From: "Joanna Boulter" <[log in to unmask]>
> That's very interesting, about the Spanish decima line. But where did the
> idea come from, that the 10 syllable line not only counts as metre but is
> the *correct, indeed the only permissible, metre for English blank verse
and
> for all places where an iambic pentameter is required?
Probably from Chaucer originally (or his models) as he inttoduced it into
English from French where (I think) simple syllable-counting was more
rigorously enforced. As much as in Spanish? Mark will be more pertinent
than me on this.
Add to which, any idiot who can count up to ten can write an iambic "poem"
(in English) if the base criterion is a simple and strict ten syllables.
And it's not *that* difficult to add a de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM rhythm.
In fact, the difficulty is sometimes in avoiding it, wherefrom one theory
that the entire *point* of the simple syllabic movement beginning in the
early part of the 20thC was to write lines with (consistently) eleven
syllables so as to *avoid* the pentameter.
> I mean, for pete's
> sake, don't these people ever *listen? To Shakespeare, for instance?
To extend Joanna's point (and I hope I'm not misinterpretting her here)
maybe there should be a rule -- like never mention a sunset in a poem --
that no one should ever use the term "iambic pentameter" without an
historical marker, as if the iambpent was some sort of homogeneous metrical
monoblock stretching from Chaucer till now.
WHICH version of iambic pentameter? Chaucer's? Lydgate's? Wyatt's?
Surrey's? Donne's? Jonson's (plays or poetry)? ... Wallace Stevens? Not
exactly the same thing.
And Shakespeare's iambic pentameter ... Which one -- the early plays, the
late plays, the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis? Anyone want to argue these are
the same thing?
<god give me patience! he sighed.>
The bare term "iambic pentameter" is virtually sematically null.
Add to WHICH, the (unspoken) definition of the "correct" version of the
iambic pentameter line is taken from the rhymed iambic pentameter couplets
of the major 18thC poets such as Pope and Dryden. And even they, in their
practice and theory, were never as rigidly restrictive as their 20thC
"acolytes".
<At which point, a Mad Dormouse, with smoke steaming from his ears,
crawls back into the teapot and began feeding his copy of Trager-Smith, page
by page, into the fiery belly of the stove. Open fires not being practical
inside well-bred teapots.>
> I got myself involved with a writing group some time ago, led by a woman
who
> regards herself as a formalist. She wanted us to try sonnet form -- you
> know -- here's the rhyme scheme, and it's iambic pentameter, off you go.
So
> I come back with one that gets me my knuckles severely rapped, because out
> of my 14 lines one has 11 syllables and one has 9. Never mind that the two
> extra are both so light as to count as two halves; never mind that the
> 'short' line conatins a syllable which is so long and weighty that it
needs
> an entire foot to itself. She rewrote the thing so as to 'correct' the
> metre, and ended up with most of the stresses on weak syllables, while I
sat
> and growled. But I refused to alter it.
What can one say, Joanna? You were right and she was wrong, and good on you
for sticking to your guns.
> I don't mean that 10 syllables ought not to be done, but I do think the
> stresses ought to be handled with awareness. Otherwise you're writing
> syllabics, and that's a whole nother animal.
Right.
The Dormouse Thing
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