A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet argues that the history of the sonnet in the last century is more than a decorative strand in its literary fabric. To a large extent, this book is about Wordsworth, who discovers, through Milton, that at the heart of the sonnet's power as a form is the trope of synecdoche, which he connects up with the very moment and act of representation - thereby "inventing" the visionary Romantic sonnet. The authority he gains by this discovery immediately reflects not only on his work, which until that moment had rarely included the sonnet, but also on the work of many major poets after him. The book also discusses Wordsworth's rejection of a sentimental mode of sonnet writing popularized by female poets of his day; instead Wordsworth insists on a "manly" (his word) employment of the form that transforms the voice of private sentiment into the voice of public, bardic authority.