Versification
versification covers all aspects of formal
organizations of sounds that characterize verse
range from localized alliteration
patterns of rhythm, metre and rhyme
larger matters, genre, sonnet, ballad, free verse
focus on poetry, but grows out of language
metrics analysis of measures or feet within a line
of verse (from Gk measure)
poetics embraces formal pattering in language
of all kinds, including drama and narrative (Gk
poiesis, fashioning, making)
measure
English a Germanic Language, organized around
presence or absence of stress
like Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian...
not like classical and Romance languages,
organized around syllable length
Anglo-Saxon poetry, like Beowulf, organized around
number of stresses in a line (four)
number unstressed syllables not important
also, two or three had to begin with same sound,
alliteration
poem "Wulf and Edawacer"
“Wulf & Eadwacer”
/
x
/
v
Wulf, min Wulf
/
x x / x
v
seoce gedygan
/ x x / x
wena me thine
/ x /
x x
thine seldcymas
Wulf, my Wulf,
it was wanting you
That made me sick, your seldom coming,
(Michael Alexander translation)
this is stressed or alliterative verse
usually performed, based on half-line units
variations on above appear in other
Anglo-Saxon poems
oral-formulaic poetry
The Couplet
1 2
3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10
A Knight ther was and that a worthy man
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
That fro the time that he first bigan
another force in play
syllabic or quantitative metre (often with endrhyme)
brought into play by Chaucer
adopted French and Italian metrical models
regular number of syllables per line
(usually 8 or 10 syllables, octo-decasyllabic)
rhyme schemes include rhyme royal, ...
Look at two lines from Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712):
And now unveiled the toilet stands displayed
Each silver vase in mystic order laid
Look at two lines from Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712):
x
/ x /
x / x /
x
/
1
2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10
And now unveiled the toilet stands displayed
x
/ x /
x /
x / x /
1
2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10
Each silver vase in mystic order laid
unstressed + stressed. This is one foot, or measure. Name
for this type = iambic
usually a blend of the two = accentual-syllabic metre
x / x / x /
x / x x /
To be or not to be, that is the question.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
-Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard“ (1751)
x / x
/
x / x / x /
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
x / x /
x
/ x /
x /
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
-Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard“ (1751)
You know that it would be untrue,
You know that I would be a liar,
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.
Come on, baby, light my fire.
Try to set the night on fire.
-Jim Morrison, “Light My Fire” (1966)
x /
x / x
/ x /
You know that it would be untrue,
x /
x /x
/ x/
You know that I would be a liar,
x/ x / x / x
If I was to say to you
/
x /
x /
x
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.
x
/ x / x
/ x
Come on, baby, light my fire.
x / x / x
/ x
Try to set the night on fire.
-Jim Morrison, “Light My Fire” (1966)
"Villanelle“, W. E. Henley
A dainty thing's the Villanelle.
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
It serves its purpose passing well.
A double-clappered silver bell
That must be made to clink in chime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting "neath the lime",
It serves its purpose passing well.
You must not ask of it the swell
Of organs grandiose and sublime A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves its purpose passing well
Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle,
It serves its purpose passing well.
Villanelle
from Latin villanus (rustic)
A1
b
A2
a
b
A1
a
b
A1
a
b
A2
a
b
A2
a
b
A1
A2
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle
into that Good Night”
five basic measures:
iambus x / again, unveil, reverse
trochee / x happy, never, heartless
anapest x x / entertain, repossess, hurry up
spondee / / heart break, Big Mac, wine
glass
dactyl / x x happiness, orchestra,
discotheque
Dimeter – two feet
Trimeter – three feet
Tetrameter – four feet
Pentameter – five feet
Hexameter – six feet
...
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
- Milton, "Samson Agonistes“ (1671)
x /
/
/
x/
x /
x /
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
- Milton, "Samson Agonistes“ (1671)
Thus I
Pass by
And die
As one
Un known
And gone
- Herrick, "Upon His Departure Hence“ (17th c.)
x
/
Thus I
x
/
Pass by
x
/
And die
x /
As one
x /
Un known
x /
And gone
- Herrick, "Upon His Departure Hence“ (17th c.)
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
However minute the employment may
appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and
whatever ridicule may be incurred by a
solemn deliberation upon accents and
pauses, it is certain that without this petty
knowledge no man can be a poet; and that
from the proper disposition of single sounds
results that harmony that adds force to
reason, and gives grace to sublimity.
Metre is a blueprint; rhythm is the inhabited
building. Metre is a skeleton; rhythm is the
functioning body. Metre is a map; rhythm
is a land.
– Philip Hobsbaum, Metre, Rhythm and
Verse Form
Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserst of vast eternity.
H.G. Widdowson, Practical
Stylistics
The dissociation of language from its normal
connections wtih context, further confirmed by the
way it is fashioned into prosodic shape, directs the
attention of the reader to the langauge itself
enclosed within the confines of the poem.
Interpretation is the function of a heightened
awareness of how language can mean, how its
resources can be exploited to express different
perspectives on familar reality. In this respect, the
reading of a poem is itself the representation of a
renewal of our experience of the language, freed
from the usual dulling effect of context.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
“To Divide is Not to Take Away”
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
“To Divide is Not to Take Away”
x
/
x /
x /
x / x x
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
x
/ x
/
x / x/
x /
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
x
/ x /
x /
x
/
x
/
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
x / xx
x / x/ x /
A sepulchre for its eternity
On the composition of “While
Resting on the Bridge at the Foot of
Brother’s Water”
When I returned, I found William writing a poem descriptive of the
sights and sounds we saw and heard. There was the gentle flowing of
the stream, the glittering lively lake, green fields, without a living
creature to be seen on them; behind us, a flat pasture with forty-two
cattle feeding; to our left, the road leading to the hamlet. No smoke
there, the sun shone on the bare roofs. The people were at work,
ploughing, harrowing, and sowing; lasses working; a dog barking now
and then; cocks crowing, birds twittering; the snow in patches at the top
of the highest hills; yellow palms, purple and green twigs on the
birches, ashes with their glittering stems quite bare. The hawthorn a
bright green, with black stems under the oak. The moss of the oaks
glossy.... As we went up the vale of Brothers Water, more and more
cattle feeding, a hundred of them. William finished his poem before we
got to the foot of Kirkstone.
- Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal of April 16, 1802
Wordsworth, “While Resting on the
Bridge at the Foot of Brother’s
Water”
The Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are graing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
Gerard Manley Hopkins (18441889) – “The Windhover”
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
his riding ...