Hi,Kathryn,
Nice to hear from you. I'm ashamed to say I have nothing new to say
about fourteeners, though the discussion has started me thinking about
them, because I hope to move into a n article on form in a few months
when I finish some other things.
Back in 2004 at Vancouver, at IAUPE, I met someone from New Zealand who
knows you, can't think of her name.
I love your ed. of Basspoole which I have been reading in snatches.
Have you ever thought of joining IAUPE? That's International Association
of University Professors of English. In July-August of 2010, we will be
meeting in Malta. I'm chairing some sessions so I will definitely be
going. It's rather expensive (dues $3oo)but the conference is always
stimulating and fun with many side trips.
Hope you are well.
Carol
Kathryn Walls wrote:
> Thought you might know something about this, xx K
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Susanne Woods
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 16 June 2009 8:12 a.m.
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: thumping fourteeners?
>
>
>
> Sternhold and Hopkins give us common measure, good for singing, but not
> so good for heroic lines. I argue in my book (Natural Emphasis, 1984)
> that their popularity in the mid-1550's may have been a response to the
> hexameter line, poulter's measure a search for some sort of home-grown
> equivalent, but not sure if I still believe it. In any case I agree
> with Anne that it can sometimes be very effective--as in (probably)
> Greville's "Silence augmenteth grief." That's a really good poem, but
> it already recognizes that "rime, the son of rage" is "no kin to skill."
> The heroic pentameter line has arrived.
>
>
>
> Susanne
>
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Hannibal Hamlin
> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> A Google Search shows that there are a cluster of references to
> "thumping fourteeners" in the early sixties (Ringler's Sidney Poems,
> Hunter's John Lyly), but Pound seems to have described the danger of
> fourteeners "thumping" back in 1918, though not in the precise phrase.
> Saintsbury (Hist. of Prosody 1908) refers to the "unmusical thump thump"
> of a fifteener. "Thump" was a good Renaissance word, and I came across a
> lovely description of his own verse by John Taylor ("A Skeltonical
> salutation to those that know how to read, and not marre the sense with
> hacking or misconstruction"):
>
>
>
> "My verses are made, to ride euery Iade, but they are forbidden, of
> Iades to be ridden, they shall not be snaffeled, nor braued nor
> bafflled, weart thou //George// with thy Naggon, that fought'st with the
> dragon, or were you great //Po////~pey//, my verse should be thumpe ye,
> if you like a Iauel against me dare cauill."
>
>
>
> Thumping here seems to be conceived as a kind of country cousin of
> Donne's masculine perswasive force.
>
>
>
> Of course, it must be pointed out that Sternhold and Hopkins is not all,
> or even mostly, thumping fourteeners, though in whatever meter it does
> often thump. A number of the SH Psalms are in meters other than the
> Common (what Bottom calls 8 and 6), and it is really only Sternhold
> himself who writes in a broken fourteener. Since he rhymes his
> couplets //abcb//, he really does seem to be thinking in terms of two
> fourteener lines, broken into shorter half-lines either for printing or
> perhaps because of the phrasing of the standard tunes. Hopkins changes
> the third line to another "a" rhyme, which cuts ties more decisively
> with the fourteener origins. So whoever originated the description of
> "thumping fourteeners" was not quite accurate, though there is certainly
> a kind of cognate relationship between Common Meter and the long lines
> of Chapman or Golding.
>
>
>
> Hannibal
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 6/15/09, *anne prescott* <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Gosh, Joel. I don't recall. I do know that the modern editor (well, sort
> of modern, and I can't recall his name), when writing of the fourteener,
> referred (I hope I have this right) to the "lilt and flop of this almost
> always fatal measure." Fair or not, I like the "lilt and flop"--up, up,
> up, op and then down, down, stop. Yes, mean and not always true. Anne.
>
>
>
> On Jun 15, 2009, at 2:39 PM, Joel Davis wrote:
>
> Who coined the now-ubiquitous term, "thumping fourteeners," to describe
> the Sternhold-Hopkins psalms? Was it CS Lewis or someone more recent?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Joel
>
>
>
>
> --
> Hannibal Hamlin
> Associate Professor of English
> The Ohio State University
> Burkhardt Fellow,
> The Folger Shakespeare Library
> 201 East Capitol Street SE
> Washington, DC 20003
> [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>
|