Hi Joanna, Doug, Michael, and everybody else.
I'm a bit rushed right now but as to the questions about our old friend the
iambic pentameter etc: well, let's look at the language - English can be
fairly described as stress-timed in nature, however, that doesn't qualify as
an absolute description, I'd better be careful here else I'll start rambling
on about maps, but the description covers degrees of emphasis, loudness
really, and in the 'classic' iambic pentameter variation is achieved by
varying primary and secondary stresses. One can extend this categorisation
of sound further but for basic purposes the distinction will do. Sometimes
the 'mighty line' will have the full punch, Marlowe for instance constantly
aspires towards that, one of the interesting things with English is the
variation words of more than two syllables introduce, for example, adverbial
ending in -ly allow of a minor stress which can be 'metrically promoted' to
keep the beat, interestingly again, 'promotion' or 'demotion' will often
occur close to the caesura, just as initial foot reversal is favourable on
the beginning of the line, thus 'holding' the rhythm by variation. All this
relates to Bunting's notion of the four beat as the base line, this I think
'spot on', one can notice, keeping to iambics pentameter for the purpose of
discussion, how later poets, like Milton or the Wordsworth of 'The Prelude',
have problems maintaining momentum in their iambs, the loss of the
Elizabethan/Jacobean habit of strong auxiliary verbs was partly a
difficulty, also the increasing tendency to cluster prepositions towards the
end of a line.
There's lots more that could be said on this and all the other matters
raised, unfortunately I haven't got time right now, I'll see how the
insomnia goes tonight (pace cris!)
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: where is the current avant-garde?
>Doug - and Dave -
>
>Your points about the four, or five, stress line in English, commonly known
>as the iambic pentameter, interest and cheer me greatly. But can you or
>anyone tell me where the notion came from, that the iambic pentameter
should
>consist not of four or five stresses and a varying number of lighter
>syllables, but of a set ten syllables per line?
>
Joanna
I can't look it up right now, but I think Bunting blames it on those
French. That may be too simple; he actually is saying that the counting of
syllables was imposed from a language in which it might have made a bit
more sense, but it just doens't work with english, partly for the reasons
Dave provided...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I do not limit myself: I imitate
many fancy things such as the dull red
cloth of literature, its mumbled griefs
Lisa Robertson
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