A straightforward and practical introduction to rhythm and meter in poetry in English.

Table of contents

Offers an instrumental investigation of a theory of rhythmical performance of poetry, originally propounded speculatively in the author's "Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre" (1977). This title assumes that when the versification patterns and linguistic patterns conflict, they can be accommodated in a pattern of Rhythmical Performance.

Examines the way in which poetry in English makes use of rhythm. The author argues that there are three major influences which determine the verse-forms used in any language: the natural rhythm of the spoken language itself; the properties of rhythmic form; and the metrical conventions which have grown up within the literary tradition. He investigates these in order to explain the forms of English verse, and to show how rhythm and metre work as an essential part of the reader's experience of poetry.

This research is an instrumental investigation of a theory of rhythmical performance of poetry, originally propounded speculatively in author Reuven Tsur's A Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre (1977). "Iambic pentameter" means that there is a verse unit consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable (in this order), and that the verse line consists of five such units. In the first 165 verse lines of Paradise Lost, there are two such lines. The theory takes up one of the central issues in metrical studies: all criteria for metricality hitherto proposed have been violated by the greatest masters of musicality in English poetry. The question arises, how do we recognize two verse lines that are very different in their structures as instances of the same abstract pattern of, e.g., iambic pentameter, and how do we distinguish a metrical from an unmetrical line? One great difference between this theory of meter and others concerns the status of deviation. Most theoreticians deploy a battery of tools to make deviant stress patterns conform with metric pattern. Only when all attempts fail do they speak of "tension." When they succeed, they blur the distinction between, for example, Milton's and Pope's metrical styles. Or else, they have formulated different rules of metricality for Shakespeare and Milton. This theory assumes that when the versification patterns and linguistic patterns conflict, they can be accommodated in a pattern of "Rhythmical Performance" - namely, one in which the conflicting patterns are simultaneously perceptible. There are scales of mounting difficulties of mismatches, on which each poet (and each theorist) draws at different points the boundary of what is acceptable. Reuven Tsur's revised and expanded second edition (original publication, Peter Lang, 1986) is essential reading for all scholars and students involved in versification and Cognitive Poetics.

Rhythm, Illusion and the Poetic Idea explores the concept of rhythm and its central yet problematic role in defining modern French poetry. Forging innovative lines of inquiry linking the detailed analysis of poetic form to the evolution of fundamental aesthetic principles, David Evans offers extensive new readings of the literary and critical writings of the three major poets at the centre of France's most important poetic revolution. The volume is of interest to all students and readers of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé, since here is presented for the first time a thorough comparative study of developments in each writer's poetic form and theory, focusing on the themes of illusion, deception and the musical metaphor. The book is also intended to stimulate wider critical debate on the interpretation of metrical verse, prose poetry and vers libre, and offers original analytical methods which facilitate the study of poetic form. The author proposes a radical shift in our understanding of the role and mechanisms of poetic rhythm, suggesting that its very resistance to definition and fixity provides a conveniently opaque veil over the difficulties of defining poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Provides a postmodern theory of poetry that sees rhythm as its essential quality