was deconstructed as part of the modernist questioning of the past. Thus, in the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni's "Mascarilla y trébol" (Mask and Clover, 1938), a section of unrhymed poems using many of the traditional versification structures of the form are presented under the title "antisonnets".


title: Sonnet

text: The first sonnets in Portuguese literature are ascribed to Dom Pedro in the early 15th century. A son of King John I, he was also responsible for translations of sonnets by Petrarch. But the form did not come into its own until the following century in the work of Luís de Camões, who generally follows the styles of Italian poetry, though in them the influence of the Spanish pioneers of the form has also been discerned. Among later writers, the comic sonnets of Thomas de Noronha were once appreciated, and the love sonnets of Barbosa Bacellar (c.1610-1663), also known for his learned glosses on the sonnets of Camões.


title: Sonnet

text: The introduction of a purified sonnet style to Brazilian literature was due to Cláudio Manuel da Costa, who also composed Petrarchan sonnets in Italian during his stay in Europe. However, it was in the wake of French Parnassianism that there developed a similar movement in Brazil which included the notable sonneteers Alberto de Oliveira, Raimundo Correia and, especially, Olavo Bilac. Others writing sonnets in that style included the now overlooked Francisca Júlia da Silva Munster (1871-1920) and the Symbolist Afro-Brazilian poet João da Cruz e Sousa.


title: Sonnet

text: In French prosody, sonnets are traditionally composed in the French alexandrine, which consists of lines of twelve syllables with a central caesura. Imitations of Petrarch were first introduced by Clément Marot, and Mellin de Saint-Gelais also took up the form near the start of the 16th century. They were later followed by Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean Antoine de Baïf, around whom formed a group of radical young noble poets of the court, generally known today as La Pléiade. They employed, amongst other forms of poetry, the Petrarchan sonnet cycle, developed around an amorous encounter or an idealized woman. The character of the group's literary program was given in Du Bellay's manifesto, the "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" (1549), which maintained that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante) was a worthy language for literary expression, and which promulgated a program of linguistic and literary production and purification.


title: Sonnet

text: In the aftermath of the Wars of Religion, French Catholic jurist and poet Jean de La Ceppède published the "Theorems", a sequence of 515 sonnets with non-traditional rhyme schemes, about the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Drawing upon the Gospels, Greek and Roman Mythology, and the Fathers of the Church, La Ceppède's poetry was praised by Saint Francis de Sales for transforming "the Pagan Muses into Christian ones." La Ceppède's sonnets often attack the Calvinist doctrine of a judgmental and unforgiving God by focusing on Christ's passionate love for the human race. Afterwards the work was long forgotten, until the 20th century witnessed a revival of interest in the poet, and his sonnets are now regarded as classic works of French poetry.


title: Sonnet

text: By the late 17th century the sonnet had fallen out of fashion but was revived by the Romantics in the 19th century. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve then published his imitation of William Wordsworth's "Scorn not the sonnet" where, in addition to the poets enumerated in the English original - Shakespeare, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoens, Dante, Spenser, Milton – Sainte-Beuve announces his own intention to revive the form and adds the names of Du Bellay and Ronsard in the final tercet. The form was little used, however, until the Parnassians brought it back into favour. From that time on there were many deviations from the traditional sonnet form. Charles Baudelaire was responsible for significant variations in rhyme-scheme and line-length in the poems included in "Les Fleurs du mal". Among the variations made by others, Théodore de Banville's "Sur une dame blonde" limited itself to a four-syllable line, while in "À une jeune morte" Jules de Rességuier (1788 - 1862) composed a sonnet monosyllabically lined.


title: Sonnet

text: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, have been described as "the first English Petrarchans" from their pioneering the sonnet form in English. In addition, some twenty five of Wyatt's poems are dependent on Petrarch, either as translations or imitations, while, of Surrey's five, three of them are translations and two imitations. In one instance, both poets translated the same poem, "Rime" 140. From these examples, as elsewhere in their prosodic practice, a difference between their style can be observed. Wyatt's verse metre, though in general decasyllabic, is irregular and proceeds by way of significantly stressed phrasal units. But in addition Wyatt's sonnets are generally closer in construction to those of Petrarch.


title: Sonnet

text: Prosodically, Surrey is more adept at composing in iambic pentameter and his sonnets are written in what has come to be known anachronistically as Shakespearean measure. This version of the sonnet form, characterised by three alternately rhymed quatrains terminating in a final couplet (ABAB CDCD, EFEF, GG), became the favourite during Elizabethan times, when it was widely used. It was particularly so in whole series of amatory sequences, beginning with Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" (1591) and continuing over a period of two decades. About four thousand sonnets were composed during this time. However, with such a volume, much there that was conventional and repetitious came to be viewed with a sceptical eye. Sir John Davies mocked these in a series of nine 'gulling sonnets' and William Shakespeare was also to dismiss some of them in his Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”.


title: Sonnet

text: Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets departs from the norm in addressing more than one person in its course, male as well as female. In addition, other sonnets by him were incorporated into some of his plays. Another exception at this time was the form used in Edmund Spenser's "Amoretti", which has the interlaced rhyme scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. And soon after, in the following century, John Donne adapted the emerging Baroque style to the new subject matter of his series of "Holy Sonnets".


title: Sonnet

text: John Milton's sonnets constitute a special case and demonstrate another stylistic transition. Two youthful examples in English and five in Italian are Petrarchan in spirit. But the seventeen sonnets of his maturity address personal and political themes. It has been observed of their intimate tone, and the way the sense overrides the volta within the poem in some cases, that Milton is here adapting the sonnet form to that of the Horatian ode. He also seems to have been the first to introduce an Italian variation of the form, the caudate sonnet, into English in his prolongation of "On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament".


title: Sonnet

text: The fashion for the sonnet went out with the 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, Thomas Warwick and Henry Headley, some of whom published small collections of sonnets alone. Many women, too, now took up the sonnet form, in particular Charlotte Smith, whose lachrymose "Elegiac Sonnets" (1784 onwards) are credited with helping create the 'school of sensibility' characteristic of the time. William Lisle Bowles was also a close follower, but the success of both stirred up resistance in the poetic politics of the time.


title: Sonnet

text: William Beckford parodied Smith's melancholy manner and archaic diction in an "Elegiac sonnet to a mopstick". 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". 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'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.


title: Sonnet

text: The example which later impressed Wordsworth the most was that of Milton's sonnets, which he described in 1803 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". Thus aware that its compression was applicable to a great variety of themes, Wordsworth eventually wrote some 523 sonnets which were to exert a powerful stylistic influence throughout the first half of the 19th century. 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 sprang reflections on any number of regional natural features; his travel tour effusions, though not always confined to sonnet form, found many imitators. What eventually became three series of "Ecclesiastical Sonnets" started a vogue for sonnets on religious and devotional themes. 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".


title: Sonnet

text: Another arm of the propaganda on behalf of the sonnet in 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), 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) 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), 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) into a narrative carried forward over an enjambed eighth line to a conclusion that is limited to the final three lines.


title: Sonnet

text: 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), for example, is described as the first depiction of a successful courtship since Elizabethan times. 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".


title: Sonnet

text: That sequence was followed in 1862 by George Meredith's "Modern Love", 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". 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.


title: Sonnet

text: 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). 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), based on episodes chosen from the seven centuries between 1120 – 1820. Neither sequence was anywhere the equal of those of Barrett Browning or Meredith, but they illustrate a contemporary urge to make new a form that was fast running out of steam.


title: Sonnet

text: As part of his attempted renewal of poetic prosody, Gerard Manley Hopkins had applied his experimental sprung rhythm to the composition of the sonnet, amplifying the number of unstressed syllables within a five- (or occasionally six-) stressed line – as in the rhetorical "The Windhover", for example . He also introduced variations in the proportions of the sonnet, from the 10 lines of the curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" to the amplified 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire". Though they were written in the later Victorian era, the poems remained virtually unknown until they were published in 1918.


title: Sonnet

text: The undergraduate W. H. Auden is sometimes credited with dispensing with rhyme altogether in "The Secret Agent", but went on to write many conventional sonnets, including two long sequences during the time of international crisis: "In Time of War" (1939) and "The Quest" (1940). Sequences by some others have been more experimental and looser in form, of which a radical example was "Altarwise by owl-light" (1935), ten irregular and barely rhyming quatorzains by Dylan Thomas in his most opaque manner.


title: Sonnet

text: In 1978 two later innovatory sequences were published at a period when it was considered that "the sonnet seems to want to lie fallow, exhausted", in the words of one commentator. Peter Dale's book-length "One Another" contains a dialogue of some sixty sonnets in which the variety of rhyming methods are as diverse as the emotions expressed between the speakers there. At the same time, Geoffrey Hill's "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" appeared in "Tenebrae" (1978), where the challenging thirteen poems of the sequence employ half-rhyme and generally ignore the volta. Seamus Heaney also wrote two sequences during this period: the personal "Glanmore Sonnets" in "Field Work" (1975); and the more freely constructed elegiac sonnets of "Clearances" in "The Haw Lantern" (1987).


title: Sonnet

text: The earliest American sonnet is David Humphreys's 1776 sonnet "Addressed to my Friends at Yale College, on my Leaving them to join the Army". The sonnet form was used widely thereafter, including by William Lloyd Garrison and William Cullen Bryant. Later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and others followed suit. His were characterised by a "purple richness of diction" and by their use of material images to illustrate niceties of thought and emotion. He also translated several sonnets, including seven by Michelangelo. Later on, among Emma Lazarus' many sonnets, perhaps the best-known is "The New Colossus" of 1883, which celebrates the Statue of Liberty and its role in welcoming immigrants to the New World.


title: Sonnet

text: In the 19th century, sonnets written by American poets began to be anthologised as such. They were included in a separate section in Leigh Hunt and S. Adams' "The Book of the Sonnet" (London and Boston, 1867), which included an essay by Adams on "American Sonnets and Sonneteers" and a section devoted only to sonnets by American women. Later came William Sharp's anthology of "American Sonnets" (1889) and Charles H. Crandall's "Representative sonnets by American poets, with an essay on the sonnet, its nature and history" (Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1890). The essay also surveyed the whole history of the sonnet, including English examples and European examples in translation, in order to contextualise the American achievement.


title: Sonnet

text: Recent scholarship has recovered many African American sonnets that were not anthologised in standard American poetry volumes. Important nineteenth and early twentieth century writers have included Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Sterling A. Brown. Several African American women poets won prizes for volumes that included sonnets, such as Margaret Walker (Yale Poetry Series) Gwendolyn Brooks (Pulitzer Prize), Rita Dove (Pulitzer Prize), and Natasha Trethewey (Pulitzer Prize). Though Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka were to question the appropriateness of the sonnet for Black poetry, both had published sonnets themselves.


title: Sonnet

text: One aspect of the American sonnet during the 20th century was the publication of sequences which had to wait decades for critical recognition. One instance is "This Man's Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets" (1928) by John Allan Wyeth. A series of irregular sonnets that recorded impressions of his military service with the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, it was scarcely noticed when it first appeared. Yet on its republication in 2008, Dana Gioia asserted in his introduction that Wyeth is the only American poet of the Great War who can stand comparison to British war poets, a claim later corroborated by Jon Stallworthy in his review of the work.


title: Sonnet

text: Shortly afterwards, H. P. Lovecraft wrote his very different sonnet sequence, sections of which first appeared in genre magazines. It was not until 1943 that it saw complete publication as Fungi from Yuggoth. These 36 poems were written in a hybrid form based on the Petrarchan sonnet that invariably ends with a rhyming couplet reminiscent of the Shakespearean sonnet. Most of these poems are discontinuous, though unified by theme, being vignettes descriptive of the kinds of dreamed and otherworldly scenarios found in Lovecraft's fiction. Their unmannered style was once compared to Edward Arlington Robinson's, but since then a case has been made for the work as minor poetry of contemporary importance in its own right.


title: Sonnet

text: In the case of John Berryman, he initially wrote a series of some hundred modernistic love sonnets during the 1940s. These, however, remained uncollected until 1967, when they appeared as "Berryman’s Sonnets", fleshed out with a few additions to give them the form of a sequence. In her 2014 survey of the book for "Poetry", April Bernard suggests that he was there making of 'Berryman' a similar semi-fictional character to the 'Henry' in The Dream Songs (1964). She also identifies an ancient ancestry for the disordered syntax of the work through the English poets Thomas Wyatt and Gerard Manley Hopkins.


title: Sonnet

text: But at this time too began to appear sequences of quatorzains with only a tenuous relationship to the sonnet form. Ted Berrigan's "The Sonnets" (1964) discard metre and rhyme but retain the dynamics of a 14-line structure with a change of direction at the volta. Berrigan claimed to have been inspired by "Shakespeare’s sonnets because they were quick, musical, witty and short". Others have described Berrigan's work as a postmodern collage using "repetition, rearrangement, and the use of 'found' phrases and text", that functions as a "radical deconstruction of the sonnet". From 1969 Robert Lowell too began publishing a less radical deconstruction of the form in his series of five collections of blank verse sonnets, including his Pulitzer Prize volume "The Dolphin" (1973). These he described as having “the eloquence at best of iambic pentameter, and often the structure and climaxes of sonnets".


title: Sonnet

text: The contemporary reaction against the strict form is described in the introduction to William Baer's anthology "Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets" (2005). But for all that a number of writers were declaring then that the sonnet was dead, others – including Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov and Anthony Hecht – continued to write sonnets and eventually became associated with the magazines "The Formalist" and then "Measure". These journals, champions of the New Formalism between the years 1994 and 2017, sponsored the annual Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.


title: Sonnet

text: In Canada during the last decades of the 19th century, the Confederation Poets and especially Archibald Lampman were known for their sonnets, which were mainly on pastoral themes.


title: Sonnet

text: Canadian poet Seymour Mayne has published a few collections of word sonnets, and is one of the chief innovators of a form using a single word per line to capture its honed perception.


title: Sonnet

text: Paulus Melissus was the first to introduce the sonnet into German poetry. But the man who did most to raise the sonnet to German consciousness was Martin Opitz, who in two works, "Buch von der deutschen Poeterey" (1624) and "Acht Bücher Deutscher Poematum" (1625), established the sonnet as a separate genre and its rules of composition. It was to be written in iambic alexandrines, with alternating masculine and feminine enclosed rhymes in the octave and a more flexible sestet with three rhymes. Reinforcing them were translated examples from Petrarch, Ronsard and Daniel Heinsius. Thereafter in the 18th century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote several love sonnets, using a rhyme scheme derived from Italian poetry. After his death, Goethe's followers created the freer 'German sonnet', which is rhymed ABBA BCCB CDD CDD.


title: Sonnet

text: The sonnet tradition was then continued by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Paul von Heyse and others, reaching fruition in Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus", which has been described as "one of the great modern poems, not to mention a monumental addition to the literature of the sonnet sequence". A cycle of 55 sonnets, it was written in two parts in 1922 while Rilke was in the midst of completing his Duino Elegies. The full title in German is "Die Sonette an Orpheus: Geschrieben als ein Grab-Mal für Wera Ouckama Knoop" (translated as "Sonnets to Orpheus: Written as a Monument for Wera Ouckama Knoop"), commemorating the recent death of a young dancer from leukaemia. The "" (literally "grave-marker") of the title brings to mind the series of "Tombeaux" written by Stéphane Mallarmé, translated (among others) by Rilke in 1919, also coinciding with the sonnets of Michelangelo which Rilke had been translating in 1921. Rilke's own sonnets are fluidly structured as a transposition of the dead girl's dancing and encompass themes of life and death and art's relation to them. As well as having varied rhyme schemes, line lengths also vary and are irregularly metred, even within the same sonnet at times.


title: Sonnet

text: Responses to turbulent times form a distinct category among German sonnets. They include Friedrich Rückert's 72 "Sonnets in Armour" ("Geharnischte Sonneten", 1814), stirring up resistance to Napoleonic domination; and sonnets by Emanuel Geibel written during the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and the First Schleswig War. In the wake of World War 1, Anton Schnack, described by one anthologist as "the only German language poet whose work can be compared with that of Wilfred Owen", published the sonnet sequence, "Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier" ("Beast Strove Mightily with Beast", 1920). The 60 poems there have the typical German sonnet form, but are written in the long-lined free rhythms developed by Ernst Stadler. Patrick Bridgwater, writing in 1985, called the work "without question the best single collection produced by a German war poet in 1914-18," but adds that it "is to this day virtually unknown even in Germany."


title: Sonnet

text: In the Netherlands Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft introduced sonnets in the Baroque style, of which "Mijn lief, mijn lief, mijn lief: soo sprack mijn lief mij toe" presents a notable example of sound and word play. Another of his


title: Sonnet

text: sonnets, dedicated to Hugo Grotius, was later translated by Edmund Gosse. In later centuries the sonnet form was dropped and then returned to by successive waves of innovators in an attempt to breathe new life into Dutch poetry when, in their eyes, it had lost its way. For the generation of the 1880s it was Jacques Perk's sonnet sequence "Mathilde" which served as a rallying cry. And for a while in the early years of the new century, Martinus Nijhoff wrote notable sonnets before turning to more modernistic models.


title: Sonnet

text: Following World War 2, avant-garde poets declared war on all formalism, reacting particularly against the extreme subjectivity and self-agrandisment of representatives of the 1880s style like Willem Kloos, who had once begun a sonnet "In my deepest being I'm a god". In reaction, Lucebert satirised such writing in the "sonnet" with which his first collection opened: <poem>::I/ me/ I/ me// me/ I/ me/ I// I/ I/ my// my/ my/ I</poem> But by the end of the 20th century, formalist poets such as Gerrit Komrij and Jan Kal were writing sonnets again as part of their own reaction to the experimentalism of earlier decades.


title: Sonnet

text: The sonnet was introduced into Czech literature at the beginning of the 19th century. The first great Czech sonneteer was Ján Kollár, who wrote a cycle of sonnets named "Slávy Dcera" ("The daughter of Sláva" / "The daughter of fame"). While Kollár was Slovak, he was a supporter of Pan-Slavism and wrote in Czech, as he disagreed that Slovak should be a separate language. Kollár's magnum opus was planned as a Slavic epic poem as great as Dante's "Divine Comedy". It consists of "The Prelude" written in quantitative hexameters, and sonnets. The number of poems increased in subsequent editions and came up to 645. The greatest Czech romantic poet, Karel Hynek Mácha also wrote many sonnets. In the second half of the 19th century Jaroslav Vrchlický published "Sonety samotáře" ("Sonnets of a Solitudinarian"). Another poet, who wrote many sonnets was Josef Svatopluk Machar. He published "Čtyři knihy sonetů" ("The Four Books of Sonnets"). In the 20th century Vítězslav Nezval wrote the cycle "100 sonetů zachránkyni věčného studenta Roberta Davida" ("One Hundred Sonnets for the Woman who Rescued Perpetual Student Robert David"). After the Second World War the sonnet was the favourite form of Oldřich Vyhlídal. Czech poets use different metres for sonnets, Kollár and Mácha used decasyllables, Vrchlický iambic pentameter, Antonín Sova free verse, and Jiří Orten the Czech alexandrine. Ondřej Hanus wrote a monograph about Czech Sonnets in the first half of the twentieth century.


title: Sonnet

text: The sonnet was introduced into Polish literature in the 16th century by Jan Kochanowski, Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński and Sebastian Grabowiecki.


title: Sonnet

text: In 1826, Poland's national poet, Adam Mickiewicz, wrote a sonnet sequence known as the "Crimean Sonnets", after


title: Sonnet

text: the Tsar sentenced him to exile in the Crimean Peninsula. Mickiewicz's sonnet sequence focuses heavily on the culture and Islamic religion of the Crimean Tatars. The sequence was translated into English by Edna Worthley Underwood.


title: Sonnet

text: In the 18th century, after the westernizing reforms of Peter the Great, Russian poets (among others Alexander Sumarokov and Mikhail Kheraskov) began to experiment with sonnets, but the form was soon overtaken in popularity by the more flexible Onegin stanza. This was used by Alexander Pushkin for his novel in verse "Eugene Onegin" and has also been described as the 'Onegin sonnet', since it consists of fourteen lines. It is, however, aberrant in rhyme scheme and the number of stresses per line and is better described as having only a family resemblance to the sonnet. The form was adapted by other poets later, including by Mikhail Lermontov in his narrative of "The Tambov Treasurer's Wife".


title: Sonnet

text: In Slovenia the sonnet became a national verse form. The greatest Slovenian poet, France Prešeren, wrote many sonnets. His best known work worldwide is "Sonetni venec" ("A Wreath of Sonnets"), which is an example of crown of sonnets. Another work of his is the sequence "Sonetje nesreče" ("Sonnets of Misfortune"). In writing sonnets Prešeren was followed by many later poets. After the Second World War sonnets remained very popular. Slovenian poets write both traditional rhymed sonnets and modern ones, unrhymed, in free verse. Among them are Milan Jesih and Aleš Debeljak. The metre for sonnets in Slovenian poetry is iambic pentameter with feminine rhymes, based both on the Italian endecasillabo and German iambic pentameter.


title: Sonnet

text: Although sonnets had long been written in English by poets of Irish heritage such as Sir Aubrey de Vere, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Tom Kettle, and Patrick Kavanagh, the sonnet form failed to enter Irish poetry in the Irish language. This changed, however, during the Gaelic revival when Dublin-born Liam Gógan (1891–1979) was dismissed from his post in the National Museum of Ireland and imprisoned at Frongoch internment camp following the Easter Rising. There he became the first poet to write sonnets in the Irish language.


title: Sonnet

text: According to Jan Morris, "When Welsh poets speak of Free Verse, they mean forms like the sonnet or the ode, which obey the same rules as English poesy. Strict Metres verse still honours the complex rules laid down for correct poetic composition 600 years ago." Nevertheless, several of the greatest recent Welsh language poets have also written sonnets, including Welsh nationalist and Traditionalist Catholic poet Saunders Lewis and Far-left poet Thomas Evan Nicholas.


title: Sonnet

text: The first sonnets in Medieval Hebrew poetry were probably composed in Rome by Immanuel the Roman around the year 1300 and less than a century after the advent of the Italian sonnet. 38 sonnets are included in his maqama collection "Mahberot Immanuel" that combine elements of both the quantitative metre traditional to Hebrew and Arabic verse and Italian syllabic metre.


title: Sonnet

text: After Immanuel, the next wave of Italo-Hebrew sonnetry arrived in the 16th century, authored by Yosef Tzarfati (Giuseppe Gallo) and Moshe ben Yoav, each poet composing around five sonnets. In total, over eighty Hebrew-language sonnets from the 16th century are extant, composed in locations as varied as Amsterdam, Oran, and Turkey.


title: Sonnet

text: In the Indian subcontinent, sonnets have been written in the Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi and Urdu languages.


title: Sonnet

text: Urdu poets, also influenced by English and other European poets, took to introducing the sonnet into Urdu poetry rather late. Azmatullah Khan (1887–1923) is believed to have introduced this format to Urdu literature in the very early part of the 20th century. The other renowned Urdu poets who wrote sonnets were Akhtar Junagarhi, Akhtar Sheerani, Noon Meem Rashid, Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi, Salaam Machhalishahari and Wazir Agha.


title: Lists of World Heritage Sites

text: This is a list of the lists of World Heritage Sites. A World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having special cultural or physical significance.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The development team wanted to make a game featuring Shadow to capitalize on the character's popularity and resolve plot mysteries that began with his introduction in "Sonic Adventure 2". It was written and directed by Takashi Iizuka, produced by Yuji Naka, and scored by Jun Senoue. Iizuka, who targeted a younger audience with previous "Sonic" games, strove to attract an older audience with "Shadow the Hedgehog"; Shadow's character also allowed the team to use elements otherwise inappropriate for the series.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The game was revealed at the March 2005 Walk of Game event, and it was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in North America and in Europe in November 2005 and in Japan the following month. It was met with generally negative reviews from critics, who criticized for its controls, mature themes, level design, and addition of guns and other weapons to traditional "Sonic" gameplay. However, some praised its replay value. Despite this, the game was commercially successful, selling 2.06 million copies by March 2007.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: It is the first game in the series to utilize the voice actors from the 4Kids dub of "Sonic X". It is also the first "Sonic" game to receive an E10+ rating from the ESRB, due to its mild use of profanity and fantasy action violence.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: "Shadow the Hedgehog" is a platform game that incorporates elements from the Third-person Shooter genre and elements from the Atction-adventure genre. Like previous games in the "Sonic" series, basic gameplay involves running quickly, collecting rings, tricky platforming and destroying enemies. Shadow collects rings as a form of health; when he is attacked by an enemy or takes damage from the enviroment, ten of his rings bounce away from and form into a circle around him. When Shadow has no rings and takes damage from an enemy he dies, loses a life and goes back to the last chekpoint. Each level is completed by undertaking a mission, and each mission is labeled "Hero," "Dark," or "Normal". The "Hero" missions involve completing tasks for the "Sonic" series' heroic characters, or Doctor Eggman on one occasion, and the "Dark" missions involve completing tasks for Black Doom or Doctor Eggman. The "Normal" missions involve reaching the Chaos Emerald or Goal Ring at the end of the stage. Examples of non-neutral mission objectives include killing all enemies in the stages, destroying an aircraft flying to the end of the level, or activating or destroying objects in the stage. All enemies attack Shadow regardless of the mission chosen. The mission types selected affect the plot, the levels played, and the ending received out of ten possibilities. Each level features cutscenes that advance the story, and several levels also feature boss battles. There are 326 possible paths to take in "Shadow the Hedgehog", and each pathway is individually named.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: New gameplay features distinguish "Shadow the Hedgehog" from previous "Sonic" games. For example, Shadow can pick up and use guns to combat enemies, adding an element of third-person shooter gameplay that in past games were the simple lock-on and fire mechanic. Parts of the scenery, such as traffic signs, can also be used as weapons. Another new feature is the ability to drive vehicles, such as motorcycles and an alien aircraft. Although Shadow can outrun the game's vehicles, the latter have unique capabilities, such as crushing enemies and traversing otherwise impassable acid-covered areas.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: As in most "Sonic" series games, the Chaos Emeralds play a major role; they help Shadow remember his past and allow him to perform Chaos Control and Chaos Blast. Chaos Control allows Shadow to move more quickly in levels and slows time in boss battles, and Chaos Blast creates an explosion that destroys or severely damages all nearby enemies. Shadow can perform Chaos Control after the player fills the Hero Gauge by defeating Black Arms soldiers (or by doing other heroic acts such as; putting out fires and healing wounded soldiers), and he can perform Chaos Blast after filling the Dark Gauge by defeating G.U.N. soldiers (or other evil acts such as; healing the enemies or destroying scenery).


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The game includes a two-player mode that retains the single-player mechanics but is set in one of three specially designed stages and uses a vertically split screen to separate each player's view. Each player chooses one of the available characters—Shadow, two metallic versions of him, and palette-swapped variants of each. The combatants attack each other and steal each other's rings until one is eliminated. Additionally, in single-player mode, a second player may take control of Shadow's hero sidekick characters (you cannot control Doom's Eye or Dr. Eggman) in the stages, however this feature isn't in the Xbox version of the game.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Shadow the Hedgehog, the game's titular protagonist, was created 50 years before the game's events by Prof. Gerald Robotnik in an orbital military research space colony known as the ARK. Robotnik was trying to unlock the secrets of eternal life on the government's orders and create the "Ultimate Life Form." To that end, Robotnik designed Shadow to harness the powers of the Chaos Emeralds. He saw G.U.N raid the ARK and shoot Robotnik’s granddaughter Maria Robotnik, killing her. At the end of "Sonic Adventure 2", his first in-game appearance, Shadow was presumed dead, but he returned in "Sonic Heroes" and suffers amnesia.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) is the military of Earth's government, the United Federation, and it is directed by the G.U.N. Commander, who has a hatred of Shadow. When completing "Hero" missions, Shadow usually helps G.U.N. and heroic characters from the "Sonic" series, including Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Omega, Vector, Charmy, and Espio. Their aim is to protect Earth from both Doctor Eggman and the Black Arms, an army of various related alien species that invade Earth from the Black Comet. Black Doom, the leader of the Black Arms, sends an extension of himself called "Doom's Eye" to watch Shadow and help him complete missions. When completing "Dark" missions, Shadow helps either Black Doom or Doctor Eggman, each of whom wants the Chaos Emeralds for himself. In one "Hero" mission of Sky Troops, Shadow assists Doctor Eggman in battling the Black Arms.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Shadow suffers from amnesia at the beginning of the game. Shadow remembers only two things: his name and his attempt to escape the Space Colony ARK with his creator's granddaughter Maria, who was killed by G.U.N. soldiers. Having walked through a room filled with androids that look like him during the events of "Sonic Heroes", Shadow wonders if he, too, is an android. The game starts with Shadow reminiscing outside the city of Westopolis when an alien race called The Black Arms drops out of the sky and invades the city. Black Doom, the Black Arms' leader, contacts Shadow and tells Shadow of an old promise Shadow made to bring the Chaos Emeralds to him. Stunned that Black Doom knows his name, Shadow searches for the Chaos Emeralds to learn about his past.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The game progresses through the Westopolis level and five more levels from the different paths Shadow may take. As missions are completed, Shadow learns more about his past and regains memories. He can choose to help Doctor Eggman, The Black Arms or G.U.N. and the series' heroic characters, or he can choose to help neither and keep the Chaos Emeralds for himself. The missions completed determine which one of ten possible endings will be seen after Shadow collects all the Chaos Emeralds and defeats one of the game's final bosses. The possible ending events range from helping the heroes destroy The Black Arms or to help Black Doom destroy the planet.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Completing all ten endings unlocks the game's true ending in which Black Doom uses Chaos Control, enhanced by the power of the Chaos Emeralds, to bring the Black Comet to the Earth's surface. Black Doom explains that the Black Arms intend to use humans as an energy source, and the Black Comet begins to release a nerve gas into the Earth's atmosphere that causes total paralysis to those who inhale it. Shadow confronts Black Doom after the level "Last Way" where he discovers that Professor Gerald Robotnik created the ARK's Eclipse Cannon to destroy the Black Comet. During their confrontation, Black Doom reveals that Shadow was created using his blood, and he attempts to use mind control on Shadow, but fails. Black Doom then transforms into a giant beast form called Devil Doom; in response, Shadow uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Shadow and confronts Devil Doom. During the battle, Doctor Eggman confirms to Shadow that he is the original and not an android. Shadow defeats Devil Doom and uses Chaos Control to teleport the Black Comet back into Earth's orbit, where he obliterates it using the Eclipse Cannon. His friends are elated, as are people at G.U.N. headquarters. Shadow is then shown in the ARK's observation deck holding up a photograph of Maria and Gerald. Recalling Maria's last words to him, "Goodbye forever... Shadow the Hedgehog", Shadow discards the photograph and walks away.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: "Shadow the Hedgehog" was developed by Sega Studios USA, the now-defunct United States division of Sega's Sonic Team, and published by Sega. Sega first revealed the game and its tagline ("Hero or villain? You decide.") at the March 8, 2005 inauguration of Sonic the Hedgehog into the Walk of Game. Sega formally announced development of the game for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox video game consoles on March 23, 2005. The same year, Sega released the game in North America on November 15, 2005, in Europe on November 18, 2005, and Japan on December 15, 2005.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka and series co-creator Yuji Naka led the game’s development, with Iizuka serving as writer and director and Naka as producer. Iizuka, who had worked on the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series since 1993, targeted a younger audience with previous "Sonic" games and wanted to attract an older audience with "Shadow the Hedgehog". The game's development team wanted to make a game featuring Shadow to resolve plot mysteries that began with the character's introduction in "Sonic Adventure 2". The team felt that Shadow's design—inspired by films such as "Underworld", "Constantine", and the "Terminator" series—would make the story darker and allow for elements, such as vehicles and weapons, otherwise considered inappropriate for a "Sonic" game. Naka stated in an interview with GameSpy that he wanted to use Shadow as the game's main character due to his popularity among fans and being the best fit for a "gun action" game.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The game features several CGI-animated cutscenes produced by Blur Studio. The music of "Shadow the Hedgehog" was composed by Jun Senoue, with additional work by Yutaka Minobe, Tomoya Ohtani, and Mariko Nanba. "Lost and Found: Shadow the Hedgehog Vocal Trax" is a video game soundtrack album released on CD on February 22, 2006. The album contains seven vocal songs from the game, one of which is a remix rather than the original. Another soundtrack, "Shadow the Hedgehog: Original Soundtrax", was also released on February 22, 2006. It contains both vocal and instrumental tracks from the game.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: In Japan, "Shadow the Hedgehog" was promoted through a collaboration with Japanese hip hop group M-flo, whose song "Tripod Baby" was remixed and featured in the commercial under the title "Tripod Baby (Shadow the Hedgehog Mix)". In addition to this, an alternate music video for "Tripod Baby" featuring the remix included new scenes with Shadow.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Uniquely, the game contains profanities, particularly the frequent use of the words "damn" and "hell" spoken by Shadow and other characters such as Espio, the G.U.N. Commander, Knuckles, and Sonic. The decision to include profanity and firearms was made early in development as it focused on a more mature tone. The ESRB ultimately assigned the game an E10+ rating for "fantasy violence" and "mild language".


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The game was also the first in the "Sonic" series to use the 4Kids cast from "Sonic X" following the death of Doctor Eggman's previous voice actor, Deem Bristow. This cast continued to be used until late 2010 when all cast members except for Mike Pollock were replaced before the release of "Sonic Free Riders".


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: "Shadow the Hedgehog" received "generally unfavorable" reviews from critics, many of which were highly critical of its gameplay mechanics and differences from other "Sonic" games. However, it was voted the best game of 2005 in the "Official Jetix Magazine" Reader Awards and named the "Best Platformer" of 2005 by "Nintendo Power" readers (receiving more votes than the staff's choice, "Sonic Rush"). "Shadow the Hedgehog" was also a commercial success: Sega reported 1.59 million units sold from its release to March 2006 and 470,000 units sold in the U.S. from March 2006 to March 2007, for total sales of at least 2.06 million. The game was later released as a part of three budget lines: Greatest Hits and Platinum Range for the PlayStation 2 (representing sales of at least 400,000 in North America and Europe, respectively) and Player's Choice for the GameCube (250,000 in North America).


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Many critics derided the game's sense of maturity for a "Sonic" game, especially the addition of guns and other weapons. "Game Informer" staff writer Matt Helgeson said, "not only is this new 'adult' interpretation of Sonic painfully dumb, it’s also ill-advised and almost feels like a betrayal to longtime fans." Eurogamer staff writer Tom Bramwell felt that "the game's other selling point – its darker edge – [is] not really meant for us." G4's "X-Play" and GameSpy staff writer Patrick Klepek thought similarly. In contrast, "Nintendo Power" staff writer Steve Thomason rated the game 8.0 out of 10, stating, "this darker take on the Sonic universe succeeds for the most part, giving the series a bit of an edge without going overboard on violence." In addition, "Official Xbox Magazine" reassured readers, "Don't worry, "Shadow the Hedgehog" isn't half as 'urban' or quite as 'gangsta' as it first seems." Helgeson panned the game's "laughable" plot, saying it "makes no sense," and that various "Sonic" conventions undermined its attempts to be "mature" or "edgy".


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Reviewers also noted the game's controls, especially Shadow's homing attack causing unexpected character deaths. "Game Informer"s Matt Helgeson complained that the attack "frequently sends you careening off into nothingness, resulting in cheap death after cheap death." "Nintendo Power", "X-Play", Eurogamer, "Official Xbox Magazine", and GameSpy agreed. Other complaints focused on the mechanics of weapons and vehicles. Greg Mueller of GameSpot felt that the guns were nearly useless because of a lack of a target lock or manual aim, combined with an ineffective auto-aim. IGN staff writer Matt Casamassina, 1UP.com staff writer Greg Sewart, "Game Informer", "X-Play", GameSpy, and London's "The Times" also criticized the mechanics of Shadow's weapons, vehicles, and other aspects of the game's controls. However, Thomason said that "blasting Shadow's foes with the wide variety of weapons at his disposal is just plain fun."


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: The level design received mixed comments. Mueller called some levels "extremely frustrating". Helgeson stated that the fast-paced "levels are poorly designed", and Andrew Reiner, who wrote a second-opinion review for "Game Informer", called the level design "disastrous". "Official Xbox Magazine" was more mixed, balancing the possibility of getting lost in the large levels with the likely appeal of these stages to 3D "Sonic" gamers, particularly those who had enjoyed "Sonic Heroes". GameTrailers found that "the levels are either dark and urban, or bright and psychedelic. Either way, they fit in well to the "Sonic" universe. They are loaded with speed ramps, loops and an assortment of other boosts that rocket Shadow like a pinball." Bettenhausen included "the classic run-like-hell roller coaster design philosophy" of some stages in his limited praise. Casamassina disliked the "stupid level design", saying that "[j]ust because they dazzled players six years ago does not mean that Sonic Team can copy and paste exactly the same loops and spins into each new franchise iteration and expect everyone to be happy with the outcome." GameSpy observed that "the areas are much less open than in previous "Sonic" games, but the level designers haven't taken advantage of the constraints." "Nintendo Power" singled out the difficulty of the missions that require the player to locate objects.


title: Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

text: Critics praised the game's replay value, applauding the many possible paths that a player may take through the game. GameTrailers stated, "this choose-your-own-adventure style gives the game replay value that many platformers lack." The Australian publication "Herald Sun", "Nintendo Power", and "Official Xbox Magazine" thought similarly. GameSpot praised the variety of alternate endings, but concluded that "the gameplay isn't fun enough to warrant playing the game through multiple times." Bettenhausen thought that the morality system felt artificial, but said that it extended the game's replay value.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The 2022 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2022 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 16 April to 2 May 2022 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the 46th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the venue. The 16th and final ranking event of the 2021–22 snooker season, the tournament was organised by the World Snooker Tour and sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom by the BBC, in Europe (including the UK) by Eurosport, and elsewhere in the world by Matchroom Sport and other broadcasters. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000, of which the winner received £500,000.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Qualifying rounds for the tournament took place from 4 to 13 April 2022 at the English Institute of Sport, featuring 128 participants, consisting of a mix of professional and invited amateur players. The main stage of the tournament featured 32 players: the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and an additional 16 players from the qualifying rounds. Ashley Hugill, Jackson Page, and Hossein Vafaei were debutants at the Crucible, with Vafaei the first Iranian player to reach the main stage. Mark Selby was the defending champion, having won the 2021 final against Shaun Murphy. He lost to Yan Bingtao in a second-round match that produced the longest frame ever played at the Crucible, lasting 85 minutes.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Ronnie O'Sullivan equalled Steve Davis's record of 30 Crucible appearances. He reached a record 20th quarter-final and a record 13th semi-final before defeating Judd Trump in the final to equal Stephen Hendry's record of seven world titles. It was O'Sullivan's 39th ranking title and 21st Triple Crown title. Aged 46 years and 148 days, he became the oldest world champion in the sport's history, surpassing Ray Reardon, who was aged 45 years and 203 days when he won his last world title in 1978. O'Sullivan also broke Hendry's record of 70 wins at the Crucible, setting a new record of 74.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Neil Robertson made a maximum break in his second-round match against Jack Lisowski, the fifth of his career and the 12th time a 147 had been achieved at the Crucible. Graeme Dott also made a maximum break in his third-round qualifying match against Pang Junxu, the second of his career and the fifth time that a maximum had been made in the World Championship qualifiers. The main stage produced a record 109 century breaks, surpassing the 108 centuries made the preceding year. Mark Williams made 16 centuries during the event, equalling the record set by Hendry in 2002.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The first World Snooker Championship final took place in 1927 at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England, and was won by Joe Davis. Since 1977, the tournament has been held annually at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The 2022 event marked the 46th consecutive year that the tournament was held at the Crucible, and the 54th successive year that the World Championship was contested through the modern knockout format. Scottish player Stephen Hendry had been the most successful participant at the World Championship in the modern era, having won the title seven times. English player Mark Selby won his fourth world title at the 2021 championship, defeating compatriot Shaun Murphy 18–15 in the final, for which he received a £500,000 top prize from a total prize fund of £2,395,000. Organised by the World Snooker Tour, the 2022 tournament was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, which sponsored the event from 2009 to 2012 and continuously since 2015.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The 2022 World Snooker Championship took place from 16 April to 2 May 2022, as the last of 16 ranking events in the 2021–22 season. The event featured a 32-player main draw, preceded by a 128-player qualifying tournament that was held at the English Institute of Sport between 4 and 13 April 2022, finishing three days before the start of the main event. The qualifiers were played over four rounds, with higher-ranked players seeded and given byes to the later rounds. The first three qualifying rounds were played as the best of 11 frames, while the final round was played as the best of 19 frames.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The top 16 players in the latest snooker world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Defending champion Selby was automatically seeded first overall. The remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on the latest world rankings, released after the 2022 Tour Championship. The first-round draw for the Crucible took place on 14 April at Betfred Studios in Salford, with the balls drawn by 1991 champion John Parrott. Matches in the first round of the main draw were played as the best of 19 frames, second-round matches and quarter-finals played as the best of 25 frames, and the semi-finals as the best of 33 frames. The final was played over two days as a best-of-35-frames match.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Reaching the first round of the tournament's main stage were 12 players from England, six from Wales, four from Scotland, four from China, two from Thailand, and one each from Northern Ireland, Australia, Belgium, and Iran. It was the first time in the tournament's history that Iran was represented at the main stage. It was also the first time, since the tournament first featured 16 seeded players in 1980, that no seeded player from the United Kingdom was aged under 30. This occasioned debate about the increasing age profile of the UK's top players.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC and Eurosport, and in Europe by Eurosport. Other international broadcasts were provided by Kuaishou, Migu, Huya Live, Youku, and CCTV in China; by NowTV in Hong Kong; and by DAZN in Canada, the United States, and Brazil. In territories where there was no other coverage, the event was broadcast by Matchroom Sport.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The winner of the event received £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000. The breakdown of prize money is shown below:


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: A bonus of £40,000 was offered for a maximum break made at the Crucible, and £10,000 for a maximum made in the qualifying rounds. These bonuses were in addition to the £15,000 highest prize.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Seven-time champion Hendry, who had rejoined the professional tour in 2021 after nine years in retirement, chose not to enter the qualifiers for the 2022 tournament, stating that he had not been practising enough to be competitive. Liang Wenbo, seeded 32nd, would have entered the qualifiers in the third round. However, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association suspended him from professional competition on 2 April after he was convicted on a domestic assault charge.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The first qualifying round featured players seeded 81–112 against unseeded players. Aged 15 years and 277 days, Welsh amateur Liam Davies set a new record as the youngest winner of a World Championship match by defeating Aaron Hill 6–4. Jimmy White, runner-up on six occasions, lost 2–6 to Andrew Pagett, although Pagett was criticised after footage showed him not declaring a . Marco Fu, a semi-finalist in 2006 and 2016, had not competed professionally since the 2020 Welsh Open due to a combination of vision problems and travel restrictions. While preparing for his return, he made a rare break exceeding 147 in a practice match against Noppon Saengkham, compiling a 149. He lost 5–6 to Ian Burns, who made a 141 break in the match. Four female players—Reanne Evans, Ng On-yee, Nutcharut Wongharuthai, and Rebecca Kenna—competed in the qualifiers, but all four lost in the first round. Ukrainian teenager Iulian Boiko, who had become the youngest player ever to compete in qualifying as a 14-year-old in 2020, defeated Michael Georgiou 6–4 to win his first World Championship match.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: The second qualifying round featured players seeded 49–80 against the first-round winners. Veteran Welsh player Dominic Dale defeated compatriot Duane Jones 6–3, a key win for Dale in his effort to stay on the professional tour. Allan Taylor defeated Michael Judge 6–5 on the final , a victory that helped Taylor remain on the tour through the one-year rankings. Nigel Bond, the 1995 runner-up, lost his place on the tour after a 1–6 defeat to Lukas Kleckers. Bond, the last player who turned professional in the 1980s to remain on the tour without an invitational tour card, subsequently announced his retirement after 33 seasons, commenting: "At 56, my time as a main tour professional is at an end and I have no intention of playing Q School". He said he would still compete in the World Seniors Championship, continue coaching, and serve the remainder of his term as a WPBSA Players Board director.


title: 2022 World Snooker Championship

text: Fergal O'Brien, Martin O'Donnell, Sunny Akani, and Andrew Higginson all lost their tour cards after defeats. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, also in danger of relegation from the tour, beat Pagett 6–4 in a match that saw Pagett make three centuries and Un-Nooh make a 137 break. Matthew Stevens, runner-up in 2000 and 2005, boosted his chances of remaining on the tour by beating Gerard Greene 6–1. The 1997 champion Ken Doherty lost 4–6 to Rory McLeod.