Partially revert Docutils' [r9562] to fix epubcheck (#12271)

CHANGES.rst

@@ -150,6 +150,10 @@ Bugs fixed
 * #11970: singlehtml builder: make target URIs to be same-document references in
   the sense of :rfc:`RFC 3986, §4.4 <3986#section-4.4>`, e.g., ``index.html#foo``
   becomes ``#foo``. Patch by eanorige.
+* #12271: Partially revert Docutils' r9562__ to fix EPUB files.
+  Patch by Adam Turner.
+
+  __ https://sourceforge.net/p/docutils/code/9562/
 
 Testing
 -------

sphinx/writers/html5.py

@@ -475,6 +475,17 @@ def visit_title(self, node: Element) -> None:
         self.add_fignumber(node.parent)
         if isinstance(node.parent, nodes.table):
             self.body.append('<span class="caption-text">')
+        # Partially revert https://sourceforge.net/p/docutils/code/9562/
+        if (
+                isinstance(node.parent, nodes.topic)
+                and self.settings.toc_backlinks
+                and 'contents' in node.parent['classes']
+                and self.body[-1].startswith('<a ')
+                # TODO: only remove for EPUB
+        ):
+            # remove <a class="reference internal" href="#top">
+            self.body.pop()
+            self.context[-1] = '</p>\n'
 
     def depart_title(self, node: Element) -> None:
         close_tag = self.context[-1]