an externalization of the medieval confessional. In his Anatomy  
of Criticism  (p. 307) Northrop Frye points to the strong 
autobiographic strain in prose fiction, “following St. Augustine 
who appears to have invented it, and Rousseau who 
established a modern type of it. The earlier tradition gave 
Religio Medici , Grace Abounding , and Newman’s Apologia  to 
English literature, besides the related but subtly different type 
of confession favored by the mystics.”

     In particular the sonnet as a new form of public 
confessional fostered by print, is worth study as it relates to 
new verse forms. Wordsworth’s familiar sonnet on the sonnet 
strikes some main notes of The Gutenberg Galaxy :

     Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, 
     Mindless of its just honors; with this key