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Reserve Text: from Anthony Easthome, Poetry as Discourse, London: Methuen, 1983. Chapter 4: Iambic pentameter
The Russian Formalists
and the Prague School of linguists considered the one universal condition
of poetry, its constitutive principle or dominanta, to be its organization
into lines. Tomashevsky writes:
In poetry the line boundary is not arbitrary but is determined by a system of equivalences operating from line to line. In different languages and cultures line equivalence or metre is established on different bases. Four main systems can be distinguished: the number of syllables in a line, syllable duration, tone, stress. So in Hungarian folk poetry the only requirement for an utterance to constitute a line is that it should have six syllables. Classical Greek and Latin poetry is organized with recurring patterns of long and short syllables. Chinese is a predominantly monosyllabic language with a very limited number of syllables but it |
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[52] quadruples its
syllabic resources because each may occur in four different tones (level,
rising, rising and falling, level and falling). Classical Chinese poetry
is organized mainly with four-, five- and seven-syllable lines patterned
through an opposition between the level tone and the other three 'deflected'
tones in a Systems rarely
operate through only one principle of organization. One may be dommant,
but is often mIxed wIth others. In Modern English, iambic pentameter
requires both a patterning of stressed and unstressed syllables and
a set number of syllables per line, and while the classical metres of
Greek and Besides these four
main principles others are possible. Classical Hebrew poetry, for example,
is made up with end-stopped lines divided by a caesura into two parts
or cola. These are related in a complex system of synonymous
and antithetic parallelism which is semantic and syntactic. In this
it remains an exception to the general rule by which in different languages
the poetic line is organized phonetically, that is, in terms
of the physical properties of language. Thus metre generally inscribes
precedence of the signifier into the very basis of poetry. As Lacan
comments in referring to a stanza by Valery:
If the material
basis of poetry is recognized in metre, in the 'parallelism of the signifier',
the ensuing question must be how different metres are historically specific. In 1912 Ezra Pound set himself the principle of composing 'in |
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[53] the sequence of
the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome' (1963, p. 3). A
generation later Brecht, in an essay of 1939, rejected 'the oily smoothness
of the usual five-foot iambic metre' (iambic pentameter in German and
English are closely comparable) and describes how he 'gave up iambics
entirely and applied firm but irregular rhythms' (1964, p. 116). The
political contrast of fascist and communist, Pound and Brecht, is so
striking it obscures the grounds they share. Both reject liberalism
and the notion of the transcendental ego. For Brecht 'the continuity
of the ego is a myth' (ibid., p. 15), while according to Pound, 'One
says "I am" this, that, or the other, and with the words scarcely
uttered one ceases to be that thing' (1960, p. 85). Both champion oriental
art forms as a means to criticize and oppose the Western Renaissance
tradition, the bourgeois tradition. Both advocate free verse. Their work provides
a point from which to interrogate the traditional prosody of English
poetry, accentual-syllabic metre; most typically represented by iambic
pentameter. Despite significant historical developments in practice--notably
Augustan correctness in the couplet followed by Romantic relaxation
there is a solid institutional continuity of the pentameter in England
from the Renaissance to at least 1900. Like linear perspective in graphic
art and Western harmony in music, the pentameter may be an epochal form,
one co-terminous with bourgeois culture from the Renaissance till now. Yet the free verse practice of Pound and Eliot opens a gap at the margin of the traditional prosody which is usually closed as follows: pentameter is normal in Modern English because it arises naturally from the English language itself. Prised away from its home in poetry, pentameter becomes immediately re-naturalized in language. This view, widely diffused and casually repeated, mainly derives from what even now remains the standard work, Saintsbury's History of English Prosody in three volumes, 1906-1910. Saintsbury's premise is that 'every language has the prosody which it deserves' (vol I, p. 371) and so iambic metre corresponds to the inherent rhythms of the English language. Established first by Chaucer, it was obscured during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries due to linguistic change, particularly the 'lopping off of the final syllable' (ibid., p. 292); but with this uncertainty resolved, iambic metre (like [54] the British Constitution
in the Whig theory of history) emerged naturally in what Saintsbury
calls 'an unbroken process of development' (ibid., p. 372). One may argue against
this linguistic determinism in two ways. First, even if it is true that
a language gets the prosody it deserves, another metre may claim to
be more natural to English. Besides iambic
pentameter there is the older accentual four stress metre inherited
from Old English poetry. While the pentameter,
conventionally defined as a line of ten syllables alternately unstressed
and stressed, legislates for both stress and syllable, accentual metre
requires only that the line should contain four stressed syllables and
says nothing about the unstressed syllables. Since stress or syllable
prominence is phonetically much more significant in English than syllable
duration, accentual metre has a strong claim to be more natural in Old,
Middle and Modern English. Its case is vigorously put
Second, iambic
pentameter did not simply emerge from the language: it was an historical
invention. In fact it was invented twice. The first time was in the
fourteenth century when it took the form of Chaucer's Middle English
pentameter. Between then and the early sixteenth century massive phonological |
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[55] metres at the Renaissance,
as Saintsbury well knew, since he says that its establishment the second
time was due to 'Italian influence, classical influence, and the two
as combined and reflected by Spenser' (1910,1, p. 303). Promoted into
dominance by the new courtly culture, pentameter is an historically
constituted institution. It is not natural to English poetry but is
a specific cultural phenomenon, a discursive form. In rejecting Saintsbury's
assumption that language determines metre there is no need to deny all
determining force exercised by language on metre. Modern English clearly
constitutes a precondition for pentameter, as can be seen in several
ways. Stress is an important linguistic feature in Modern English and
pentameter exploits it. Stress is inherent in the isolated word when
it is of more than one syllable, and a full account of this is offered
by Halle and Keyser (1971). They give the rules we operate in knowing
how to place primary stress by saying 'America' instead of ,
America', 'arthritis' not 'arthritis', and so on.
As soon as isolated words are combined into phrases , the stress they
hold in isolation is modified by context. A form of this is isochrony:
the tendency to keep roughly the same time interval between stresses
so that (in Attridge's excellent illustration 1982) the two syllables
of 'John stands' is timed roughly the same as the six of "jonathan
understands," both having two strong stresses, in contrast to 'Johnny
Black withstands', which has three. There is also a
preference for alternating strong and weak stresses to give 'bright
and shining eyes' rather than 'shining and bright eyes' with two strong
stresses adjacent (see Bolinger 1965). In prescribing a regular spacing-out
of stress along the line pentameter makes use of the tendency to isochrony
and Not concerned with unstressed syllables, it accommodates itself easily to the wayisochrony demotes syllables between stresses, while pentameter insists on them, being concerned with the number of syllables in a line. Modern English, then, is a determinant for iambic pentameter but not the only determinant.
Pentameter and
Language
[57]
and a recommendation of cannibalism
A syllable can be emphasized by means of stress but also by accent, that is, through its place in one of the many strongly varied intonation contours of English. The relation of stress and accent remains controversial in linguistics. David Crystal argues that both stress and accent are produced by a 'bundle' of phonetic features, not just one, and that in 'stress, the dominant perceptual component is loudness' while in accent it is pitch (1969, p. 120). Both stress and accent have to be considered together in defining what makes a syllable more or less prominent in an utterance. Roger Fowler (1971, p. 175) summarizes four factors contributing to syllable prominence: that inherent in the isolated word when it is of more than one syllable (cf. Halle and Keyser 1971); that due to a sub-sentence stereotyping, for instance of the kind which prefers 'bright and shining eyes' to 'shining and bright eyes'; that ensuing when a word is picked out for emphasis for semantic reasons (as intonation signals difference of meaning in Delattre'sexample); that which occurs through the normal functioning of intonation contour.
draw two conclusions.
First, the concept of stress alone is entirely insufficient to explain
syllable prominence, and accent as effected holistically by the intonation
contour must be considered as well. Second, if only because of the role
of intonation, syllables do not occur in a simple contrast between prominent
and unprominent but have degrees of prominence relativized by the context.
Prominence and unprominence donot function like bricks added together
to make a wall but like the relative values 2 Another doubtful development in linguistic work on metre also follows from giving theoretical priority to syllable and stress, to units within the line rather than the line itself. One area of the discussion has come to operate on the basis of an epistemological error. This is the 'generative metrics' of Halle and Keyser (1966 and 1971), Magnuson and Ryder (1970 and 1971), Kiparsky and--ironically --Attridge (1982) (ironically because in his second chapter on 'Linguistic Approaches' Attridge provides one of the best critiques of the procedure). The theoretical
principle of this tendency is explicit when Halle and Keyser announce:
The assumption is that each line of pentameter actualizes the rules of metre in the same way that rules in transformational grammar can show how sentences are generated through transformations in the relations between surface and deep structures. The hoped for result is 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' lines of pentameter on the model of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. But pentameter is not a structure elaborated by rules [59]
On this principle, that of the perception of a gestalt, any line in a passage of iambic pentameter tends to become iambic pentameter. Raymond Chapman points out the way a sentence from daily speech ('the stated price is subject to review') can turn into pentameter when inserted into that metrical context: But the same utterance--the
same intonation--will also function perfectly as a four-stress line
in accentual metre: In both cases the
set of metric expectations imposes itself on the same utterance to make
an acceptable line in two different metres. The metre makes the line
while the line supports the metre. That definitions of pentameter should begin with the culturally established pattern is shown by the fact that the pentameter norm can be perceived entirely apart from lines--that is, in prose. Commenting in detail on a passage fromVirginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway Traugott and Pratt note that
An
even more impressive instance occurs in a speech by Vladimir in Waiting
for Godot beginning 'Let us not waste our time in idle discourse'.
This establishes the 'idea' of the pentameter in association with a
certain humanist rhetoric only in order to mock both. A number of regular
'lines' ('. ..tho'se cries fo'r help This happens less
often than people think, as would have been apparent if the linguistic
discussion of metre had paid more attention to free verse. As Graham
Hough has shown (1960) much of what passes for free verse, including
Eliot's 'Prufrock' and one of Lawrence's more polemically free verse
poems, turns These two general criticisms of work on metre concern intonation and the pattern of pentameter. The implications lead back to a definition of pentameter as counterpoint. As applied to pentameter the term metre has meant ambiguously the 'official' metrical pattern itself (ten syllables alternately unstressed and stressed) and the pattern as practised in relation to syllables made prominent in the intonation of a line. Both in fact are needed to specify the pentamet.er, which is defined by the relation of two systems, the abstract metrIcal pattern and the mtonatlon of non-metrical language. On this there is a definite consensus [61] |
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among linguists
and literary critics. In 1949 Wellek and Warren wrote that:
More recently,
introducing a selection of articles on metre,' Chatman and Levin summarize
a now general agreement:
The term counterpoint is preferred here because of the currency given it first by Hopkins and later by Yvor Winters. It designates the metre as function of two forces, the vector between two axes. One is the abstract pattern ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti:'tum ti-tum, a grid of expectations explicitly formulated within British culture and sufficiently confirmed within a poem to fix the pattern as totalized gestalt. The grid enables both
and
to constitute pentameter, even though, as E. M. W. Tillyard says in citing them, the lines are 'as different as they can be except in that
the pattern behind them is the same' (1929, p. 18). On the other side
there are' the prominences and unprominences of the syllables produced
in the non-metric usage. It is not the case that the official pattern
is a metrical 'abstraction' and its practice in counterpoint an 'actualization'
of this abstraction; rather the counterpoint is the metre. This can be substantiated
through two comparisons. 2 English pentameter can be compared with the model of classical hexameteh The abstract pattern of Latin hexameter is defined by the Oxford Classical Dictionary as follows:
refuse to put a
dactyl at the fifth foot ('an Alexandrian mannerism', as the Oxford
Classical Dictionary notes). The term metre accurately includes
both the abstraction and its actualization, and the composition of Latin
verse becomes a mechanical operation which slots in the abstract pattern
are filled using a Latm dIctIonary, which defines the correct length
of each syllable, and Gradus Ad Parnassum, a special dictionary
for verse composition, which gives metrical synonyms. Contrast with
this model shows how the English pentameter works. ' In English, the abstract pattern is ten syllables, alternately unstressed and stressed. In the Latin model, length of syllable is absolute and durational contrast is binary (not least because [63] But as the earlier
discussion of accent and intonation sought to show, syllables in English
do not occur in a simple binary contrast between prominence and unprominence,
and degrees of prominence in an utterance are always contextually relative.
Since syllable prominence is relative, it follows that the abstract
pattern of pentameter is never actualized (except of course by the line
boundary) but that syllable prominences and unprominences in the non-metric
intonation approximate it. This approximation is the metre. 2 Pentameter can
be compared with the older, accentual metre, a comparison which confirms
that pentameter is to be defined by approximation rather than coincidence
between abstract pattern and non-metrical intonation. The abstract pattern
of four-stress accentual metre anticipates four equally prominent syllables
in each line. Since numbers of unstressed syllables are not regarded
as significant for metrical purposes, syllable prominence provided already
by the non-metric intonation of an utterance will readily and necessarily
coincide with some of these four metric positions. Where they do not,
or do not do so sufficiently strongly, the expectations set up by the
abstract pattern will intensify what stress there is, as it did to the
sentence, 'The stated price is subject to review' when this was inserted
into the context of accentual metre. As a result, prominences anticipated
by the abstract pattern and those preexisting from non-metric intonation
will coincide and reinforce each other. Hence the high prominence of
syllable, the heavily stressed rhythms, of accentual verse:
Here a line of
six syllables and one of eleven constitute two metrically regular lines
in a metre specified by reinforcement, not counterpoint. Pentameter can
be performed as though it were accentual metre; that is, thumped out
as doggerel so that abstract pattern and intonation coincide. This is
how children and the inexperienced, used mainly to accentual metre (for
example, nursery
Spoken performance
of pentameter is accordingly open to variation in a way accentual verse
is not. Since pentameter consists neither of the abstract pattern itself
nor the intonation of non-metric language but is a function of the two
in which both are active, actual performance will vary widely according
to whether the voice tends towards the abstract pattern (though never
losing hold on the intonation) or towards the intonation (though it
could only become non-metric speech by defying entirely the abstract
pattern). The metre can be
seen not as a neutral form of poetic necessity but a specific historical
form producing certain meanings and acting to exclude others. [65] These meanings
are ideological. Though they persist in and with the metre, they surface
most manifestly during its founding moment, at the Renaissance. Pentameter
comes to power as a neo-classical form and this is inscribed into its
defining feature of counterpoint. On the one side, as the name proclaims,
iambic pentameter reaches back to the quantitative metre of Greek and
Latin and the model ofbinarily contrasted syllables arranged in 'feet';
on the other, the non-metric intonation approximates to the abstract
pattern and thus the native language is brought into relation with the
classical model. So a particular practice of the national tongue can
dress itself in the clothes of antiquity and a bourgeois national aspiration
may represent itself in the form of universal civilization (see Kristeva
1974, p. 210). The pentameter is favoured by the English court at the
Renaissance --in 1589 Puttenham praises Wyatt and Surrey on the grounds
Once established
as national poetic institution pentameter becomes a hegemonic form.
It becomes a sign which includes and excludes, sanctions and denigrates,
for it discriminates"the 'properly' poetic from the 'improperly'
poetic, Poetry from verse. In an unbroken continuity from the Renaissance
to 1900 The hegemony of
pentameter continues to promote certain meanings rather than others: 1 Abstraction
Relative to accentual metre whose requirement off our stresses admits
a wide variety of line lengths, the abstract pattern of pentameter is
abstract in a specific and restricted fashion. It represents a systemic
totality, an explicit preconception legislating for every unit of stress
and syllable, and this 'continueth throughout the verse' (Gascoigne),
'in sequence of a metronome' (Pound). The only relief from this uniformity
is the intonation, which even so always implies the comprehensive grid
to which it approximates. Pentameter accordingly shares the prestige
attaching to abstract and uniform modes. Marshall McLuhan has suggested
an historical significance for such modes; the heterogeneity and simultaneity
of feudal culture, its 'easy habit of configuration',
2 Concealed
production Yet the abstraction of pentameter is never openly announced
as such. According to the contradictory nature of the metre, counterpoint
being its specific effect, the abstraction of the pattern is always
produced in relation to the apparent spontaneity of the intonation contours
in ordinary speech. To this extent the severity of the abstract pattern
is always mitigated. The 'smoothness' Brecht notes, the tendency of
verse in iambic metre to 'glide past the ear' because its (regular)
rhythms 'fail. ..to cut deep enough' (1964, p. 120), has been welcomed
as desirable for the English poetic tradition.
Robert Graves and
Laura Riding have made an explicit claim for the political significance
of counterpoint: In pentameter intonation
approximates to the abstract pattern but can never coincide with it.
Because of this feature, as the previous quotations show, counterpoint
has yet another ideological connotation. For it corresponds to the ideological
opposition between the 'social' and the 'individual', an opposition
which envisages society as a 'necessity' against and within which the
individual finds his or her 'freedom'. Normally (that
is, in casual discourse), there would be no problem; the first of the
similar sounds would be omitted by a variety of elision . . . It might
sound somethIng like, 'When I Ajak' strive' some Rock's vast Weigh'
to throw'. (1978, P.44) : However, the 'formal
style of poetry reading, even in silent reading' means that this elision
does not operate and so to say 'Ajax-strives' without elision 'requires
a pause, an actual "cessation of phonation'" (ibid., p. 44).
This is an extreme example of a feature typical of English poetic discourse.
Elision of some degree is invited whenever the sound at the end of one
word and that at the beginning of the next is close in point of [69]
Pentameter aims to preclude shouting and 'improper' excitement; it enhances the poise of a moderate yet uplifted tone of voice, an individual voice self-possessed, self-controlled, impersonally self-expressive. The topic of pronunciation
takes analysis of ideological meanings right up to the question of subjec Pentameter and
subjectivity Meaning 'insists'
along the syntagmatic axis, and so the attempt to close meaning along
this axis offers a coherent position to the subject as 'a single voice'
sustaining meaning and itself sustained in 'this linearity' (Lacan 1977a,
pp. 153-4). The fixity of this position for the ego appears transcendental
simply there rather than constructed -when the process of discourse
which in fact produces the position is generally backgrounded and denied. Relative to other
metres, English iambic pentameter is a syntagmatic form and works to
promote a position for the reader as transcendental ego. It does so
while operating in the the line.. In expanding
these assertions it will be useful to bear in mind a contrast between
pentameter and the older four-stress metre, as well as the model of
classical metre. The way pentameter
enforces coherence and unity in meaning has been convincingly evidenced
by Donald Davie. Taking Pound's free verse exploration of a landscape,
'Provincia Deserta', Davie re-writes it in iambic pentameter (1965,
pp. 60-3). The whole exercise needs to be read but some salient points can be picked out: 'the pentameter makes the creeping and peering happen together, whereas in Pound's poem the man is seen first to creep, and then to peer. ...In the blank verse weare told that the Dronne has lilies in it; we do not discover it for ourselves as the speaker did. InPound's poem the speaker sees the road wind eastwards, and then reflects that Aubeterre is where it leads to. ...In the blank verse Aubeterre and the road are parts of a single act. ..'. Davie's conclusion is that:
The effect of pentameter
is to run together and unify (Davie's word is 'interweave') subject
matter and meaning.. The reason for
this is that while all metre is precisely linear, an organization along
the line closing at the line boundary,pentameter is linear ~o a s~ecial
~e~ree. It points horizontally along the syntagmatIc cham. ThIs IS the
case both within the line and across lines. Within the line Paul Kiparsky
has pointed to the relative nature of stress in pentameter, the fact
that the degree of stress is not absolute but exists by virtue of the
greater or lesser stresses next to it--'syntagmatically' --(rather than
by virtue of the greater or lesser stresses that might have occured
instead of it -'paradigmatically'). ...(1977, p. 194) In the Latin verse
model preformed units of long and short syllables can be substituted
in the line without otherwise affecting the metre. This cannot happen
with pentameter(as anyone knows who's tried it) because pentameter depends
upon syllable prominence and this is relative to context- the preformed [71]
This means that
when we reach the ehd of the line there is no compelling pressure from
the larger structure to register the completion of a rhythmic unit and
to move on to the next one. Instead, the syntax
has a more powerful voice. ..and will determine whether we pause or
read straight on to the following line. (1982, p. 133) The predominantly
syntagmatic structuring of pentameter determines subject position in
two ways simultaneously. These can be distinguished according to whether
counterpoint is thought 'up' from the intonation towards the abstract
pattern or 'down' from the pattern onto the intonation. On one side
that
The single voice that 'comes most naturally when we soliloquize' tends to be over-personal; through 'a powerful and passionate syntax' enforced by traditional metres the voice can be raised towards 'impersonal meditation'. That is: syntagmatic closure promoted by the pentameter can approximate to a poise and self-consistency that seems absolute (Yeats identifies it with art, the ideal, impersonality and indeed eternity). But on the other side this autonomy is effected by the pentameter only at the cost of increased repression: the abstract pattern contains and overrides process as enacted in the intonation. In fact Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose programmatic commitments might have been expected to lead them to free verse, both make finely conservative spokesmen for the repressive effectivity of what their practice reveals to be essentially traditional pentameter. Coleridge traces the origin of metre to that 'spontaneous effort' of the mind 'which strives to hold in check the workings of passion' (1949, II, p. 49); Wordsworth takes the view that excitement may get out of control (be carried beyond its proper bounds') and that metre has 'great efficacy in tempering and restraining the passion' (1965, p. 264).
If the speed is
slowed down, however, intermediate stresses make themselves felt. ..,
causing the listener to reinterpret the passage in two-syllable measures.
This should cause no wonder, since it is a well-known fact of English
rhythm that the slower the speed at which an utterance is spoken, the
greater the proportion of stressed to unstressed syllables. (1969, p.
I 17) But pentameter
requires this slower pace since its abstract pattern looks for a binary
uniformity of stressed and unstressed [73] syllables. It acts to restrain, to withold and release stress in an even distribution through the line. The intonation of an extra-metric utterance (Tye up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead') rising to two equal peaks ('I'm sick, I'm dead') is ironed out by the abstract pattern of the metre. Accordingly, pentameter provides space for certain polysyllabic words and so encourages a certain vocabulary and register in poetry. (A full account of this would be the subject of another study along lines laid down by Mukarovsky, 1964, pp. 113-32). To sum up: accentual metre preceded pentameter in English and became subordniated to it at the Renaissance though continuing in popular forms such as children's rhymes:
In accentual metre
the stress of the intonation and the abstract pattern coincide and reinforce
each other; in pentameter they are counterpointed. The coincidence in
accentual metre calls for an emphatic, heavily stressed performance,
one typically recited or chanted, often in association with rhythmic
gestures, [74] Poetry as Discourse |
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and so to a single
voice in the closure of its own coherence. Try speaking 'Humpty-Dumpty'
and then Milton on his blindness ('When I consider how my light is spent',
etc.). F. R. Leavis was
right to assert that English poetry in the dominant discourse 'depends
upon the play of the natural sense movement and intonation against the
verse structure' (1967, p. 50); by accommodating 'i<!!.?matic speech'
(ibid.) poetry becomes as though transparent to the presence ora represented
speaker, an effect 'as if words as words withdrew themselves from the
focus of our attention and we were directly aware of a tissue of feelings
and perceptions' (p. 47). Four-stress metreand for that matter free
verse -forces attention to the words as words and so shatters any effect
of transparency. Relative to other
forms of discourse all poetry can be seen to foreground the signifier.
In four-stress accentual metre (to persist with the example) the coinciding
reinforcement of abstract pattern and intonation puts the sound of the
words before their meaning -it exhibits metricality and openly celebrates
rhythmic pleasure in the work/play of the signifier. In contrast, pentameter
would disavow its own metricality and restrain the activity of the signifier.
ln this lies the central effect of pentameter, an effect which can be
made visible by reference to the distinction between enunciation and
enounced as developed in Chapter 3. There is always necessarily a disjunction
for the subject between its position as subject of and for the enounced
and its position as subject of and for the enunciation (on which the
former position depends). When I speak a line of poetry (such as that
of the Milton sonnet just now) I am placed as subject of the process
of enunciation and only thus may come to occupy a place as subject of
the enounced, 'Milton' considering his blindness. Iambic pentameter
works to deny the position of subject of enunciation in favour of that
of the subject of the enounced; it would disclaim the voice speaking
the poem infavour of the voice represented in the poem, speaking what
it says. Accordingly
By eliding metricality
in favour of '.the prosody of natural speech' the pentameter would render
poetic discourse transparent, aiming to identify the speaking of a poem
with the speaking of a represented speaker or a narrator; it invites
the reader into a position of imaginary identification with this single
voice, this represented presence. The discussion
of pentameter has meant to show the cohesion of English bourgeois poetic
discourse by analysing iambic pentameter as a necessary condition of
its possibility. The dominance of the metre since the Renaissance gives
it a claim to be an epochal form, and ,a similar analysis might be made
of In leaving the question of metre two points of qualification need to be made. First, iambic pentameter, by far the most widely used form, has been taken to typify accentual-syllabic metre in English. There has been no account of other iambic forms or of the other metres, trochaic, anapaestic and dactylic. I see no reason to doubt Martin Halpern's conclusion that these all resolve themselves into two types: of the four so-called 'syllable-stress' metres in English iambic, trochaic, anapaestic and dactylic--only the iambic has developed in a direction radically different from the native accentual tradition. ..the other three, as characteristically used in English poetry, are simply variants of the strong-stress mode. (1962, p. 177) Second, there has
been a degree of abstraction at work in analysing iambic pentameter
apart from its use in a particular moment of the historical
process. The abstraction has been necessary. It is a temporary and provisional
'freezing' of other factors in order to isolate and understand the material
effect of the metrical form. Of course in practice the metre is always
active in conjunction with many other features. Clearly, in the aggressive
early days of the struggle for bourgeois hegemony, especially around
1600, the pentameter had a novelty and glamour that was long gone in
1900. Now the pentameter is a dead form and its continued use (e.g.
by Philip Larkin) is in the strict sense reactionary. Eliot wrote in
1942: 'only a bad poet would welcome free verse as a liberation from
form. It was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form'
(1957, p. 37). The cohesive identity
of English poetic discourse continues through historical change. To
deal with this I shall look at four sample texts from four crucial conjunctures
in the history of the discourse: the Renaissance, obviously enough the
founding moment of the discourse and so particularly likely to show
how it works; the 'high plateau' of the discourse when it was consolidated
during the Augustan period; its renovation by Romanticism, when changes
are introduced whose effect is to keep it the same; and finally the
crisis of the discourse when the Modernist revolution challenges it
at every level. English poetic
discourse is rooted in the pentameter. Through it certain ideological
meanings and a subject position are 'written into' the discourse. Pentameter
defends the canon against the four-stress popular metre, which foregrounds
the po~m as a poem; it promotes the 'realist' effect of an individual
voice 'actually' speaking. To provide this, a position for the reader
as subject of the enounced must be fixed in a coherence, a stability
'of its own'. Fixity is achieved mainly in two ways: as signifier is
held firmly onto signified in the syntagmatic chain, as ' the work/play
of the signifier is denied. Here are to be found the relevant terms
for analysing historical variation with reference to the four examples.
Each chapter will begin with a discussion of attitudes towards language
in each period. Other related topics and terms for their analysis -the
referential effect and iconicity, for example -will be introduced and
explained as they come up. It is not easy to shake off the familiar assumptions brought [77] |
|
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