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The Metrical Structure of Free Verse

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The Metrical Structure of Free Verse The Metrical Structure of Free Verse PhD Thesis Hansjörg Bittner School of Modern Languages and European Studies University of East Anglia May 1997 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis, nor any information derived therefrom, may be published without the author’s prior, written consent. Acknowledgements: First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Clive Scott. In numberless discussions, his critical remarks have helped me to refine my concept of free verse metrics and to consolidate its theoretical foundations. This thesis would not have been written but for financial support from The British Academy and, above all, from my parents. 2 Abstract The irregular undulations of the lexical stress patterns in English and German free verse seem to elude any attempts at controlling their structural variety. This elusiveness calls for metrical confinement through a theory that illuminates the rhythmic effects of variable accentual structures. Metre represents the abstract image of poetic rhythm. Its binary stress patterns utilize accentual isochrony and accentual diversity in order to produce temporal and, if possible, structural regularity. Thus, a stress-based theory of free verse metre becomes possible. The metrical structure of free verse depends on the simultaneous co-operation of all metrically relevant factors. None of these factors is invariable; but their variability is restricted by their need to negotiate mutually the various possibilities of producing, in a concerted effort, the rhythmically best stress pattern. There are three different kinds of metrically relevant factors: while syntax is generally responsible for the delimitation of a metrical unit, lexical stress furnishes the accentual raw material, whose shape is, then, refined under the influence of metro-rhythmic idealization. These factors are, in addition to their interdependence, also conditioned by linear and semantic considerations, as well as by the various constraints of contextual suitability. For an ideal structural metre aims at variational continuity in that each metrical unit depends for its rhythmic effectiveness on the immediately preceding stress pattern and, at the same time, constitutes a metrical norm for the immediately following stress pattern. The cognitive nature of structural metrics acknowledges the possibility of different rhythmic interpretations in the underlying test readings, if a metrical analysis fails to yield an unequivocal set of criteria for the establishment of a definitive stress structure. Free verse rhythm is, therefore, often governed by a metrical potential rather than by one irrefutable stress pattern. Embedded in a historical understanding of metrically irregular poetry and its justification, the above theory is employed in a comparative study of English and German free verse. 3 Contents Introduction.......................................................................................................... 5 1. Fundamental presuppositions......................................................................... 10 1.1. Rhythm: an exploration of its nature and scope........................................... 10 1.2. Metre: its function, its description, and its relation to rhythm....................... 21 2. Locating the object of investigation............................................................... 44 2.1. Historical perspectives: the emergence of free verse.................................... 44 2.2. Towards a classification of free verse forms................................................ 70 3. Critical approaches to free verse rhythm....................................................... 82 3.1. The free verse concepts of some free verse poets........................................ 82 3.2. Various critical approaches to free verse rhythm in general.......................... 88 3.3. Case-studies................................................................................................ 93 3.4. Linguistic approaches.................................................................................. 96 3.5. Phrasal approaches...................................................................................... 99 4. The metrical structure of free verse................................................................ 110 4.1. The concept of a structural metre................................................................ 110 4.2. Assumptions and presuppositions................................................................ 115 4.3. The establishment of a structural metre....................................................... 131 4.4. Applications................................................................................................ 148 4.5. Advantages and disadvantages.................................................................... 156 5. English and German free verse - a metrical comparison.............................. 162 5.1. Linguistic comparison................................................................................. 163 5.2. Comparing the metrical patterns of English and German free verse............. 171 Conclusion........................................................................................................... 192 Bibliography........................................................................................................ 197 4 Introduction To write about the metrical structure of free verse is often considered an impossibility, because free verse does not adhere to any of the regular patterns by which metre is habitually characterized. Free verse rejects the traditional forms of poetry; in particular, it renounces those features that constitute the line as an auditory unit. Thus, linear end-rhyme is not normally employed in free verse, and any free verse metre can only be defined independently of lineation. Since such a definition requires a structural flexibility which seems to contradict the etymological sense of “metre” as “measure”, most metrists regard free verse as unmetrical. Yet, at the same time, they would concede that “unmetrical verse” still retains some kind of linguistic rhythm, a rhythm invoked by the recurrence of syntactic or lexical elements, for example, or describable in terms of irregular linear stress patterns. While recurrent language features may produce a strong rhythmic effect when they occasionally become conspicuous, a description of the accentual structures within each line usually fails to yield insightful results because the line in free verse does not, as in traditional poetry, serve primarily to mark the most important rhythmic segments of a poem. What is needed is an analytical approach which examines accentual rhythm in its linguistic variety, and which accounts for the possibility of different interpretations of the rhythmic material without having to abandon the theoretical basis of its methodology. The usefulness of a theory depends not only on the logic of its argumentative structure, but also on the comprehensibility of its results. For a theoretical analysis to be readily understandable and produce valuable insights, it must in some way or other relate to less sophisticated, common-sense notions of the subject under investigation. What may, in metrics, be of some practical use to the reader of verse, is a holistic approach that recognizes the inseparability of form and content. “We will get nowhere in versification,” writes T.V.F. Brogan in the introduction to his compendious bibliography of English metrics (1981: xxv), “until we [....] take the poem as a complex structure of meanings, i.e. a semantic system, in which many diverse and disparate types of elements and structures all contribute information in varying degrees and at various levels.” This statement not only applies to meaning, but holds true for any linguistic aspects of poetry, including metre, so that a metrical pattern can be said to emerge as the result of accentual as well as syntactic and semantic considerations. It will be seen, below, that this kind of holism is particularly important in the metro-rhythmic analysis of a free verse poem. Almost thirty years ago, Paul Ramsey (1968: 108) wrote as part of his conclusion to a very perceptive essay: Free verse can be partially analyzed and understood. Its metric habits, dispositions, and mysteries can also be seen in terms of the rhetoric and meaning and spiritual vision of the poems. It is a rich world for study and I would hope not merely accurate but illuminating study. Linguists should help us refine such study; so may musical metrics; keen ears and poetic sensibility must inform it. However promising in its perspicacious observations on some metro-rhythmic aspects of free verse, Ramsey’s essay did not bring about a sharp increase in analytical works on free verse metrics. Even as late as 1995, Beth Bjorklund exhorts her readers: “If prosody is to remain in touch with the times, as well as with critical debate in other 5 areas, it can no longer afford to ignore free verse” (1995: 565). The theory proposed in this thesis is intended to further the debate on structures in metrically irregular poetry. In a holistic approach to free verse metrics - as, indeed, to metrics in general - due attention should be paid to the role played by an actual recitation of the poetic work. It is assumed that the performance of a free verse poem evokes a rhythmic
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