Toolbox of Interpretation: Poetry
1. General Approach (Peter Hühn)
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central relevance of the confined subjective perspective with respect to communication situation,
theme and function of poetry
subjective perspective embedded in a context of extra-subjective contingency
most paradoxical form: form implies closeness/unity, whereas the interpretation context is widely
open
formal unity may serve as a superficial compensation (or suppression) of the inner conflict the lyrical I
suffers from
2 epistemological frames:
1. subject of the enounced (lyrisches Ich)
2. subject of enunciation (Kompositionssubjekt)
> elucidation of language manipulation might as well reveal hidden tendencies of the poem
references:
1. self-reference: poem refers to itself (meta-poem, overt construction, rigid formality, form over
content)
2. historical reference: poem refers to historical background (behavioural role, conventions)
3. intertextual reference (other authors or texts)
4. psychological/in-depth reference: inner conflict of the subject of the enounced (often
contrasted or affirmed by the outer, spatiotemporal environment of the poem diegesis).
1.1. Schema of interpretation
1. narrator:
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Who is the subject of the enounced?
What is his/her social role?
What is his inner conflict; what is the (superficial) solution of this conflict? (i.e. identity problems)
Is his/her inner conflict extrapolated into/contrasted by the extra-subjective environment of the
diegesis? (i.e. Shakespeare’s winter metaphors which mirror his inner coldness. His emotional
unbalance is stabilized by a delusory harmonization of nature with the narrator’s state of mind. The
subject of the enounced does not realize that this concordance is merely due to his will to see nature
in this particular way.)
2. narrate:
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Does the poem address/invoke (Gods) somebody in particular?
Is the addressed person present/absent/dead?
What is the addressee’s social role?
Out of which motive is the addressee addressed (love, criticism, etc.)?
How is the mode of communication (friendly, yearningly, hatefully, etc.)?
3. overriding message:
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What is the frame (Bezugsrahmen) of the poem?
What is its script (consecutive order of the entities emerging in the poem)?
Which entities do not fit/contrast with the frame?
Which isotopies stress/contrast the central topic?
What are the basic semantic fields? Is there a movement from one semantic field to another? Are
the expectations of the new field fulfilled or (ironically) negated (Tennyson’s Lady Of Shalott)?
Which metaphors?
How does the title correspond with the frame?
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4. language:
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Is the timeliness of the act of speaking retrospective, synchronic or prospective?
Where do metric disruptions occur? Can they be explained in relation to the overriding message
(interplay)?
Do inversions stress certain central words?
Are there repeated words? Why? Is another semantic meaning of the repeated word evoked in
the second voicing (evolution/resolution of conflict)?
Is there eye-catching punctuation like question marks or exclamation marks? Where and why?
(rhetorical questions, imperatives, etc.)
Which tense(s) occur in the poem?
Which modes (conjunctive, etc.)?
Which word classes dominate the poem (i.e. verbs: movement)?
Diction: Which words are of Germanic, which are of Latin origin? Is there a balance between
them or rather an abundance of one of them (Latin: sophisticated, airy, sometimes irony; German:
direct subjectivity, unveiled emotions)?
Oxymoron through a combination of a Latin and a Germanic word?
Ambiguity? If necessary, look up archaic meanings of common words.
Movement: In which places do metre, enjambment, etc. mimic speed, upwards movement,
stumbling, etc?
Names: Do the persons carry names or are they nameless? Why?
2. Prosodic Terminology
1. stress
iamb/iambic:
trochee/trochaic:
spondee/spondaic:
pyrrhic:
x/
/x
/ /
xx
(rising rhythm)
(falling rhythm)
anapaest:
dactyl:
xx/
/xx
(rising rhythm, silly, limerick)
(falling rhythm)
elision:
inverted foot:
catalectic lines:
hypermetric:
upbeat:
wrenched accent:
ne’er (rhythmical abridgement of words)
i.e. a trochee in an otherwise iambic stress-pattern (interplay: stresses meaning)
leaving out an unstressed syllable, often at the beginning/end of a line
1 beat too much (hyperbeat)
unstressed hyperbeat an the beginning of a line
unusual pronunciation, forced by the overriding rhythm-template of the poem
(gezogen)
end-stopped line:
enjambed line:
syntax stops (semi-colon, fullstop).
enjambment; syntax continues; i.e. “open couplets”: 2 consecutive couplets are
syntactically enjambed; even stanzas can be enjambed (continuity), i.e.
“immortality / consumes … (stressing the nevverending burden of life
female ending:
masculine ending:
line stops with an unstressed syllable
line stops with a stressed syllable
2. rhyme:
single rhyme:
double rhyme:
triple rhyme:
bed -head (einsilbig)
follow - hollow (zweisilbig)
attitude - gratitude (dreisilbig)
perfect rhyme:
full rhyme:
masculine (stressed) end rhyme
confirms the semantic connection between rhyming words
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rime riche:
autorhyme:
hudibrastic rhyme:
sound
before
rhyming
vowel
need
to
be
identical
as
well:
evolutionary/devolutionary. homographs (well 1. of water, 2. mood); homophones
(there/their).
repetition of the very same word (Mac Beth)
silly rhyme (“lot o’ news” - “hypotheneuse”)
half rhyme:
vowel rhyme:
pararhyme:
female endings:
questions the semantic connection between half-rhyming words
consonants differ (bite/fire)
vowels differ (lust/lost)
falling pitch contour as a substitute for rhymes.
internal rhyme:
leonine rhyme:
broken rhyme:
divided rhyme:
rhyme within a line (might evoke claustrophobic feeling)
internal rhyme in the middle of a line (often making an abca to an ab(cc)a)
split word at the end of a line: “I was go- / ing and show- / ing
rhyme stretches over more than 1 word (grass sole /asshole)
alliteration:
assonance:
consonance:
onomatopoeia:
repetition of beginning consonants
repetition of vowels
repetition of consonants (“last but not least”)
sound miming meaning, i.e. “crack”, “boom”
paronomasia:
polyptoton:
figura etymologica:
pun: Rheinstrom ist Peinstrom; Genosse der Bosse
repetition of the same word in different flexions (king of kings)
Grube graben.
eye-rhyme:
cough/bough/although (seem to rhyme but don’t)
3. line-length
monometer:
dimeter:
trimeter:
tetrameter:
pentameter:
hexameter:
heptameter:
1 accent
2 accents
3 accents
4 accents (Middle English)
5 accents (since Elizabethan Age)
6 accents
7 accents
blank verse:
alexandrine:
heroic (iambic) pentameters; no rhymes (Milton’s Paradise Lost)
iambic hexameters
caesura:
medial pause, caused by semi-colon or comma. Can be forced to be early or late
by use of punctuation
reading against the layout. Often in blank verse: Caesura in the middle makes you
“listen” the poem from caesura to caesura, while layout suggests the (enjambed)
end-lines: this evokes a feeling of never reaching a finish.
rocking lineation:
4. stanzas
couplet:
tercet:
quatrain:
pentrain:
sestet:
2 lines
3 lines; triplet 3 rhyming lines (aaa)
4 lines
5 lines
6 lines
single-rhymed:
double-rhymed:
1 rhyme in stanza
2 rhymes in stanza
verse paragraphs:
divisions, not stanzas of a longer poem (often written in blank verse)
5. diction
nonce words:
acronym:
neologisms that only exist in the poem
DINKY (double income, no kids yet)
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neologism:
hubris:
invention of new word that comes to use
Hybris.
6. important poem forms
2 lines:
3 lines:
4 lines:
5 lines:
7 lines:
8 lines:
9 lines:
couplets: full rhymes indicate strong closure
heroic couplet: rhyming iambic pentameters
triplets: last rhyme is sometimes metrically delayed; implied insistence (and insecurity)
terza rima: aba, bcb, cdc, … Dante’s Divine Comedy or Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind;
very cohesive
cross-rhymed: abab; tends to look back over its own shoulder
heroic quatrains: abab; iambic pentameters
chiasmatic rhyme: abba, rising tension curve
ballad stanza: i.e. a8 b6 c8 b6; alternating tetra- and trimeters
limerick; aa bb a, anapaestic
rime royal: abab bcc (Chaucer)
ottava rima: ababab cc (sestet/couplet); Elizabethan Age (Thomas Wayatt imported it
from Italy to England); Byron. In part silly because of obvious construction, iambic.
Spensarian stanza: 1-8 iambic pentameters, 9 alexandrine; abab bcbc c; alexandrine at
the end prevents stanza enjambment (Fairy Queene)
14 lines:
Sonnets: (1) Petrarchan sonnet - octet (abba, abba) + sestet (i.e. cde, cde); turning
point after octet. (2) Shakespearean sonnet: 3 quatrains (abab, cdcd, efef) + couplet
(gg); 1st turning point often after 2nd quatrain, final couplet summarizes or comments;
Shakespearean sonnet frequently consists of one single sentence. (3) Spensarian
sonnet: 3 interrelated quatrains (abab, bcbc, cdcd) + couplet (ee), very cohesive thanks
to interleaving rhymes.
Onegin: 14 lines, tetrameters; 3 quatrains (1st cross-rhymed, 2nd couplet-rhymed, 3rd
chiasmatically rhymed) + final couplet
19 lines:
Villanelle: almost mathematic poetry of Russian origin. 5 tercets (all aba) + quatrain
(abaa); 1st line repeated in 6th, 12th and 18th rhyme; 3rd line repeated in 9th, 15th and 19th
line. Thematically often persistent enunciation of anger, love, monotony, etc.
Form and content:
Certain forms are historically related to certain topics or moods. If, now, a “classic”
form is quoted in combination with a topic that is semantically unusual for the form,
a tension between form and content rises, i.e. if the narration of a rape (Leda and
the Swan) is embedded into the lyrical shape of a sonnet - a form that is
historically related to love-declarations of enunciations of soul-stirring yearning the historical context of the form is obviously fractured by irony.
free verse:
From 1920 onwards, poets freed themselves of metric and rhyme restrictions.
Passages, however, can be written in a regular pattern. Using line-breaks at will.
poésie pure:
High aesthetic power overlays/blurs the semantic meaning. (Lady of Shalott: selfreferential, as the ironically criticized “pure” life of an artist and his death in the
realm of life are mirrored by the macrostructure of the poem, which is written in the
form of poésie pure.)
Historically predominant topics
Medieval Poetry:
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trochaic or iambic tetrameters and pentameters and Chaucer’s rime royal
Elizabethan Age:
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blank verse (Milton), sonnet (Spenser, Shakespeare). Spensarian stanza
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Classicism:
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heroic couplet (iambic pentameters, aa)
Romantic Times:
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retrospective and further development of Elizabethan forms
withdrawal from world, absolute subjectivity (loss of reality, delusion)
subjectivity as the last option to emote within a world deprived of transcendence
Victorian Times:
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Within the long period of Victoria (1837-1901), England experienced an economical boom that after an initial period of painful social and political upheavals (particularly for people of lower
social standing), i.e. epidemics, exploitation, rural migration, child labour - also disembogued
into an improvement of the social and political system.
reforms: reduction of child labour (1833), Ten-Hours Act (1847, 10-Stundentag), Public Health Act
(1848, Gesundheitsreform), Abolition of Corn Laws (1846), Reform Acts (1832 und 1867, Wahlrecht)
citizenship and civic duties: Moral duties, such as: rigidity, honesty, sincerity, religiousness,
suppression of (sex) drives, family values, “protestant work ethics” (Leistungsorientiertheit).
Hypocrisy since nobody could meet those rigid moral requirements.
Two lines of argumentation: (1) Industrialization leads to constant improvement and progress;
(2) Darwinist world will inevitably decay (discovery of entropy fuels this conviction).
loss experiences, compensations and suppressions; loss of the meaning of life: loss of religious and
normative guidelines
insecurity (decay, entropy)
subtle melancholy (Tennyson, Arnold), expectation of death (Tennyson’s Tithonus), morbid
introspection (Browning)
pressing need for contingency coverage (ideals of domestic lifestyle)
rejection of romantic withdrawal into delusory subjectivity
Mirror vs. lamp: loss of confidence into the artistic power of depicting the world (Romanticism,
lamp), artist merely mirrors the world, without reshaping it in a particularly innovative way (mirror)
techniques of objectivity and detachment: i.e. dramatic monologue (speaking through fictional
characters clearly dissociated from author, concrete setting, speaks to somebody - no soliloguy - but
answer is not published)
more explicit criticism and commentary of social grievances
approximation to a more and more colloquial register, description of realistic details
popular usage of epic forms
Modernism:
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economical crisis, labour unions, female emancipation, mass consumption, globalization
contingency-problem: ontological world remains unfathomable and inconceivable
broken (elliptic) syntax, free verse, intertextuality, colloquial register (modern world perceives as
so adrift that regular form seems inadequate.
paradox of urban living conditions: narrow, yet distant; the adjacent is close by, yet invisible.
irrational, pathological and surreal phenomena (dreams, hallucinations, drug-trips, etc.)
dichotomization of “high” and “low” culture
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